Authored by Satyajit Das via Naked Capitalism,

Ordinary lives are lived out amidst global economic, social and political forces that they have no control over. Today, multiple far-reaching pressures are reshaping that setting.

This three-part piece examines the re-arrangement. This first part examined current great geopolitical divisions. This second part looked at key vulnerabilities. The final third part, studies possible trajectories.

The Ukraine conflict may shape the trajectories of a fractured world. In the short-term, anti-Russian sentiment has united the West. In the long-term, it is likely to accelerate its divisions and decline. Individual pathways within the Western bloc will differ because, in part, of disunions.

Divergent Trails

American policymakers continue to believe that the global economy revolves around the US. They routinely use economic weapons, such as sanctions, to threaten foreign access to American consumer and financial markets. The aim is to force other countries to adhere to its positions and isolate opponents. American military capabilities serve to underline its power.

The US self-serving strategy seeks to weaken Russia by implicitly sacrificing Ukraine and Europe. Given its high dependence on imported energy and sensitivity to fuel costs, Europe, especially Germany and Italy, risk a severe economic contraction, damage to its industrial base, reduction of living standards and a financial crisis.

Industrial leaders have warned of an existential threat from higher power prices, highlighting the ruinous consequences for employment, taxes and ability to repay borrowing. Environmentalists worry about recommissioning nuclear power plants and restarting dirty old coal fired power plants.

Precarious coalition governments in Germany and Italy may not survive internal disagreements on Ukraine and the concomitant economic cost. Announcing aid measures including a gas price cap and cancellation of a gas tax, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that prices must go down. It was wishful thinking related to plunging support of his government and party.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, de facto leader of The Visegrád political alliance of Central European countries, recently questioned the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia asking pointedly as to how long Brussels will continue with this course. Hungary alongside other European Union members were also highly critical of Germany’s domestic energy cost aid package which, in their view, would distort fair competition within the single market. Orban termed it “cannibalism” and a “bombshell” calling instead for a co-ordinated solution to help all Europeans, presumably paid for by the continent’s richer nations.

Concatenating events – the Euro debt crisis, Covid19 and now the energy crisis – pose a serious threat to fragile European unity. Predicated on preventing a new continental war, the Union has become a financial transfer system between wealthier and low-income countries. Divides are likely to grow over time as Germany’s financial position becomes compromised and its ability to buy off weaker European Union members weakens.

Europe’s need for a negotiated solution, if possible, will increase. Despite periodic mindless moralising, the German Chancellor, French President and Italian Prime Minister have sought, at least, to maintain communications with Russia unlike the Anglosphere.

Japan’s high exposure to energy prices and important trade relationship with China complicates support for the Western position. The tensions underlie difficulties with the US-led ‘Chip  4’ alliance with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to secure access to semiconductors. The east Asian partners have cited trade and security concerns.

Australia and New Zealand’s commitment to the Western alliance depends on developments in relations with China.

Over 35 percent of Australian exports  go to China, greater than the combined total to Japan, South Korea, India, the US and UK.  Australian imports from China comprise approximately 20 percent of the total. China is normally Australia’s largest source of higher education international students (over 160,000 or 38 percent). China is also its second-largest inbound tourist market (around 1.4 million arrivals) and the largest by expenditure. Over 28 percent of New Zealand’s exports and 38 percent of imports are to or from China. It is its second-largest source of tourism and 47 percent of foreign students at New Zealand universities are from China.

The US could place specific sanctions on China, over support for Russia, non-compliance with existing sanctions or actions in relation to Taiwan. The flow-on effect of secondary sanctions – penalties on persons and organizations, not subject to the sanctioning country’s legal jurisdiction, entering into dealings prohibited under primary sanctions- would affect Australia and New Zealand. They would find it extremely difficult to maintain commercial relations with its major trading partner without broad exemptions which may not be forthcoming. The national income loss would be substantial.

The issue is not exclusively antipodean as Europe is highly dependent on Chinese trade. In 2021, China was the third largest destination for European Union goods exports (10 percent) and the largest source for European Union goods imports (22 percent).

Outside of economics, there are concerns about the Disunited States of America, a deeply alienated mixture of honest hard-working people, a thoughtful and able if highly partisan intelligentsia, oppressed minorities and racist, misogynistic, conspiracy subscribing, religious fanatics. For outsiders, these internal divisions, bordering on an uncivil war between armed citizens, combined with abrupt policy shifts driven by never-ending electoral cycles complicates any alliance.

A simplistic Manichean foreign policy modelled on Superman’s pursuit for truth, justice and the American way is unhelpful. The persistent need to venture forth without thought to slay foreign demons -starting wars, staging coups or otherwise interfering in the internal affairs of other nations- is unsettling. US use of carpet bombing, napalm and chemical weapons in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts often against civilian populations or the supply of lethal weapons to American supported despots for use against their own citizens has not been forgotten.

The unexplained September 2022 destruction of pipelines for Russian gas added to concerns about America’s febrile approach. It was inexplicable why Russia would sabotage its own expensive infrastructure which historically generated up to 40 percent of Russian GDP. They could simply turn off supplies. Germany which is dependent on Nord Stream was also unlikely to have taken such action.

Cui Bono theorists suggested that America and Britain were responsible to prevent a recalcitrant Germany from breaking ranks with the Western alliance. The allegations gained traction when America’s Secretary of State pronounced the sabotage a great opportunity for US energy firms and a Polish politician deleted a tweet thanking the US. There were uncomfortable precedents including the false Gulf of Tonkin incident and incorrect WMD claims that was used to justify the Vietnam and Iraqi wars.

Policy positions are muddled. Recent positions on US support for Taiwan replace ‘strategic ambiguity’ with ‘strategic confusion’. Reacting to Chinese overtures, an US rush to engage with Pacific Islands attracted scepticism. Fiji’s attorney-general noted that US leaders saw the region as small dots from plane windows as they flew to meetings “where they spoke about us rather than with us”.

American willingness or ability to support allies, other than with financial assistance and low risk stand-off weaponry, is questionable. Outside of minor affairs like Panama and Granada, the US record in military combat is unimpressive. For Australians tied to the US and UK through the opaque 2021 AUKUS defence agreement, the possibility of being drawn into a military conflict with China and the prospect of the American cavalry not reporting for duty is a clear concern. The parallel to Great Britain’s abandonment of Australia during the World War 2 is striking.

Even US economic support is uncertain. Despite promises, America has, to date, been unable or unwilling to help meet European oil and gas needs. This is due to production constraints and prioritisation of domestic supply and low homeland prices. It flagging economic power also reduces its ability to provide assistance, especially with pressing domestic funding needs.

Playwright Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech for the 2005 Noble Prize for Literature set out a widely held view of US foreign policy: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

More recently, the demonised President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin provided an updated analysis: “Europe is about to throw its achievements in building up its manufacturing capability, the quality of life of its people and socioeconomic stability into the sanctions furnace, depleting its potential, as directed by Washington for the sake of the infamous Euro-Atlantic unity. In fact, this amounts to sacrifices in the name of preserving the dominance of the United States in global affairs….The competitive ability of European companies is in decline, for the European Union officials themselves are essentially cutting them off from affordable commodities and energy, as well as trade markets. It will come as no surprise if eventually the niches currently occupied by European businesses, both on the continent and on the global market in general, will be taken over by their American patrons who know no boundaries or hesitation when it comes to pursuing their interests and achieving their goals.”

