Authored by Abir Ballan via The Brownstone Institute,

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told.

Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking. 

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19. 

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm). 

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’ 

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and  academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative. 

Falsehoods such as ‘Lockdowns save lives’ and ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ have far-reaching costs in livelihoods and lives. Institutional false information during the pandemic was rampant. Below is just a sample by way of illustration.

The health authorities falsely convinced the public that the Covid-19 vaccines stop infection and transmission when the manufacturers never even tested these outcomes. The CDC changed its definition of vaccination to be more ‘inclusive’ of the novel mRNA technology vaccines. Instead of the vaccines being expected to produce immunity, now it was good enough to produce protection. 

The authorities also repeated the mantra (at 16:55) of ‘safe and effective’ throughout the pandemic despite emerging evidence of vaccine harm. The FDA refused the full release of documents they had reviewed in 108 days when granting the vaccines emergency use authorisation. Then in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, it attempted to delay their release for up to 75 years. These documents presented evidence of vaccine adverse events. It’s important to note that between 50 and 96 percent of the funding of drug regulatory agencies around the world comes from Big Pharma in the form of grants or user fees. Can we disregard that it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you?

The vaccine manufacturers claimed high levels of vaccine efficacy in terms of relative risk reduction (between 67 and 95 percent). They failed, however, to share with the public the more reliable measure of absolute risk reduction that was only around 1 percent, thereby exaggerating the expected benefit of these vaccines. 

They also claimed “no serious safety concerns observed” despite their own post-authorisation safety report revealing multiple serious adverse events, some lethal. The manufacturers also failed to publicly address the immune suppression during the two weeks post-vaccination and the rapidly waning vaccine effectiveness that turns negative at 6 months or the increased risk of infection with each additional booster. Lack of transparency about this vital information denied people their right to informed consent. 

They also claimed that natural immunity is not protective enough and that hybrid immunity (a combination of natural immunity and vaccination) is required. This false information was necessary to sell remaining stocks of their products in the face of mounting breakthrough cases (infection despite vaccination). 

In reality, although natural immunity may not completely prevent future infection with SARS-CoV-2, it is however effective in preventing severe symptoms and deaths. Thus vaccination post-natural infection is not needed. 

The WHO also participated in falsely informing the public. It disregarded its own pre-pandemic plans, and denied that lockdowns and masks are ineffective at saving lives and have a net harm on public health. It also promoted mass vaccination in contradiction to the public health principle of ‘interventions based on individual needs.’ 

It also went as far as excluding natural immunity from its definition of herd immunity and claimed that only vaccines can help reach this end point. This was later reversed under pressure from the scientific community. Again, at least 20 percent of the WHO’s funding comes from Big Pharma and philanthropists invested in pharmaceuticals. Is this a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune? 

The Lancet, a respectable medical journal, published a paper claiming that Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) — a repurposed drug used for the treatment of Covid-19 —  was associated with a slight increased risk of death. This led the FDA to ban the use of HCQ to treat Covid-19 patients and the NIH to halt the clinical trials on HCQ as a potential Covid-19 treatment. These were drastic measures taken on the basis of a study that was later retracted due to the emergence of evidence showing that the data used was false. 

In another instance, the medical journal Current Problems in Cardiology retracted —without any justification— a paper showing an increased risk of myocarditis in young people following the Covid-19 vaccines, after it was peer-reviewed and published. The authors advocated for the precautionary principle in the vaccination of young people and called for more pharmacovigilance studies to assess the safety of the vaccines. Erasing such findings from the medical literature not only prevents science from taking its natural course, but it also gatekeeps important information from the public.

A similar story took place with Ivermectin, another drug used for the treatment of Covdi-19, this time potentially implicating academia. Andrew Hill stated (at 5:15) that the conclusion of his paper on Ivermectin was influenced by Unitaid which is, coincidentally, the main funder of a new research centre at Hill’s workplace —the University of Liverpool. His meta-analysis showed that Ivermectin reduced mortality with Covid-19 by 75 percent. Instead of supporting Ivermectin use as a Covid-19 treatment, he concluded that further studies were needed.

The suppression of potentially life-saving treatments was instrumental for the emergency use authorization of the Covid-19 vaccines as the absence of a treatment for the disease is a condition for EUA (p.3).

Many media outlets are also guilty of sharing false information. This was in the form of biased reporting, or by accepting to be a platform for public relations (PR) campaigns. PR is an innocuous word for propaganda or the art of sharing information to influence public opinion in the service of special interest groups. 

The danger of PR is that it passes for independent journalistic opinion to the untrained eye. PR campaigns aim to sensationalise scientific findings, possibly to increase consumer uptake of a given therapeutic, increase funding for similar research, or to increase stock prices. The pharmaceutical companies spent $6.88 billion on TV advertisements in 2021 in the US alone. Is it possible that this funding influenced media reporting during the Covid-19 pandemic? 

Lack of integrity and conflicts of interest have led to an unprecedented institutional false information pandemic. It is up to the public to determine whether the above are instances of mis- or dis-information. 

Public trust in the Media has seen its biggest drop over the last five years. Many are also waking up to the widespread institutional false information. The public can no longer trust ‘authoritative’ institutions that were expected to look after their interests. This lesson was learned at great cost. Many lives were lost due to the suppression of early treatment and an unsound vaccination policy; businesses ruined; jobs destroyed; educational achievement regressed; poverty aggravated; and both physical and mental health outcomes worsened. A preventable mass disaster. 

We have a choice: either we continue to passively accept institutional false information or we resist. What are the checks and balances that we must put in place to reduce conflicts of interest in public health and research institutions? How can we decentralise the media and academic journals in order to reduce the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on their editorial policy?

As individuals, how can we improve our media literacy to become more critical consumers of information? There is nothing that dispels false narratives better than personal inquiry and critical thinking. So the next time conflicted institutions cry woeful wolf or vicious variant or catastrophic climate, we need to think twice.

The profile of risks facing the world is evolving constantly. Events like last year’s invasion of Ukraine can send shockwaves through the system, radically shifting perceptions of what the biggest risks facing humanity are.

Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley created the graphic below to summarize findings from the Global Risks Report, an annual publication produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

It provides an overview of the most pressing global risks that the world is facing, as identified by experts and decision-makers.

These risks are grouped into five general categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological.

Let’s dive into this year’s findings.

2023’s Risk Profile

In the lower–middle portion of the chart are the risks that could have serious impacts—such as attacks involving nuclear or biological weapons—but that were highlighted by fewer experts.

Over in the top-right quadrant of the chart are the risks that a number of experts mentioned, and that are causing a strain on society. Not surprisingly, the top risks are related to issues that impact a wide variety of people, such as the rising cost of living and inflation. When staples like food and energy become more expensive, this can fuel unrest and political instability—particularly in countries that already had simmering discontent. WEF points out that increases in fuel prices alone led to protests in an estimated 92 countries.

One risk worth watching is geoeconomic confrontation, which includes sanctions, trade wars, investment screening, and other actions that have the intent of weakening the countries on the receiving end. Efforts to mitigate this risk result in some of the key themes we see for the coming year. One example is the onshoring of industries, and “friend-shoring”, which is essentially moving operations to a foreign country that has more stable relations with one’s home country.

How Prepared Are We?

It’s one thing to be aware of risks, but it’s quite another to have the ability to head off negative events when they come to fruition.

The chart below is a look at how prepared we are globally to deal with specific types of risks that could arise in the next few years.

At the top of the chart are risks that experts feel society is better equipped to handle with current plans and resources. Moving towards the bottom of the chart are risks that experts feel are more of a threat since mechanisms for handling them are weak or non-existent.

Experts are generally more confident in solutions in the military or healthcare domains. Environmental and societal challenges leave policy and decision-makers less confident.

One telling observation from the data above is that none of the risks left a majority of experts feeling neither confident in our ability to prevent the risk from occurring, or prepared to mitigate its impact. As the 2020s are shaping up to be a turbulent decade, that could be a cause for concern.

Submitted by Gun Owners Of America.,

The ATF has finally unveiled its “final rule” regarding pistol braces.

This rule, also called “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached Stabilizing Braces,” could result in serious criminal charges for owners of up to 40 million guns if they do not register their braced firearms with ATF.  

🚨BREAKING🚨

The @ATFHQ just released @JoeBiden‘s unconstitutional pistol brace ban that affects as many as 40,000,000 lawfully purchased firearms.

Read the new rule here ⤵️https://t.co/dVWgf3isNo pic.twitter.com/6dYftjaDXQ

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 13, 2023

GOA’s Legal & Federal Affairs team are currently going over the final rule with a fine-toothed comb, but here’s what we know so far.  

According to the final rule, gun owners who possess braced firearms will have 120 days to destroy, reconfigure, register, turn in their firearms to ATF, or face NFA violations which include $250,000 in fines and a hefty prison sentence. 

In addition, ATF has released a list titled “Commercially available firearms equipped with a stabilizing brace that are short-barreled rifles.”

ATF claims that the list is representative of how the agency will apply the definition of “rifle” to firearms equipped with a stabilizing brace.

The immediate logistics of this final rule have been called into question by even the anti-gun corporate media. It is a well-known fact that ATF’s NFA division consistently misses its own performance benchmarks and routinely sees wait times for ATF form approvals and tax stamps in the 300-400 day range. If 40 million firearms are added to that waitlist, it is logical to assume that gun owners forced to comply with this unconstitutional registration scheme may wait years in limbo.

But don’t despair! Gun Owners of America is currently pursuing multiple actions to defeat this unconstitutional ATF overreach on America’s 2nd Amendment Rights. 

The first is to work with members of Congress to overturn the rule via the Congressional Review Act.

The Congressional Review Act allows members of Congress to introduce a Joint Resolution of Disapproval to reverse any agency rule or action they deem unconstitutional.

Of course, if Congress doesn’t cooperate, GOA will not give up. We are prepared to file a lawsuit immediately and fight this subversion of the lawmaking process in the court system. 

Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America’s Senior Vice President, had this to say: 

“This administration continues to find new ways to attack gun owners, and this time their target is brace-equipped firearms that allow persons with disabilities to safely and effectively use pistols. We will continue to work with our industry partners to amplify the disapproving voices in the firearms industry, and the Gun Owners Foundation, our sister legal arm, will be filing suit in the near future.”  

Aidan Johnston, GOA’s Director of Federal Affairs, added:  

“President Biden just initiated the largest federal gun registration scheme in our nation’s history without even the passage of a new law. GOA is actively working with Congress to pass a resolution blocking this rule under the Congressional Review Act, and we continue to lobby lawmakers to support Rep. Clyde and Sen. Marshall’s Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today (SHORT) Act. If President Biden will not sign such legislation, then Congress must defund this rogue agency.”  

GOA has a history of overturning these unconstitutional rule changes. In 2020, when the ATF under the Trump administration attempted to regulate pistol braces, GOA rallied our members to take action. GOA members flooded the proposed rule with comments. Because of this, ATF abandoned its attempt and withdrew the rulemaking. 

While GOA is prepared to take the ATF to court over this issue, we’re interested in cutting the ATF’s ability to regulate Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, and similar types of firearms.   

To strip the ATF of its ability to regulate these types of firearms, we’re targeting the core of the issue, the National Firearms Act. The outdated and unconstitutional NFA allows ATF the leeway to make these unconstitutional rule changes. We’re working with Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas and Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia to pass the SHORT Act, which would remove Short Barreled Rifles and Shotguns from the NFA. 