These concerns are strong in emerging countries. There is additional anger at duplicitous policies. After having spent decades championing free trade and capital movement and forcing the Washington Consensus on other countries (most recently on Sri Lanka and Argentina), the West are busily implementing the very programs they derided – trade and capital restrictions, price caps or controls, subsidies, nationalisation and replacing market forces with state diktats.

Suspicion of the rhetoric, disinformation and propaganda which masks America’s true objective of preserving its hegemony is widespread. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the US has no enemies but is intensely disliked by friends.

For British statesman Lord Palmerston, countries had no eternal allies or perpetual enemies just permanent interests.  Europe, Japan and perhaps Australia and New Zealand may drift away from the alliance. Already, protests have taken place in several European countries against continued support of Kyiv and its effects on the cost of living. Ultimately, the cost of energy and food shortages accompanied by declining living standards will have to be weighed against taking sides in another military and economic war between great powers.

The evolving stance on Ukraine may be an indication of the long-term path.

The Special Relationship

The most durable support for the US (the current global empire) comes from the UK (the previous holder of that position). The British empire ended over six decades ago and its position as a great power has been declining for a century, since its penurious victory in World War 1. The UK’s special relationship with the US is little more than sponging off the latter’s economic and military strength to prop up pretensions of British global influence. For the US, the UK is an useful messenger as evidenced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s obedient deliveries of missives to Ukraine.

The UK provides an useful road map for decline. Since the 1970s when it needed IMF intervention, the British economy has been propped by a combination of North Sea oil, membership of the European Union and flight capital. Common market membership provided cheap labour (mainly from the East and South Europe) and trade opportunities especially in financial services (which generates around 10 percent of British economic output). Monetary inflows of frequently dubious origins from Russia, the Middle East, China and other less salubrious jurisdictions underpinned prosperity. It funded the South-East property markets, the National Health System, cultural and educational establishments as well as ‘cool Britannia’.

Today, North Sea oil production and energy security are in decline. Brexit means worker shortages, loss of trade and a reduced role for London as the centre for Euro financial markets. Idle promises of sovereignty and new trade opportunities may flounder on the fact that Europe is hard to replace and Britain does not actually produce much anymore.

The UK, tacitly retreating from Brexit promise, sought to boost immigration. It sought to remain attractive to the non-Russian, non-Chinese newly minted rich from the emerging world – a no-questions-asked tax haven on the Thames. But the UK may no longer be a secure place for placing wealth or for potential investees personally due to the risk of sanctions and asset confiscations or freezes if geo-political winds change direction.

Even the special relationship may be weakened if the UK decides to abandon the Northern Ireland protocols, an action opposed by the US.

The UK’s vulnerabilities were on show in October 2022. The UK government under new Conservative leader Liz Truss announced tax cuts and substantial subsidies, funded by public borrowing, to ameliorate rising energy and food prices. While it pleased conservative ideologues, the fiscally incontinent and economically vacuous plan unleashed a predictable crisis of confidence amongst those being asked to finance it.

Investors savagely sold the pound and UK government bonds. They demanded a “moron risk premium” (a term attributed to TS Lombard’s Dario Perkins) on government borrowings and sought a restoration of “abacus economics” (Prime Minister Liz Truss’ derogatory reference to fiscal orthodoxy).

The Pound plunged to record lows and interest rates on UK government debt rose sharply. There were witty asides about King Charles’s currency being devalued even before his face was stamped on UK legal tender. Conservative parliamentarians and opinion-istas spoke darkly about a foreign conspiracy against the UK and its decision to leave the European Union.

The Bank of England intervened to prop up the currency and lower rates (a volte-face from its stance of higher rates and tightening liquidity) to counter what the UK government stoically defended as “a little turbulence”. It was a confused case of mixing ‘uppers’ and ‘downers’.

The UK’s strategy -dubbed Kami-Kwasi (a riff on UK Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, whose tenure lasted a mere 38 days)- highlighted a Western weakness -the lack of currency reserves to intervene in foreign exchange markets. Other than the US ($716 billion), most of the West did not see the need for reserves as first world nations with internationally accepted, freely traded and, in some cases, reserve currencies.

Based on World Bank data, the UK’s reserves, as at end 2021, were $194 billion. This compared to China ($3,427 billion), Japan ($1,405 billion), India ($638 billion), Russia ($632 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($474 billion). The actual amount available as at August 2022 might be lower at around $108 billion. In addition, the funds that could be deployed were limited by not easily deployed holdings of gold ($17 billion) and the IMF’s special drawing rights ($39 billion). Nevertheless the Bank of England, with stiff upper lip, expended treasure to try to undo the actions of a government intent on self-harm.

Political pandemonium ensued. The plan to abolish the 45 percent bracket for highest-earning taxpayers was dropped when the government realised that the proposal would not pass in parliament because of opposition from members of the government itself. Literally hours before, the Prime Minister and Chancellor had repeatedly insisted that they would not change course. Spun as listening to the people, it was both shambolic and pointless as it did not alter the essential economic direction.

Ultimately, forced to back down on the entire package of tax cuts and large parts of her program, Truss resigned after the shortest prime ministership in British history. In little more than 4 months, the UK had cycled through four chancellors, three home secretaries, two prime ministers and two monarchs. Larry, the Prime Ministerial residence’s cat, had seen off no less than 4 incumbents and enjoyed support from many Britons to take over the running of the country.

The conservative party duly elected a new leader – former Chancellor Rishi Sunak. He promised a dullness dividend after the hysteric entertainment of Truss.

Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, forced out by his own party only months ago, rushed back from a Caribbean holiday in a later aborted attempt to return to power. Johnson was under investigation for misleading parliament and, if found guilty, faced suspension or a by-election. The Bojo 2.0 campaign was founded on the assertion that he had learned from past mistakes. His acolytes, concerned only about their candidate’s assumed election winning credentials and personal re-election prospects, were untroubled by Johnson’s lack of leadership and scandal ridden reign. Other ruling Conservatives opposed the return of Johnson and threatened mass resignations. The fact that Johnson could be a serious contender beggared belief.

The chaos illustrated how a supposedly advanced economy could rapidly find itself near collapse through a mixture of ideological blindness, policy errors and insensitivity to its predicament. It showed how markets can destroy fantasies. Multiple co-morbidities and minimal resistance to shocks can rapidly unravel seemingly prosperous and stable polities.

Precedents

Britain provides a guide to America’s fate. There are similar economic susceptibilities -high debt, decayed infrastructure, and hollowed out industries. They are both deeply unequal societies, where the less well-off rank badly and a small group of the rich fare particularly well over-stating average incomes. Government and institutions are barely functional.