But we can’t do it alone. We need your help fighting back against the rogue ATF and the anti-gun Biden administration. Help us fight by calling your Senators and Congress members and asking them to support the SHORT Act and the Joint Resolution of Disapproval. 

*   *   * 

We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

Last year was a bad year for corn — the latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) report shows drought conditions and extreme weather wreaked havoc on croplands. 

USDA unexpectedly slashed its outlook for domestic corn production amid a severe drought across the western farm belt. Farmers in Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas were forced to abandon drought-plagued fields. 

The agency estimated farmers harvested 79.2 million acres, a decline of 1.6 million acres versus the previous estimate — the smallest acres harvest since 2008. 

The unexpected cut to US harvested corn acres means grain supplies are a lot tighter than realized. A report Thursday showed the corn area in the world’s largest producer is at the smallest since 2008 with crops failing in states such as Texas and Nebraska. That’s due to persistent drought conditions in the western part of the country that could also hit harvests for wheat plants that are currently dormant for the winter. — Bloomberg

The crop-failed lands reduced total harvest corn acreage to levels not seen since 2008. 

Less acreage tightens supply and might continue to put a bid under corn prices. 

Global food prices remain at crisis levels.

Here’s the current drought situation across the farm belt. 

Corn production woes from the US don’t bode well in the fight to crush food inflation. It seems as if the prices for our food will remain high well through 2023. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An American doctor is joining the calls for the withdrawal of the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines, pointing to new research that highlights a connection between the shots and adverse events.

Dr. Joseph Fraiman, a doctor based in Louisiana who also conducts research on COVID-19 and other health issues, says it’s time to halt the administration of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines until new clinical trials prove the benefits from the vaccines outweigh the harms.

The new research, including a reanalysis of the trials for the vaccines, raise concerns about whether the benefits from the vaccines outweigh the harms, according to the doctor.

“I don’t see how anyone couldn’t be certain that the benefits are outweighing the harms on a population level, or even in the high-risk groups. I don’t see the evidence to support that claim,” Fraiman told The Epoch Times. “But I also can’t say that there’s evidence to support that it’s potentially more harmful, but there’s also uncertainty here. … Given that scenario, I believe that people should not be given the [vaccines] outside of a clinical trial, because we need to figure out … if their benefits outweigh harm or if harm outweighs benefits.”

“The only thing that can answer that question is going to be a randomized trial,” he added.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which cleared the shots and has never stopped promoting them, did not return an inquiry.

The Data

Fraiman led a study that reanalyzed the original Pfizer and Moderna trials. He and his colleagues concluded in a study published following peer review that the vaccinated were at higher risk of serious adverse events.

That’s one data point. Another is the identification of safety signals, or adverse events, that are potentially caused by the vaccines but require further study. The FDA revealed in December 2022 that the Pfizer vaccine was linked to blood clotting in elderly individuals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recommends the vaccines for virtually all Americans, found hundreds of other signals in its research, according to records obtained by The Epoch Times.

Several serious problems that can lead to death have been causally linked, or proven to be caused by the vaccines. They include myocarditis, or heart inflammation.

While U.S. health officials have repeatedly downplayed the severity of myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, German researchers who dug into the deaths of 25 people who died suddenly at home after vaccination ruled out every potential cause except for vaccination for five of the people. They reported their results in a study that was published after peer review in late 2022.

“Given alternative causes are unlikely to cause myocarditis within one week of vaccination, this is essentially conclusive evidence that we’re seeing sudden cardiac deaths from the vaccines,” Fraiman said.

Fraiman also noted that excess mortality, or deaths from all causes, have risen during the pandemic—with spikes correlating with the introduction of the vaccines. Vaccines may not have caused the additional deaths, he says, but some researchers, including British professors Norman Fenton and Martin Neil, have examined the data and found a signal that the vaccines were linked to at least some of the excess deaths. U.S. officials say some of the deaths may be from COVID-19.

Initial Thoughts

When the vaccines were first introduced, Fraiman backed giving them to the elderly and others at high risk from COVID-19, or people of all ages with serious underlying health conditions. He says he also did not recommend against vaccination for any ages, though he told younger family members he was not sure if it was a good idea to get a jab.

Fraiman also says the vaccines likely reduced hospitalizations in the first two quarters of 2021, recalling how he did not see a single vaccinated person in his hospital until June of that year.

When he and the other scientists discovered the vaccinated were at higher risk of serious problems, he shifted to a stance of the harms likely outweighing the benefits among healthy people.

With the new evidence of harm, along with Omicron being less dangerous and more likely to evade vaccine immunity, Fraiman questions whether the benefits outweigh the serious harms even among the elderly and otherwise infirm.

“I see the likelihood that the harm could outweigh the benefit in the group who stood to benefit the most from the vaccine,” he said.

Standards Fall

Clinical trial data on the vaccines have been hard to come by, especially trials not run by the vaccine makers themselves, and the standards for the trials have been lowered over time.

The FDA authorized shots for children based on immunobridging, or trial data that found the vaccines triggered a similar antibody response in kids than that in adults. For the new bivalent boosters, created because the original vaccines have been providing much lower levels of protection against Omicron and its subvariants, no clinical data, not even antibody measurements, was provided at all. Months later, that data is still not available to the public.

Some observational studies have estimated the boosters provide subpar protection against infection and solid protection, at least initially, against hospitalization. Randomized, controlled trials are typically considered superior.

Fraiman recommends withdrawing the vaccines and U.S. officials going to the vaccine makers and asking them to demonstrate the benefits outweigh the harms in light of the changed dynamics of the pandemic. The trials should feature investigators looking closely at each COVID-19 hospitalization to distinguish whether they were caused by COVID-19, or the COVID-19 diagnosis was incidental. That distinction is known widely as being hospitalized, or dying, with COVID-19 versus from COVID-19.