American strengths may not hold over the longer term. Food self-sufficiency is susceptible to climate change induced extreme weather. Energy independence is reliant on shale oil and gas production. Estimated US oil proven reserves that can be economically recovered is around 69 billion barrels enough for less than 10 years based on daily consumption of 20 million barrels barring further discoveries or new technologies. In contrast, Saudi Arabia, other Middle-East producers, Canada and Venezuela have reserves totalling more than 1,270 billion barrels.

The US may revert to an energy importer once the shale oil boom has run its course. This would make it vulnerable to oil-producers, especially Saudi Arabia which needs high oil prices in the short run to engineer its post-fossil fuel future. Under a young absolutist ruler who is willing to take sides in US domestic politics, the Kingdom, which is building ties with Russia and China, increasingly rejects America’s premiere position in the existing world order. The reformation of Middle East alliances reflects the fact that major energy exporters no longer regard the US as a reliable guarantor of security.

In October 2022, OPEC, in which the Kingdom is a pivotal player, cut output despite US pressure to maintain or even increase production to assist in keep fuel prices and inflation down. America’s furious response threatened possible bans on exports of petroleum products, which would damage Europe but not oil producers. Congress thundered about NOPEC legislation designed to break-up the cartel and exert US military leverage on Gulf oil exporters. The US policy responses reflected a persistent tendency to double down on what has not worked.

In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers published in 1987, Paul Kennedy argued that great power ascendancy and decline correlates to available resources and economic durability. America’s military overreach and military spending – greater than China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea combined – is unsustainable.

America and the UK revel in the past. The UK, as the Queen’s death evidences, love expensive, meaningless pageantry and nostalgia. MAGA/MAGAA too is a fantasy of a return to a simpler, more prosperous and hopeful time. They fail to acknowledge the complex present global context.

In the election of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, America and Great Britain were affirming their respective national narcissistic disorders. In anointing these individuals, voters embraced entitlement, media magic and most of all celebrity rather than dignity, decency or purpose. In choosing such leaders, once powerful nations abandoned all semblance of seriousness.

Despite its wealth and power, the likelihood is that the US will join the UK as a failed first-world state, a Somali with nukes. Historian Arnold Toynbee may have been correct in concluding that most civilizations commit suicide.

Succession

While the declining influence of the West, especially the US, is evident, it is unlikely that another nation or grouping can fill the vacuum in the short term. China, Russia and India are all Potemkin structures, with serious weaknesses.

China has massive overcapacity funded by debt which cannot be paid back of serviced. The dominant state-owned enterprises have low productivity and generate inadequate returns. The Chinese economy is in the early stages of a lengthy period of adjustment as its growth slows and its vulnerable $5 trillion property market and related debt are addressed.

Russia’s commodity fossil fuel export driven economic outlook is indeterminate in the face of long-term sanctions and decarbonisation. India’s economy is as always a heady cocktail of capability, protectionism, cronyism and oligarchies generously spiced with general societal chaos, delusions, mutinies as well as religious and social bigotry. The land of the license Raj remains self-harming and vain glorious.

The challengers’ limited capabilities for projecting military strength (most recent hegemons were naval powers) restrict the scope currently for full-fledged empire and global domination. Chinese, Russian and Indian imperial ambitions are confined to security and contiguous historical territorial claims. Another factor is historical differences and internecine rivalry – China gains if the Ukraine conflict weakens Russia to eliminate a potential contender; India benefits if US economic sanctions diminish the Middle Kingdom.

The governability and internal cohesion of putative powers is overstated. When congratulated by President Richard Nixon on his achievements, Chairman Mao Zedong reputedly replied that he had only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Beijing. Even today, despite the advantages of a centralised top-down system, Chinese policymakers complain about the difficulty of implementing state policies beyond Zhongnanhai (the leadership enclave in the Chinese capital). Unstable leadership cults, absence of clear lines of succession or power transition, centralised power structures, and lack of effective institutions or structures worsens the problems.

In any case, survival and warding of collective disaster -climate change, resource scarcity-  may now be everyone’s primary focus. Talk of a Chinese or Russian world order is premature.

Wasteland

But a critical point is approaching. Economic growth is stagnating. Resource scarcity, climate problems and associated inflationary pressures are rising. High debt levels may prove difficult to sustain. The financial system is fragile. Global political, business and cultural elites are increasingly detached from the concerns of ordinary people. Geo-political tensions are high and the American-dominated unipolar world is under threat from within and without. The repeated shocks and loss of naïve confidence – political (911 and its aftermath), economic (successive crises), political (Brexit, Trump, rising populist authoritarianism) – are beginning to unravel existing structures.

But large systems do not fail quickly. British power has been falling for a century. The 1991 demise of the USSR can be traced back to Stalin’s commitment to unwinnable competition with an economically superior US at the end of World War 2.

While there are few clear markers, the internal contradictions of the existing order make instability likely. At the edge of chaos, the exact shape of any transformation is unpredictable. Poet TS Eliot wrote of history’s “cunning passages”, “contrived corridors” and “supple confusions”. The outcomes may be positive or negative. A violent conflagration is not unimaginable. Winston Churchill believed that the “story of the human race is war”. Peace was a short interlude between murderous strife and mayhem. Writing in AD120, Tacitus even questioned the calm: “Where they make a wasteland, they call it peace”.

The world may be on the verge of a period, like the Dark Ages (approximately 500 to 1500 AD) after the fall of the Roman Empire, where stasis or drift rule. During such times, multiple centres fight for influence and recurrent conflict, both within and between countries, is common. Stronger countries push aside or predate upon weaker countries. Most survive at different levels of subsistence as Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, North Korea or Congo do today.

Famine, disease, declining living standards and feudal arrangements are features of these periods. Aristocracy and oligarchy thrive. Social and economic mobility become limited. These are also times of great superstition. Contemporary worship of technology and human invincibility resembles such a belief system. The past also reminds us that such periods release mankind’s violent and heinous impulses.

In his 1930 Prison Notebooks, Anton Gramsci elliptically anticipated the dystopian present: “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

At least nine people were killed and twenty more wounded when a gas tanker exploded in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday, national security services said in a statement. 

“The explosion is an accident and not an act of terrorism,” commander of security forces in Baghdad, Ahmad Salim, said. Most of the victims were soccer players participating in an amateur game on a field nearest the blast in a bustling eastern part of the city. However, conflicting reports pointed to the possibility of a car bomb having been denoted, or other IED which triggered the petrol tanker explosion.

An AFP correspondent cited that many area windows were blown out, with extensive damage to nearby parked vehicles. “We were at home and felt a very strong blast and a smell of gas” an eyewitness told AFP.

“It felt like we were suffocating,” the local resident added. “Our doors and windows were blown out.”

Iraq’s recently-elected president, Abdul Latif Rashid, vowed to launch an investigation to determine what happened and who was responsible. 

In an initial report, Reuters gave an account that appeared to conflict with Iraqi authorities saying it was ‘accidental’. 

10 killed, 20+ wounded in an explosion in east Baghdad, Iraq 🇮🇶

The explosion took place near a football stadium & a café, when an explosive device attached to a vehicle in the area detonated, leading to another explosion of a gas tanker that was close byhttps://t.co/IAuMsEouYN pic.twitter.com/IKEFT5jdTm

— Saad Abedine (@SaadAbedine) October 29, 2022

“The explosion took place in a garage near a football stadium and a café, when an explosive device attached to a vehicle detonated, leading to another explosion of a gas tanker that was close by, the security sources said,” Reuters wrote. 

Shrapnel damaged surrounding residential buildings. Other reports too have questioned whether it was an attack or the result of accidental detonation: “Security officials, speaking to Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said it was unclear whether the explosion was a technical failure or targeted attack.”

Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

As Brazilians are going to vote in Sunday’s decisive presidential runoff, a report published Saturday revealed that social media giants Meta—Facebook’s parent company—and TikTok are driving traffic to content promoting a military coup to overthrow Brazil’s democracy.

The report—entitled Stop the Steal 2.0: How Meta and TikTok Are Promoting a Coup—was published by the San Francisco-based activist group SumOfUs and asserts that “on the eve of the second vote in Brazil’s most important election in decades, Meta and TikTok continue to put the integrity of the election on the line through their disastrous recommendation systems.”

The publication comes ahead of Sunday’s second-round contest between far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro—who has said he may not accept the outcome of the election if he loses–and former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Aggregate polling showed the two candidates in a statistical dead heat on Friday.

According to the new report:

Meta claims that Brazil is a priority region and that the company is committed to enforcing policies and practices that uphold the integrity of the vote. But not only does SumOfUs’ previous research show that the platforms are awash with conspiracy theories about the election, claims of electoral fraud, and calls for a military coup, this research report sets out how Facebook’s recommender systems are actively pushing users towards this content.

Far-right extremists, who are openly agitating for a military coup, are operating freely on Meta’s platforms, and Meta is not only allowing them to spread their message and recruit new members, but the platform’s algorithms are prioritizing anti-democratic groups, accounts, and posts. The report also looked at the role TikTok is playing in tackling the growing problem of election disinformation on its platform, and found its moderation lacking…

The findings confirm civil society organizations’ worst fears, that platforms like Facebook and Instagram are enabling bad actors to organize and recruit new members, just as it did in the U.S. 2020 elections, which ended in violent insurrectionists storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

“At this point, it is safe to say that Meta has become Bolsonaro’s official disinformation machine,” SumOfUs campaign director Flora Rebello Arduini said in a statement. “This is not Meta’s first time wreaking havoc on democracy and Brazilians deserve better from this multi-billion dollar company.”

“As this report shows,” she added, “TikTok needs to up its game and not follow Meta’s lead in fueling the disinformation crisis in Brazil.”

The last 2 major polls for Brazil’s run-off for the presidency:

Datafolha: Lula (52%) – Bolsonaro (48%)

Ipec: Lula (54%) – Bolsonaro (46%)

Election is tomorrow. Unlike the US, Brazil fully counts all ballots nationwide in a matter of hours. Result will be known tomorrow night. pic.twitter.com/dPVf4poaUd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2022

On Saturday evening, SumOfUs activists projected an image of Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg setting the Brazilian flag alight with the message “Meta is destroying Brazilian democracy” at Kings Cross tube station in London, just around the corner from Meta’s U.K. headquarters.

The new report comes amid warnings and acts of right-wing political violence. While no motive has yet been announced, on Friday local São Paulo-area politician Reginaldo Camilo dos Santos, a prominent supporter of da Silva and the left-wing Workers’ Party running for Congress, was assassinated in a drive-by shooting near his home in Jandira.

Agência Pública, an independent Brazilian investigative journalism outlet, reported earlier this month that from August 16 and the end of the first round on October 2, there were at least 148 cases of electoral violence across the country.

A separate report published last week by the anti-corruption and human rights organization Global Witness revealed that YouTube approved 100% of Brazilian election misinformation ads submitted for approval, while Facebook accepted around half of such submissions.

Update: The death toll continues to rise: at least 146 people have died, and 150 were injured in a crowd-crushing incident at a Halloween festival in Seoul, according to South Korean officials.  

At least 146 dead, 150 injured in #Seoul after stampede during #Halloween festivities.#SouthKorea #Halloween #Seoul #Itaewon #이태원 #이태원사고 #압사사고. pic.twitter.com/IhjZBU4yYu

— Siraj Noorani (@sirajnoorani) October 29, 2022

*  *  *

At least 120 people died, and more than 100 were seriously injured after a catastrophic crowd-crushing incident unfolded at a Halloween festival in Seoul’s South Korean capital on Saturday night. 

The mass casualty incident occurred in the Itaewon area of Seoul.

 The Washington Post said the festival was a “chaotic scene of partygoers cramped into narrow streets near the Itaewon station, some trying to leave the area after a night of celebrations … many people couldn’t even move their limbs because of the elbow-to-elbow crowd … and people couldn’t hear one another over the noise or call for help because of lack of a cell connection.” 

Vean esto. Está brutal lo de #Itaewon Yo no hubiera soportado tanto sufrimiento. Parece película de terror. #SouthKorea pic.twitter.com/A8RCW1pJp7

— M͓̽M͓̽A͓̽R͓̽I͓̽P͓̽O͓̽S͓̽A͓̽ 🇵🇷 (@MMariposa31) October 29, 2022

Footage of the mass casualty incident is absolutely shocking. Bodies littered the streets as emergency personnel administered CPR. 

truly the scariest halloween of my life—30 down, 400 rescue workers deployed. please avoid itaewon and stay safe. #이태원사고 pic.twitter.com/PC1GBJt7qk

— Chloe Park 🦋 in Seoul (@chloepark) October 29, 2022

my god 😢 my prayers go out to all the victims & their families.
may their soul rest in peace 🕊️ 🤍#Itaewon pic.twitter.com/f7sls1OmvW

— z  (@kopiconnoisseur) October 29, 2022

According to the National Fire Agency, many victims were in their 20s. Among the fatalities, 46 died on the street after being crushed by the crowd, while 74 died either while being transported to local area hospitals or in the emergency room. 

The agency warned more deaths are likely: 

“Of the 100 injured, there is [a] high possibility of more deaths.”

ABC News said more than 100,000 people were at Halloween parties in the area known for its nightclubs. 

*This is a developing story.

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

A Lehman squared moment is approaching with Swiss banks and UK pension funds under severe pressure.

But let’s first look at another circus – 

The global travelling circus is now reaching ever more nations just as expected. This is right on cue at the end of the most extraordinary financial bubble era in history.

It is obviously debt creation, money printing and the resulting currency debasement which creates the inevitable fall of yet another monetary system. This has been the norm throughout history so “the more it changes, the more it stays the same”.

It started this time with the closing of the gold window in August 1971.  That was the beginning of a financial and political circus which continuously added more risk and more lethal acts to keep the circus going.

An economic upheaval always causes political chaos with a revolving door of leaders and political parties going and coming. Remember, a government is never voted in but invariably voted out.

What was always clear to a few of us was that the circus would end with all of the acts crashing virtually simultaneously.

And this is what is starting to happen now.

We have just seen a political farce in the UK. Even the most talented playwright could not have created such a wonderful merry-go-round of characters who we have seen coming in and out of Downing Street.