The trial would take five or six months, similar to the original ones, Fraiman says.

Other Calls

Some countries, such as Denmark, meanwhile, have stopped offering booster shots to certain segments of the population. A growing number of experts, meanwhile, are calling for the administration of the Moderna and Pfizer shots, which are by far the most administered in the United States, to be halted.

The group includes Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British doctor who turned against the vaccines in 2022 due to the growing evidence of side effects. Malhotra’s citations included the Moderna and Pfizer trials, which showed no reduction in mortality or severe disease, and the research led by Fraiman.

Read more here…

FEMA hired a California government contractor to translate disaster-assistance information into two native Alaska languages, but all it and the natives got was a big heap of nonsense. 

After a typhoon hammered the west coast of Alaska in September, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hired a Berkeley-based company, Accent on Languages, to translate instructions for applying for disaster aid. 

FEMA quickly turned the company’s work into tri-fold, glossy brochures that left native Alaskans utterly perplexed, as they encountered phrases like: 

• “Your husband is a polar bear, skinny.”
• “Tomorrow he will go hunting Alaska very early, and will (bring) nothing”  
• “When she said so, the dog ran farther off from the curtain.”

University of Alaska Fairbanks linguist Gary Holton says one of the translations is a random assortment of phrases copied from a compilation of far-eastern Russian folklore: “Yupik Eskimo Texts from the 1940s.” 

“They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense,” Holton told AP. He summed up the work as a “word salad.” 

In a publicly-posted letter, Accent on Languages CEO Caroline Lee said her firm will reimburse FEMA $5,116. “We make no excuses for erroneous translations, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused to the local community.” 

Lee said when the “horrifying,” botched translations came to her attention, that her company hired a new team of translators to do the project over again. FEMA has fired the company. 

Former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney wants more than a reimbursement, saying the company is guilty of fraud — “and you can’t put a price on the impact of denying services to vulnerable communities because of misinformation.” The grandstanding Sweeney even called for congressional hearings. 

We wonder if Accent on Languages was itself a victim of fraud on the part of whomever it assigned to do the original translation. 

Associated Press presented the fiasco as new evidence of systemic racism. Reporter Mark Thiessen called it “an ugly reminder for Alaska Natives of the suppression of their culture and languages from decades past,” and quoted Sweeney as she linked the bogus translations to her mother being beaten in school for speaking her native tongue.  

Like so many government contractors with ownership and leadership optimized for affirmative-action-driven contract awards, Accent on Languages touts itself as a “female, minority-owned business.”

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Texas, targets The Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), The Associated Press (AP), and Reuters—all of which are members of the “Trusted News Initiative (TNI),” a self-described “industry partnership” formed in 2020 among legacy media giants and big tech companies.

“By their own admission, members of the TNI have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,” the complaint reads.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination policies, led the lawsuit. He is joined by Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Truth About Vaccines founders Ty and Charlene Bollinger, independent journalist Ben Swann, Health Nut News publisher Erin Elizabeth Finn, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft, Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.

The plaintiffs, the lawsuit alleges, are among the many victims of the TNI’s “group boycott” tactic, defined as a coordinated effort to facilitate monopoly by cutting off the competitors’ access to supplies and necessities.

In this case, the TNI members are accused of engaging in group boycott—in concert with their big tech partners—against small, independent news publishers by denying them access to internet platforms they need to compete and even survive in the online news market.

“As a result of the TNI’s group boycott, [the plaintiffs] have been censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In,” the lawsuit states.

For example, the lawsuit claims, TNI members have been working with Big Tech to censor what they condemned as “misinformation,” such as reports that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection, and that vaccinated people may still transmit COVID to others.

This alleged effort to establish a dominant media narrative by shutting off nonestablishment outlets, according to the lawsuit, has violated both federal antitrust and freedom of speech laws.

“Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership,’” the lawsuit states. “It’s called a group boycott and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”

Read more here…

The NCAA convention in San Antonio had some unwelcome publicity on Thursday, in the form of dozens of protesters speaking out against the collegiate athletics organization’s insertion of transgender athletes into women’s competition. 

Among the demonstrators against NCAA’s policies was former Kentucky Wildcat swimmer Riley Gaines, who had to compete against transgender athlete Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania Quaker who was crowned the NCAA women’s champion in the 500-yard freestyle. 

“Today, we intend to personally tell the NCAA to stop discriminating against female athletes by handing them a petition that we have garnered nearly 10,000 signatures on in just a couple of days,” said Gaines. 

The NCAA has allowed transgender athletes to cross gender lines since 2010. Full implementation of a 2022 update of that policy was set to happen by August 2023, but, amid growing pushback from women and those with empathize with them, the NCAA Board of Governors his week opted to delay it to the 2023-24 academic year “to address operational considerations.” 

“I want to show the NCAA their discrimination against female athletes like me does not go unnoticed,” protestor and former Lee University volleyball player Macy Petty told Daily Caller. “I will not stand by as they allow biological men to take over female athletics.” Petter had to compete against a trans athlete in USA Volleyball qualifiers.

While Thursday’s action against the NCAA’s transgender policies consisted of speeches and signs, opponents of the status quo are likely to take the NCAA to court with the aim of proving its policies violate Title IX, the legislation that, among other things, requires that female collegiate athletes be afforded the same athletic opportunities as men at the same school. 

This week, attorneys for the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), a network of current and former collegiate and professional women athletes and their families, published a letter to the NCAA, declaring ICONS was putting the NCAA “on official notice that your practice of allowing male athletes on women’s teams constitutes illegal discrimination against women on the basis of sex…it is impossible to provide equal opportunities for both sexes (as required by Title IX) without female-only teams.” 