Just look at the UK Prime Ministers. First there was David Cameron who had to resign in 2016 due to mishandling Brexit. Then the next PM Theresa May had to go in 2019 since she couldn’t get anything done, including Brexit. Then Boris Johnson won the biggest Conservative majority ever but was forced out in 2022 due to Partygate during Covid.

In came Liz Truss as PM in September this year but she only lasted 44 days due to her and her Chancellor’s (Finance Minister) mishandling of the mini budget. They managed to crash the pound and UK gilts (bonds) on the international markets leading to the Bank of England having to step in. Both gilts, derivatives and UK pension funds were at the point of implosion.

And now the carousel has gone full circle with Rishi Sunak the ex-Chancellor taking the helm as Boris bailed out. Boris clearly decided that speeches and other private engagements would be more fruitful than being part of the circus. But he will most certainly attempt to come back.

What a circus!

It just shows that at the end of an economic era, we get the worst leaders who always promise but never deliver.

In a bankrupt global system, you reach a point when the value of printed money dies and whatever a leader promises can no longer be bought with fake money which will always have ZERO intrinsic value.

No one must believe that this is only happening in the UK. The US has a leader who sadly is too old and not in command. He has a deputy who is not respected by anyone. So if Biden, as many believe, doesn’t make it to the end of his period, the US is likely to have a real leadership circus. Also, the US economy is chronically ill having run deficits for 90 years. What keeps the US alive temporarily is the dollar which is strong because it is the least ugly horse in the currency stable.

Scholz in Germany was given a very bad hand by Merkel but has certainly not improved it since he took charge and Germany is on the verge of collapse.

Most countries are the same. Macron doesn’t have a majority in France and strikes are paralysing his country on a daily basis. And his new Italian counterpart, PM Georgina Meloni certainly doesn’t shred her words. Just watch her having a very aggressive go at Macron (poor video quality).

But for people (like myself) who have difficulty accepting the current wave of Wokeism in the world, Meloni’s attack on this fad and her strong defence of family values is a “must watch” (video link). So there is still hope when leaders dare to express views that most media including social media censor today.

DEBT BONDAGE

History has dealt with punishment of non payment of debt in a variety of ways.

In the early Roman Republic around 2,500 years ago, there was a debt bondage called Nexum. In simple terms, a borrower pledged his person as collateral. If he didn’t pay his debt he was enslaved often for an undetermined period.

Jumping quickly to modern times, it would mean that the majority of people, especially in the West would all be debt slaves today. The big difference today is that most people are debt slaves but they have physical freedom. Since virtually nobody, individuals, companies or sovereign states, neither has the intention nor the ability to repay debt, the world now has a chronic debt slavery.

It is even worse than that. The playing field is totally skewed in favour of the banks, big business and the wealthy. The more money you can play with, the more money you can make risk free.

UNLIMITED PERSONAL LIABILITY

No banker, no company management or business owner ever has to take the loss personally if he makes a mistake. Losses are socialised and profits are capitalised. Heads I win, Tails I don’t lose!

But there are honourable exceptions. A smaller number of Swiss banks still work with the principle of unlimited personal liability for the partners/owners. If the global financial system and governments applied that principle, imagine how different the world would look not just financially but also ethically.

With such a system, we wouldn’t just adore the golden calf but put human values first. And whenever we evaluate an investment proposal or granting someone a loan, we wouldn’t just look at how much we could gain personally but if the transaction was sound both economically and ethically and if the risk of loss was minimal.

But I can hear many people protesting and arguing that the world could never have grown as fast without this massive amount of debt. That is of course correct in the short term. But rather than fast growth and then a total implosion of assets and debt, we would then have a much more stable system.

GLOBAL DEBT $300 TRILLION PLUS $2.2 TRILLION OF DERIVATIVES & LIAB.

Just look at the last 50 years since 1971. Globally governments and central banks have contributed to the creation of almost  $300 trillion of new money plus quasi money in the form of unfunded liabilities and derivatives of $2.2 quadrillion making £2.5 trillion in total.

As debt explodes, the world could easily face a debt burden of $3 quadrillion by 2025-2030 as the derivatives and unfunded liabilities become debt.

DERIVATIVES – THE MOST DANGEROUS FINANCIAL WEAPON CREATED

Derivatives is not a new instrument. For example during the Tulipomania bubble in Holland in the 17th century, it was possible to trade options on tulip bulbs.

Today the financial system has developed derivatives to become such a sophisticated instrument that virtually no financial transaction can take place without involving some form of derivatives.

But the biggest problem with derivatives is that the quants that create them don’t understand the consequences of their actions. And senior management, including boards of directors, haven’t got a clue of the massive risk derivatives represent.

The collapse in 1998 of LTCM (Long Term Capital Management), set up by Nobel Prize winners and the 2007-9 Sub-Prime crisis is a clear proof of the ignorance of the risk of derivatives.

As an aside, it seems that anyone can receive a Nobel Prize today. Just take Bernanke, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Remember that Bernanke, when he was Head of the Fed, printed more money than anyone in history!

What we have to understand is that the committee which chooses the winner of the Nobel  economy prize is the Swedish Riksbank (central bank), filled with Keynesian money printers!

Need I say more?

Derivatives have been a massive profit earner for all banks involved. They were initially created as defensive hedge instruments but today they are the most dangerous and aggressive financial instrument of destruction.

Just over 10 years ago, global derivatives were $1.2 quadrillion. Then the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel decided to halve the values  to $600 trillion overnight by changing the basis of calculation. But the $1.2Q risk was still remained at the time.

Since then Over The Counter (OTC) derivatives have seen an explosive growth just like all financial assets. The beauty of OTC derivatives, from the issuers point of view, is that they don’t need to be declared like derivatives traded on exchanges.

And today there are not just interest rate and forex derivatives. No, these instruments are involved in virtually every single financial transaction. Every stock and bond fund involves derivatives. And today most of these funds consist of only synthetic instruments and contain none of the virtual stocks or bonds they represent.

CENTRAL BANKS RESCUING UK AND SWISS BANKS

Just a couple of weeks ago, the UK and thus the global financial system was under severe pressure due to pension funds’ interest derivatives collapsing in value after the UK Budget. Pension funds are globally on the verge of collapse due to rising interest rates and insolvency risk. In order to create cash flow, the pension funds have acquired interest rate swaps. But as bond rates surged these swaps collapsed in value, requiring either liquidation or margin injection.

And thus the Bank of England had to support the UK pension funds and financial system to the extent of £65 billion to avoid default.

In the last couple of weeks we have seen a dismal situation in Switzerland. Swiss banks, through the Swiss National Bank (SNB) have received $11 billion ongoing support through currency swaps (a form of dollar loans) from the Fed.

No details have been revealed of the Swiss situation except that 17 banks are involved. It could also be international banks. But most certainly the ailing Credit Suisse is involved. Credit Suisse just announced a 4 billion Swiss francs loss.

What is clear is that these UK and Swiss situations are just the tip of the iceberg.

The world is now on the verge of another Lehman moment which could erupt at any time.