At the protest, alluding to potential legal avenues, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Christiana Kiefer said:

“I think that could look like a Title IX complaint. And I think it could look like even universities starting to actually push back against the NCAA and saying, ’Hey, we have a legal obligation to protect fair athletic opportunities for female athletes and if we fail to do that, you’re kind of binding our hands and not allowing us to fulfill our legal obligations to the female athletes at our schools.’”

The resistance to NCAA’s transgender-athlete campaign now includes state governments that have barred transgender athletes from women’s sports. Earlier this month, a federal judge upheld West Virginia’s ban, saying that “one’s sex…dictates physical characteristics that are relevant to athletics.” 

Our NCAA protest made the @AP_Sports, @washingtonpost and @espn — we came from across the political spectrum and from around the country, united for #OurBodiesOurSports #TitleIX #SexDiscrimination https://t.co/SdyTkUUWJM https://t.co/Pyc09SEK40 pic.twitter.com/wkUoIzxtoG

— Nancy Hogshead-Makar, JD, Oly (@Hogshead3Au) January 12, 2023

Via Consortium News/ProPublica,

In 2019, reporter Lynzy Billing returned to Afghanistan to research the murders of her mother and sister nearly 30 years earlier. Instead, in the country’s remote reaches, she stumbled upon the C.I.A.-backed Zero Units, who conducted night raids — quick, brutal operations designed to have resounding psychological impacts while ostensibly removing high-priority enemy targets.

So, Billing attempted to catalog the scale of civilian deaths left behind by just one of four Zero Units, known as the 02, over a four year period. 

The resulting report represents an effort no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Here is what she found:

• At least 452 civilians were killed in 107 raids. This number is almost certainly an undercount. While some raids did result in the capture or death of known militants, others killed bystanders or appeared to target people for no clear reason.
• A troubling number of raids appear to have relied on faulty intelligence by the C.I.A. and other U.S. intelligence-gathering services. Two Afghan Zero Unit soldiers described raids they were sent on in which they said their targets were chosen by the United States.
• The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency acknowledged that the units were getting it wrong at times and killing civilians. He oversaw the Zero Units during a crucial period and agreed that no one paid a consequence for those botched raids. He went on to describe an operation that went wrong: “I went to the family myself and said: ‘We are sorry. … We want to be different from the Taliban.’ And I mean we did, we wanted to be different from the Taliban.”
• The Afghan soldiers weren’t alone on the raids; U.S. special operations forces soldiers working with the C.I.A. often joined them. The Afghan soldiers Billing spoke to said they were typically accompanied on raids by at least 10 U.S. special operations forces soldiers. “These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” one of the Afghans said, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.”
• Military planners baked potential “collateral damage” into the pre-raid calculus — how many women/children/noncombatants were at risk if the raid went awry, according to one U.S. Army Ranger Billing spoke to. Those forecasts were often wildly off, he said, yet no one seemed to really care. He told Billing that night raids were a better option than airstrikes but acknowledged that the raids risked creating new insurgent recruits. “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill.”

• Because the Zero Units operated under a CIA program, their actions were part of a “classified” war, with the lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer for operations that went wrong. And U.S. responsibility for the raids was quietly muddied by a legal loophole that allows the C.I.A. — and any U.S. soldiers lent to the agency for their operations — to act without the same level of oversight as the American military.
• Congressional aides and former intelligence committee staffers said they don’t believe Congress was getting a complete picture of the C.I.A.’s overseas operations. Lawyers representing whistleblowers said there is ample motivation to downplay to Congress the number of civilians killed or injured in such operations. By the time reports get to congressional oversight committees, one lawyer said, they’re “undercounting deaths and overstating accuracy.”
• U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long relied on night raids by forces like the 02 unit to fight insurgencies around the globe. The strategy has, again and again, drawn outrage for its reliance on sometimes flawed intelligence and civilian death count. In 1967, the C.I.A.’s Phoenix Program famously used kill-capture raids against the Viet Cong insurgency in south Vietnam, creating an intense public blowback. Despite the program’s ignominious reputation — a 1971 Pentagon study found only 3 percent of those killed or captured were full or probationary Viet Cong members above the district level — it appears to have served as a blueprint for future night raid operations.
• Eyewitnesses, survivors and family members described how Zero Unit soldiers had stormed into their homes at night, killing loved ones at more than 30 raid sites Billing visited. No Afghan or U.S officials returned to investigate. In one instance, a 22-year-old named Batour witnessed a raid that killed his two brothers. One was a teacher and the other a university student. He told Billing the Zero Unit strategy had actually made enemies of families like his. He and his brothers, he said, had supported the government and vowed never to join the Taliban. Now, he said, he’s not so sure.
• Little in the way of explanation was ever provided to the relatives of the dead — or to their neighbors and friends — as to why these particular individuals were targeted and what crimes they were accused of. Families who sought answers from provincial officials about the raids were told nothing could be done because they were Zero Unit operations. “They have their own intelligence and they do their own operation,” one grieving family member remembered being told after his three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike and night raid. “The provincial governor gave us a parcel of rice, a can of oil and some sugar” as compensation for the killings. At medical facilities, doctors told Billing they’d never been contacted by Afghan or U.S. investigators or human rights groups about the fate of those injured in the raids. Some of the injured later died, quietly boosting the casualty count.

In a statement, C.I.A. spokesperson Tammy Thorp said, “As a rule, the U.S. takes extraordinary measures — beyond those mandated by law — to reduce civilian casualties in armed conflict, and treats any claim of human rights abuses with the utmost seriousness.” She said any allegations of human rights abuses by a “foreign partner” are reviewed and, if valid, the C.I.A. and “other elements of the U.S. government take concrete steps, including providing training on applicable law and best practices, or if necessary terminating assistance or the relationship.” Thorp said the Zero Units had been the target of a systematic propaganda campaign designed to discredit them because “of the threat they posed to Taliban rule.”