CENTRAL BANKS NEED TO VACUUM $2 QUADRILLION DERIVATIVES

These derivatives which some of us now estimate to be over $2 quadrillion (not $600b reported by BIS) are what will bring the financial system down.

Every derivative includes an interest element. And the construction of all derivatives did not foresee the major and rapid rise in interest rates that the world has seen. Remember Powell and Lagarde calling inflation transitory just a year ago!

WITH OVER $ 2 QUADRILLION DEBT, PROTECTION IS CRITICAL

This article is not directly about gold. No, it is about the disastrous consequences of governments’ deceitful mismanagement of the economy and of your money. But based on history, gold has been the best protection or insurance against such mismanagement.

Why do 99.5 % of all investors in financial assets avoid the investment that is continuously backed and supported by every government and every central bank globally.

Investors own $600 trillion in stocks, bonds and property which have all enjoyed a 50 year (40 years for bonds) explosion in value.

But why do they only hold $2.3 trillion of an asset that without fail and for 5,000 years has always appreciated and never gone to zero or even gone down substantially over time?

It is the simplest asset to understand and appreciate. It looks good, even shiny and you don’t have to understand the technology behind it nor the balance sheet.

All you need to understand is that every day and every year your government does whatever it can to increase the value of this asset.

So this asset that only gets 0.5% of world financial investments and is continuously supported by governments through their constant creation of money is obviously gold.

What very few investors know, partly because governments are suppressing it, is that gold is the only money that has survived throughout history. Every other currency has without fail gone to ZERO and become extinct. 

With this perfect 100% record for gold, it certainly is surprising that virtually nobody owns it!

Investors don’t understand gold or its relevance. There are many reasons for this.

Governments hate gold in spite of the fact that all their actions make gold appreciate considerably over time.

They are of course totally aware of the fact that their totally inept management of the economy and of the monetary system, destroys the value of fiat money.

This is why it is in their interest to conceal their mismanagement of the economy by suppressing the value of gold in the paper market.

But investors ignorance of gold and reluctance to buy it will very soon go through a tectonic change.

OVER $2 QUADRILLION OF LIABILITIES RESTING ON $2 TRILLION OF GOLD

Total gold ever produced in the world is $10.5 trillion. Most of this gold is in jewellery. Central banks around the world hold $2 trillion. That includes $425 billion that US allegedly hold. Many people doubt this figure.

So with over $2 quadrillion (2 and15 ZEROS) of debt and liabilities resting on a foundation of $2 trillion of government owned gold that makes a gold coverage of 0.1% or a leverage of 1000X!

So that is clearly an inverse pyramid with a very weak foundation. A sound financial system needs a very solid foundation of real money. Quadrillions of debt and liabilities can not survive resting on this feeble amount of gold. If gold went up 100X to say $160,000, the coverage would be 10% which is still hardly acceptable.

So the $2 quadrillion financial weapon of mass destruction is now on the way to totally destroy the system. This is a global house of cards that will collapse at some point in the not too distant future.

Obviously Central Banks will first print unlimited amounts of money, buying up to $2 quadrillion of outstanding derivatives, turning them to on balance sheet debt. This will create a vicious circle of more debt, higher interest rates and higher inflation, with probable hyperinflation as debt markets default.    

No government and no central bank can solve the problem that they have created. More of the same just won’t work.

So these are the gigantic risks that the world is now facing.

Obviously there is no certainty in these kind of forecasts. But what is certain is that risk of this magnitude must be protected.

There is no reason to believe that gold this time will play a different role to what is has done throughout history.

Gold stands as the sole protector of a sound currency system and the only money which has survived throughout the ages.

Last week, DB’s Jim Reid published a note looking at what normally happens next, when inflation hits 8% through history using 50 DM and EM countries, around 320 unique observations, and covering up to a 100 years of data.

The reason for the study, which even grabbed the attention of Larry Summer who has repeatedly been warning in recent months the Powell Fed will never be Volcker 2.0 and instead will repeat Arthur Burns’ mistakes and pivot sooner than it should…

Almost never does high inflation come down fast. Today’s consensus view that inflation will come way down is, as this figure from Jim Reid at Deutsche illustrates, outside the range of normal historical experience. pic.twitter.com/Mbnb4yg3UV

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) October 27, 2022

… was because as Reid put it, “with consensus being so bad at predicting inflation in this cycle we thought we’d look at what history says.”

So what does history suggest? According to the DB strategist, and in keeping with the Fed’s hawkish view, it would be unusual to see inflation now fall back as quickly as consensus believes over the next 2 years. In fact using data from the last 50 years (the fiat money era), current consensus forecasts would be in the most optimistic decile of observations over this period. As an aside, Reid notes that in most inflationary cycles rates don’t normally only start rising after inflation hits 8% (as they did in this one) and fiscal policy doesn’t normally loosen (e.g. across Europe given the gas crisis).

Needless to say, but Reid says it anyway, “whether consensus or the median observation through history is correct will have profound implications for assets over the next few months and years. So this is crucial to have a view on.”

So if history suggest it will take a long time for inflation to normalize, is there a way to short-circuit the process?

The answer is, of course, yes… but it’s painful. Reid, who next looks at 100 years of US inflation around recessions, found that while there is a big range, on average inflation only starts declining when the recession starts.

To be sure, in this cycle headline US CPI has already declined from its peak in June – even without the US officially entering recession – and may continue to do so due to energy rolling over but maybe the all-important core print – which is the core pilled behind Fed monetary policy – will only see serious declines once a recession hits.

Indeed on this, DB economist Matt Luzzetti recently published a note (available to pro subs), suggesting that only in their base case of a recession and US unemployment hitting 5.5-6% next year will inflation get close to the Fed’s objective by end-2024.

The implications are that Fed Funds will probably need to go to at least 5% to achieve this, which incidentally is what the market has been pricing in for the past month (although the recent dovish comments from Wikileaks and Mary Daly have seen a notable drop in the Fed’s peak target rate)…

Authored by Andrew Eve via Bond Vigilantes,

It’s that time of year again – Halloween and time for the Bond Vigilantes’ usual round up of the scariest charts in global finance! With rising inflation and the cost of living crisis, 2022 has been a scary year for everyone. Turning our focus to markets, rising bond yields and CPI prints mean we have certainly found no shortage of scary charts either.

While spooky for bond investors, 2022 has also made fixed income a more interesting place to be an investor. After years of low, rangebound bond yields, markets have finally escaped the zero bound – in the case of the German 10 year yield, going from below zero just months ago at the start of 2022 to close to 2.5% over recent days. 

Rising yields have been driven higher in the UK too by the return of the eponymous Bond Vigilantes, challenging the government’s tax-cutting policies in a time that many households will require fiscal support.

Likewise, as we wrote last week, after many years of a Halloween ‘treat’ for markets in the form of QE, it will soon be time for the ‘trick’ (QT)!

With all this in mind, here are the Bond Vigilantes’ scariest charts for 2022. Happy Halloween!