The Department of Defense did not respond to questions about Zero Unit operations.

With a forensic pathologist, Billing drove hundreds of miles across some of the country’s most volatile areas — visiting the sites of more than 30 raids, interviewing witnesses, survivors, family members, doctors and village elders.

To understand the program, she met secretly with two Zero Unit soldiers over the course of years, wrangled with Afghanistan’s former spy master in his heavily fortified home and traveled to a diner in the middle of America to meet with an Army Ranger who’d joined the units on operations.

She also conducted more than 350 interviews with current and former Afghan and American government officials, Afghan commanders, U.S military officials, American defense and security officials and former C.I.A. intelligence officers, as well as U.S. lawmakers and former oversight committee members, counterterrorism and policy officers, civilian-casualty assessment experts, military lawyers, intelligence analysts, representatives of human rights organizations, doctors, hospital directors, coroners, forensic examiners, eyewitnesses and family members — some of whom are not named in the story for their safety.

While America’s war in Afghanistan may be over, there are lessons to be learned from what it left behind. Billing writes:

“The American government has scant basis for believing it has a full picture of the Zero Units’ performance. Again and again, I spoke with Afghans who had never shared their stories with anyone. Congressional officials concerned about the CIA’s operations in Afghanistan said they were startled by the civilian death toll I documented.

As my notebooks filled, I came to realize that I was compiling an eyewitness account of a particularly ignominious chapter in the United States’ fraught record of overseas interventions.

Without a true reckoning of what happened in Afghanistan, it became clear the U.S. could easily deploy the same failed tactics in some new country against some new threat.”

Read her full report here.

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

The evidence strongly suggests that a combined interest rate, economic and currency crisis for the US and its western alliance will continue in 2023.

This article focuses on credit, its constraints, and why quantitative easing has already crowded out private sector activity. Adjusting M2 money supply for accumulating QE indicates the degree to which this has driven the US tax base into deep recession. And the wider effects on credit in the economy should not be ignored. 

After a brief partial recovery from the covid crisis in US government finances, they are likely to start deteriorating again due to a deepening recession of private sector activity. Funding these deficits depends on foreign inward investment flows, which are faltering. Rising interest rates and an ongoing bear market make funding from this source hard to envisage.

Meanwhile, from his public statements President Putin is fully aware of these difficulties, and a consequence of the western alliance increasing their support and involvement in Ukraine makes it almost certain that Putin will take the opportunity to push the dollar over the edge.

Credit is much more than bank deposits

Economics is about credit, and its balance sheet twin, debt. Debt is either productive, in which case it can extinguish credit in due course, or it is not, and credit must be extended or written off. Money almost never comes into it. Money is distinguished from credit by having no counterparty risk, which credit always has. The role of money is to stabilise the purchasing power of credit. And the only legal form of money is metallic; gold, silver, or copper usually rendered into coin for enhanced fungibility.

Credit is created between consenting parties. It facilitates commerce, created to circulate existing commodities, and to transform them into consumer goods. The chain of production requires credit, from miner, grower, or importer, to manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and customer or consumer. Credit in the production chain is only extinguished when the customer or consumer pays for the end product. Until then, the entire production chain must either have money or arrange for credit to pay for their inputs. 

Providers of this credit include the widest range of economic actors in an economy as well as the banks. When we talk of the misnamed money supply as the measure of credit in an economy, we are looking at the tip of an iceberg, leading us to think that debt in the form of bank notes and deposit accounts owed to individuals and businesses is the extent of it. Changes in the banking sector’s risk appetite drive a larger change in unrecorded credit conditions. We must accept that changes in the level of officially recognised debt are merely symptomatic of larger changes in payment obligations in the economy. 

The role of credit is not adequately understood by economists. Keynes’s General Theory has only one indexed reference to credit in the entire book, the vade mecum for all macroeconomists. Even the title includes “money” when it is actually all about credit. Von Mises expounds on credit to a considerable degree in his Human Action, but this is an exception. And even his followers today are often unclear about the distinction between money and credit.

Economists and commentators have begun to understand that credit is not limited to banks, by admitting to the existence of shadow banking, a loose definition for financial institutions which do not have a banking licence but circulate credit. The Bank for International Settlements which monitors shadow banking appears to suspect shadow banks of creating credit without the requirement of a banking licence. There appears to be a confusion here: the BIS’s starting point is that credit is the preserve of a licenced bank. The mistake is to not understand the wider role of non-bank credit in economic activity.

But these institutions, ranging from insurance companies and pension funds to various forms of financial intermediaries and agents, unconsciously create credit by allowing time to elapse between a commitment giving rise to an obligation, and its settlement. Even next day settlement is a debt obligation for a buyer, or credit extended by a seller. Delivery against settlement is a credit obligation for both parties in a transaction. Futures, forwards, and options are credit obligations in favour of a buyer, which can be traded. And when a broker insists a client must have a credit in his account before investing, or to deliver securities before selling, credits and obligations are also created.

Therefore, credit has the same effect as money (which is very rarely used) in every transaction, financial or non-financial. All the debts in the accounts of businesses are part of the circulating medium in an economy, including bills of exchange and other tradable obligations. And at each transfer a new credit, debt, or right of action is created, while others are extinguished.

A banking system provides a base for further credit expansion because all credit transactions are ultimately settled in bank notes, which are an obligation of the note issuer (in practice today, a central bank) or through the novation of a bank deposit, being an obligation of a commercial bank. Banks are simply dealers in credit. As such, they facilitate not just their own dealings, but all credit creation and expunction. 