1. No sofa to hide behind in 2022

One of the scariest charts for investors this year will be a look at their 2022 portfolio returns. Whether in government bonds, corporate bonds, emerging market bonds, currencies or equities, there really were very few places to hide this year from the spectre of rising interest rates and a ghostly slowdown in growth. The dollar was one of the few assets in our chart to see a positive return so far this year.

2. The waking of the giant anaconda

We have previously compared the long end of the US Treasury market to a giant anaconda: drawing little attention during its long slumber, but making markets shake the moment it wakes and rears its head.

For many years, long-dated Treasury bonds have made investors smile: a multi-decade bull market in yields made financing cheap and gave investors healthy returns. The moves in long-dated Treasury yields can be poisonous though, as they affect mortgage rates and the price of debt around the world. This year, the whole Treasury curve has risen, and the giant anaconda may finally have awoken…

3. Inflation linked bond investors hoping for a treat may have received a trick instead

One place investors may have tried to shelter from the headwinds of 2022 is in inflation linked bonds. These may sound like the perfect place to hide in a year that has seen CPI reach double digits in the UK, and not far off it in Europe and the US. But a quick look at year to date returns of the FTSE Actuaries UK Index-Linked Gilts All Stocks Index makes for scary viewing – this index is down over 30% year to date.

What is going on here? It is important to remember that, while inflation linked bonds do contain a treat, in having their principle and coupons linked to inflation, they also carry a potential trick: they can have a lot of interest rate duration. In inflationary environments, in which central banks tend to hike rates, rising interest rates is bad news for bonds with a lot of duration as linker investors may have found to their peril this year. One way to mitigate this effect is to invest in much shorter dated linkers.

4. Boo! IG issuers now have to pay HY borrowing costs

Turning now to those companies issuing bonds, 2022 had a spooky surprise for investment grade issuers, who are now having to pay what the market recently would have priced as high yield borrowing costs. From as low as 1.6% all-in yields at the start of 2021, BBB-rated investment grade issuers are now having to pay eye-watering borrowing costs of 6.1% – not far off the 6.4% that CCC-rated high yield issuers were being charged that same year.

This chart may send ghostly shivers down the backs of any IG companies with approaching refinancing risks.

5. Leading indicators are looking scary

There are some frightening ghouls hiding behind this chart, which shows the US Conference Board leading indicators index. From jobless claims data and production measures, to new orders and consumer expectations, this index is a combination of the most used leading economic indicators and makes for grim viewing. Recently it plunged below zero, which in the past has suggested a recession is about to come.

6. Recession forecasts give investors pumpkin to worry about

Perhaps these leading indicators, along with the inflationary pressures being felt around the world, help explain this next alarming chart. Economists’ forecasts for the probability of a recession coming over the next year have been steadily creeping up in 2022. This chart makes for terrifying viewing, with forecasts now having reached 80% in the UK and Eurozone.

7. And finally… a sweet treat may not bring investors cheer this year

Finally, the cost of Halloween may be going up this year for those hoping some sweet treats may cheer them up after seeing these scary charts. The US CPI Candy & Chewing Gum Index (!) reveals inflation here at over 13% in the year from September 2021 to September 2022 – to put this in perspective, it took around seven years to see the same level of inflation in the candy index in the period up to 2021.

Happy Halloween!

Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times,

When the school called his 14-year-old son to the principal’s office for refusing to say a female student was a boy, Matthew Duncan decided he’d had enough.

At first, Duncan’s son thought his longtime classmate was joking when she told him to say she was a man. He refused.

“You can’t do that! You can’t call somebody by something that they’re not,” Duncan said school administrators in Grants Pass chastised the boy.

“Just so you know, if you do it again, you’re gonna get in trouble,” they warned his son, Duncan said.

After the school year ended, Duncan transferred his two children to a private school.

Grants Pass is a small, conservative town, but locals have found they can’t control what their children get taught in public school. Families have found directives from Oregon’s governor trample their own beliefs. Teachers who want a politically neutral curriculum say local schools have actively promoted LGBT ideology.

“There was never a push towards dominance and control like it is now,” said Duncan. “You can’t voice your opinion.”

In response, many families in Grants Pass have withdrawn their children from public school, enrolling them in private school or starting to homeschool, Grants Pass teachers, school administrators and parents told The Epoch Times.

But those solutions can be expensive and inconvenient, and private schools sometimes don’t have enough space to absorb the exodus of students.

Boys Aren’t Girls

In just a few years, LGBT ideology has swept into Oregon schools, said Betty, a former school employee who used her first name only to avoid backlash within the community. She retired early because she was tired of trying to help kids, while simultaneously fighting left-wing ideology, she told The Epoch Times.

Just a few years ago, there wasn’t any LGBT indoctrination in her school, Betty said. Then, education workers slowly and quietly filled schools with pro-LGBT material.

“I mean, we’re out in the country. It’s conservative. And it’s like [the truth is], ‘Beware! It’s not!’” she said.

One day, Betty discovered a poster in the library that stated left-wing talking points.

“We believe black lives matter, no human is illegal, love is love, women’s rights are human rights, science is real, water is life, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” it read.

It didn’t seem like education to provide just one perspective on controversial issues, she said. So she put up her own poster next to it.

“We believe all lives matter, legal immigration, marriage is one man & one woman, unborn female and male babies have rights, God’s creation supports science, water is life, return to law abiding Constitutional America,” Betty’s poster read.

Then she got called to the principal’s office.

“They said, ‘You know what? This is unacceptable. You need to clear everything with us,’” Betty recalled.

The school forced her to take her poster down, but allowed the left-wing poster to remain, she said.

In another incident, when Betty stopped a young elementary school boy from walking into the girls’ bathroom by mistake, administrators expressed their disapproval.

“Oh, did I get it for that!” she exclaimed.  “They said, ‘Betty, don’t you understand? They can walk wherever they want.’”

Radical gender ideology broke into schools after younger teachers embraced it in their training in college.

“They bought the propaganda,” Betty lamented. “They were immersed in the propaganda at the college level, so they’re just spewing that out. My sense is that they don’t have the same morality that us oldsters do.”

Another conservative teacher, Deborah, left her job after facing pressure to resign, she said. Deborah chose not to use her real name because she was concerned about drawing criticism.

Before she left, a school-mandated lecture told all teachers to raise their hands if they had “white privilege,” she said. She was the only one not to signal affirmation.

“No one else, as far as I know—no one else spoke up,” she said.

In another incident, a student expressed panic after Donald Trump was elected president.  The girl said she feared Trump would put her in a concentration camp because she was a lesbian, Deborah recalled.

Deborah assured her it wouldn’t happen, she said. The student filed a complaint, and the school’s administration talked with Deborah about the incident.

“It was so ridiculous,” she said. “It never went anywhere, and is not even documented in my employment file. But I was visited by the administration because of it.”

Then, after Deborah accidentally handed a graded test to the wrong student, the student filed a complaint against her. Documents she provided to The Epoch Times show that the school assigned her “focus goals” that included passing out papers to the correct students.

Deborah has 22 years of teaching experience. She said she believes the school used the complaint to make her job so frustrating that she would quit. She suspects the school wanted her out because of her political beliefs.

“I think that people knew that I probably wouldn’t call a girl a boy,” Deborah said.

After the complaint, the school subjected all her work to intense scrutiny, she said.

“I would have to email my every single detail [in a] plan, at 5 in the morning to the principal and the personnel director,” Deborah recalled. “And then they would have people coming in my class every day. Different administrators were picking apart everything. And I found that many of the things that they said were just flat-out lies.”

Tired of the pressure, Deborah retired in 2019.

Local Kids, State Standards

Some in the community believe schools have also swung left in towns like Grants Pass, because Oregon’s state government sets educational standards that promote radical gender ideology.

“The whole system is set up to reprogram the kids. I mean, that’s what they’re doing. They’re literally destroying these innocent little brains,” said Betty.

The Oregon State Board of Education (OSBE) sets educational policies and standards for the state. The governor selects the board’s members.

Democrats have controlled the governor’s office since 1986. Oregon’s current governor, Kate Brown, is the nation’s first openly bisexual politician.

Some have accused the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) of pushing left-wing ideology at the expense of educational excellence. Its website urges administrators to educate while focusing on race and ethnicity.

Oregon’s health education standards also say children should learn there are “many ways to express gender” in kindergarten. They should learn about sexual orientation in third grade, the standards state, and they should be taught how to prevent the spread of AIDS in third grade as well.

By third grade,  the guidelines continue, students should “recognize differences and similarities of how individuals identify regarding gender or sexual orientation.”

From kindergarten, students should learn to “recognize the importance of treating others with respect including gender expression,” the standards read. Students of the same age should also “identify different kinds of family structures.”

Sometimes, Oregon state curriculum is pornographic, in the opinion of Heidi Napier, a Grants Pass local who works with the area’s Republican Party education committee.

Napier paid for a copy of the state’s curriculum and discovered it included photographs of diseased genitals and line drawings of people having sex.

When Napier showed the pictures to a police officer, he told her that it would be a crime if she distributed them to children.

It’s legal, however, to use the same materials in the classroom.

“These are from the CDC,” the officer told her. “And as long as they’re used by a schoolteacher, they’re not pornography. But if anybody else used them, they would be considered pornography.”

Napier wondered if she could even show them at a school board meeting without facing repercussions.

The outside of Grants Pass High School suggests the school promotes left-wing gender ideology. The school has a rainbow LGBT pride heart above its main entrance and LGBT pride stickers on the windows of its classrooms.

The Epoch Times requested an interview with the Grants Pass school district, but one had not been scheduled by press time.

Pushing Private School

In response to ideological teaching, many Grants Pass parents have removed their children from public schools.

Admissions for Grants Pass New Hope Christian School have skyrocketed in the last three years, according to school administrator Annie Burnham.

Since 2020, the school has gone from 190 students to 340, with about 30 students on a waiting list, she said. To meet the need, New Hope more than doubled its staff. This switch is part of a nationwide post-COVID-19 trend.

Read more here…

Authored by Law Ka-chung via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The latest China data continue to show an overall downtrend, although some rebound is seen. The domestic economy, as represented by internal demand (private and government consumption expenditure and investment), remains weak under deleveraging (paying off debts). One possible way to improve the situation is to rely on external demand, which is net exports. At first glance, this seems sensible because the outside world is in a much better shape economically than China. However, the global cyclical pulldown effect can offset this completely.

The standard way to counter such a headwind is to “lower the price;” it can be done actively by policymakers or automatically under market mechanisms. A worsening outlook ahead will lead to a fall in prices, be they prices of goods, assets, or others. This is a market outcome that is the most natural yet the most uncontrollable. In order to take a more active approach, policymakers often cut interest rates or depreciate exchange rates to restore competitiveness. Here the interest rate affects the price of an investment, while the exchange rate affects the price of net exports.

Given both interest and exchange rates are sector-specific, the impact of changing either is different. Lowering interest rates benefits the borrowers while sacrificing the savers (or lenders). This affects who holds or loans money over time. However, depreciating the exchange rate impacts not over time but across borders: those within the border will gain an advantage in exporting yet will be disadvantaged in importing. While those outside the border will gain by paying less for goods.

As China is undergoing prolonged housing and debt crises, the interest rate tool would be ineffective because deleveraging to eliminate the debts usually takes longer than the effective duration of the interest rate cut. Similar classic examples are in post-1990 Japan and the post-2007 U.S., where even a zero interest rate with quantitative easing did not help.

However, exchange rate depreciation may make more sense (given the sharp contrast in economic performance between China and the rest of the world), as competitiveness in exports would be improved.

This is a traditional argument, but hold on. Now the global supply chain in production is so lengthy that countries might contribute only a portion of the total goods value at a lower exchange rate. Also, for a country importing $100 of raw materials or semi-finished goods and adding value then exporting it at $110, the exchange rate change affects the $10 value-added part only rather than the total exports of $110—China falls into this category. This is why exchange rate depreciation might not be as effective as one might think in helping China’s export figures.

As the accompanying chart shows, China’s share of world exports moves in unison with its real effective exchange rate. This means a cheaper Yuan does not boost exports. Instead, the opposite is seen—when the exports boom, it drives capital inflow, and the exchange rate appreciates. Depreciation is not a way out, either.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Friday night’s thriller of a World Series Game 1 started with a flurry of errors…by Grammy-nominated Black Pumas singer Eric Burton, who made a wreck of the national anthem by repeatedly botching the lyrics.

Things went south quickly, as Burton sang “what so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last streaming” rather than “gleaming.” Two lines later, instead of “o’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?” he reverted to a repeat of the erroneous “What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last streaming.”

 Someone tell Eric Burton to learn the lyrics to the National Anthem before you sing it before game 1 of the #WorldSeries
pic.twitter.com/kwPCnU6rs4

— Michael Ball (@Michael44004861) October 29, 2022

Burton’s bomb bursting on air likely gave at least a few fans of the host Houston Astros a jinxy feeling. Their worst fears would be realized over the ensuing game. 

Things started out great for Houston, a team with a reputation permanently stained by a 2017-18 cheating scandal in which video cameras were used to steal opposing catchers’ signals, and the banging of trash cans — or silence — was used to tell Astros batters what pitch to expect.

The Astros, previously undefeated this postseason, rocketed out to a 5-0 lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the third inning. At that point, ESPN’s analytics put the Astros’ win probability at 94%.

However, the scrappy sixth-seed Phillies, well-practiced at resolutely overcoming adversity, stormed back to tie the game in the fifth inning before scoring a winning sixth run in the 10th. The Phillies are now 4-0 in Game 1’s this postseason — with every one of those wins coming in hostile territory. 

J.T. stands for JUST TOOK THE LEAD pic.twitter.com/C2vTWfNBmn

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) October 29, 2022

Next time, the Astros might want to provide their anthem singer with a teleprompter: That’s one kind of Houston cheating we’d all approve of.  

Idk who Eric Burton is but one thing I do know is that he doesn’t know the National Anthem 😂

— Ellie Cook (@Elsworth35) October 28, 2022

Eric Burton just messed up the National Anthem.

Phillies by 100

— Paul Rakszawski (@Paul_Rakszawski) October 28, 2022