The reason for making the point about the true extent of credit is that it is a mistake to think that the statistical expansion, or contraction of it, conventionally measured by the misnamed money supply, is the true extent of a change in outstanding credit. Central banks in particular act as if they believe that by influencing the height of the visible tip of the credit iceberg, they can simply ignore the consequences for the rest. 

It is also worth making this point so that we can assess how the economies of the western alliance will fare in the year ahead — the American-led NATO and other nations adhering to its sphere of influence. With signs of bank credit no longer expanding and, in some cases, contracting, and with price inflation continuing at destructive levels and a recession threatened, it is rarely so important to understand credit and its role in an economy. 

We also need to have a true understanding of credit to assess the prospects for China’s economy, which appears to be set on a different course. Emerging from lockdown and in the light of favourable geopolitical developments while the western alliance is tipping into recession, the prospects for China’s economy are rapidly improving.

Interest rates in 2023

That the long-term trend of declining interest rates for the major fiat currencies over the last four decades came to an end in 2021 is now beyond question. That this trend fostered a continuing appreciation of asset values is fundamental to an understanding of the consequences. And that the expansion of bank credit supporting a widening plethora of financial credit has stopped, is now only beginning to be register. If we look at the quarterly rate of change in US M2 money supply, this is now evident.

Since the Bretton Woods agreement was abandoned in 1971, there has not been as severe a contraction of US dollar bank credit as witnessed today. It follows a massive covid-related spike when the US Government’s budget deficit soared. And its rise and fall is contemporaneous with a collapse in government revenues and soaring welfare costs.

In fiscal 2020 (to end-September), the Federal Government’s deficit was $3.312 trillion, compared with revenue of $3.42 trillion. It meant that spending was nearly twice tax income. Some of that excess expenditure was helicoptered directly into citizens’ bank accounts. The rest was reflected in bank balances as it was spent into public circulation by the government. Furthermore, from March 2020 the Fed commenced QE at the rate of $120bn per month, adding a total of $2.6 trillion in bank deposits by the end of fiscal 2021. 

Deflating M2 by QE to get a feel for changes in the aggregate level of bank deposits strictly related to private sector origination tells us that private sector related credit was already contracting substantially in fiscal 2020—2021. This finding is consistent with an economy which suffered a suspension of much activity. This is illustrated in our next chart, taken from January 2020.

In this chart, accumulating QE is subtracted from official M2 to derive the red line. In practice, one cannot make such a clear distinction, because QE credit goes directly into the financial sector, which is broadly excluded from the GDP calculation. Nevertheless, QE inflates not just commercial bank reserves at the Fed, but their deposit liabilities to the insurance companies, pension funds, and other members of the shadow banking group. A minor portion of QE might relate to the commercial banks themselves, which for practical purposes can be ignored.

Through QE, state-origination of credit effectively crowds out private sector-origination of credit. A Keynesian critic might dismiss this on the basis that he believes QE stimulates the wider economy. That may be true when a monetary stimulus is first applied, since it takes time for market prices to adjust to the extra quantity of credit. Furthermore, QE stimulates financial market values and not the GDP economy, only affecting it later in a roundabout way.

But when QE eventually leaks out into the wider economy, it leads to higher prices for consumer goods, confirmed by the dramatic re-emergence of consumer price inflation. Furthermore, regulated banks are limited in their ability to create credit by balance sheet constraints, so to accommodate QE they are necessarily restricted in their credit creation for private sector borrowers.

Given the far larger quantities of non-bank credit which depend for its facilitation on bank credit, the negative impact on the economy of banks becoming risk averse is poorly understood. It is ignored on the assumption that state-origination of credit through budget deficits stimulates economic activity. What is less appreciated is that QE has already driven the non-government portion of the US economy into a deepening recession, yet to be reflected in government statistics. Furthermore, that the extra credit burden on the commercial banking system has exceeded their collective balance sheet capacity is confirmed by the Fed’s reverse repo facility, which offers deposit facilities additional to the commercial banking system. Currently standing at $2.2 trillion, it represents the bulk of excess credit created by QE since March 2020.

Adjusted for QE, the falling level of private sector deposits in the M2 statistic is consistent with an economic slump, only concealed statistically by the expansion of state spending and the loss of the dollar’s purchasing power. The economic distortions arising from QE are not restricted to America but are repeated in the other advanced economies as well. The only offset to the problem is an increase in private sector savings at the expense of immediate consumption and the extent to which they absorb increasing government borrowing. That way, the consequences for price inflation would have been lessened. But in America, much of the EU, and the UK, savings have not increased as a proportion of GDP, so there has been little or no savings offset to soaring budget deficits.

A funding crisis is in the making

Returning to the US as our primary example, we can see that national monetary statistics are concealing a slump in economic activity in the “real economy”. This real economy represents the state’s revenue base. On its own, this is going to lead to higher government borrowing than expected by forecasters as tax revenues fall and welfare commitments rise. And interest expense, already estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $442bn in the current fiscal year and $525bn in fiscal 2024, are bound to be significantly higher due to unbudgeted extra borrowing.

Officialdom still assumes that a recession will be mild and brief. Consequently, the CBO’s calculations are unrealistic in what is clearly an unfolding economic slump given the evidence from bank credit. Even without considering additional negative factors, such as bankruptcies and bank failures which always attend a deep recession, borrowing cost estimates are almost certainly going to be far higher than currently expected.

In addition to domestic spending, the western alliance appears to be stepping up its war in Ukraine against Russia. US Defence spending is already running at nearly $800bn, and that can be expected to escalate significantly as the conflict in Ukraine worsens. The CBO’s estimate for 2024 is an increase to $814bn; but in the face of a more realistic assessment of an escalation of the Ukraine conflict since the CBO forecast was made last May, the outturn could easily be over $1,000bn. 

To the volume of debt issuance must also be added variations in interest cost. Bond investors currently tolerate negative yields in the apparent belief that falling consumer demand in a recession will reduce the tendency for consumer prices to rise. This is certainly the official line in all western central banks. But as we have seen, this “transient inflation” argument has had its timescale pushed further into the future as reality intervenes. 

This line of thinking, which is based on interpretations of supply and demand curves, ignores the plain fact that a general fall in consumption is tied irrevocably to a general fall in production. It also ignores the most important variable, which is the purchasing power of a fiat currency. It is the loss of purchasing power, which is primarily reflected in the consumer price index following the dilution of the currency by its debasement. In the absence of a sheet anchor tying credit values to legal money there is the thorny question of its users’ confidence being maintained in it as the exchange medium. Should that deteriorate, not only have we yet to see the consequences of earlier QE work their way through to undermining the dollar’s purchasing power, but the cost of government borrowing is likely to remain higher and for longer than official forecasts assume. 

Funding difficulties are ahead

We can now identify sources of ongoing credit inflation, which at the least will serve to continue to undermine the dollar’s purchasing power and ensure that a rising trend for interest rates will continue. This conclusion is markedly different from expectations that the current catalogue of problems facing the US authorities amounts to a series of one-off factors that will diminish and disappear in time.

We can see that in common with the Eurozone, Japan, and the UK, the US financial system will be required to come up with rising levels of credit to fund government debt, the consequence of continuing high levels of budget deficits. Furthermore, after a brief respite from the exceptional levels of deficits over covid, there is every likelihood that these deficits will increase again, particularly in the US, UK, and the PIGS grouping in the Eurozone. Not only do these nations have a problem with budget deficits, but they have trade deficits as well. This is bad news particularly for the dollar and sterling, because both currencies are overly dependent on inward capital flows to balance their governments’ books.

It is becoming apparent that with respect to credit policies, the authorities in America (and the UK) are faced with mounting funding difficulties to resolve. We can briefly summarise them as follows:

• Though they have yet to admit it, despite all the QE to date the evidence of a gathering recession is mounting. It has only served to conceal a deteriorating economic condition. The Fed is prioritising tackling rising consumer prices for now, claiming that that is the immediate problem.

• Along with the US Treasury, the Fed still claims that inflation is transient. This claim must continue to have credibility if negative real yields in bond markets are to endure, a situation which cannot last for very long.

• Monetary stimulus is confined by a lack of commercial banking balance sheet space. Further stimulation through QE will come up against this lack of headroom. 

• With early evidence of a declining foreign appetite for US Treasuries, it could become increasingly difficult to fund the government’s deficits, as was the case in the UK in the 1970s.

This author has vivid recollections of a similar situation faced by the UK’s monetary authorities between 1972—1975. In those days, the Bank of England was instructed in its monetary policy by the Treasury, and often its market related advice was overridden by Treasury mandarins lacking knowledge of financial markets. During the Barbour boom of 1971—1972, the Bank suppressed interest rates and encouraged the inflation of credit. Subsequently, price inflation started to rise and interest rates belatedly followed, always reluctantly conceded by the authorities.

This rapidly became a funding crisis for the government. The Treasury always tried to issue gilt-edged stock at less than the market was prepared to pay. Consequently, sterling’s exchange rate would come under pressure, and with a trend of rising consumer prices continuing, interest rates would have to be raised to get the gilt issue of the day subscribed. Having reflected a deteriorating situation, bond yields then fell when it was momentarily resolved. The crunch came in Autumn 1973, when the Bank of England’s minimum lending rate was increased from 9% on 26 July in steps to 13% on 13 November. A banking crisis suddenly ensued among lenders exposed to commercial property, and a number of banks failed. This episode became known as the secondary banking crisis.

As bond yields rose, stock markets crashed, with the FT30 Share Index falling from 530 in May 1972, to 140 in January 1975. The listed commercial property sector was virtually wiped out. In an air of crisis, inept Treasury policies continued to contribute to a growing fear of runaway inflation. Long maturity gilt issues bore coupons such as 15 ¼% and 15 ½%. And finally, in November 1976, the IMF bailed Britain out with a $3.9bn loan. 

Today, these lessons for the Fed and holders of dollar denominated financial assets are instructive. Future increases in interest rates were always underestimated, and as the error became apparent bond yields rose and equities fell. While the Fed is notionally independent from the US Treasury, the Federal Open Market Committee’s approach to markets is one of control, which was not so much shared by the Bank of England in the 1970s but reflected the anti-market Keynesian view of the controlling UK Treasury. 

In common with all other western central banks today, official policy at the Fed is to deny that price inflation is related to the quantity of credit. It is rare that money or credit in the context of a circulating medium is even mentioned in FOMC policy statements. Instead, interest rate setting is the dominant theme. And there is no acknowledgement that interest rates are primarily compensation to depositors for loss of purchasing power — a dangerous error when national finances are dependent on foreigners buying your treasury bonds. 

Foreign ownership of dollars and dollar assets

In the 1970s, sterling’s troubles were compounded by a combination of trade deficits and Britain’s dependence on inward (foreign) investment. In short, the nation was, and still is savings deficient. Consequently, at the first sign of rising interest rates foreign holders recognised that the UK government would drag its heels at accepting reality. They would turn sellers leading to perennial sterling crises.

Today, the dollar has been protected from this fate because of its status as the world’s reserve currency. Otherwise, it shares the same characteristics as sterling in the 1970s — twin deficits, reliance upon foreign investment, and rising yields on government bonds. 

According to the US Treasury’s TIC statistics, in the 12 months to September last, foreign holders purchased $846bn long-term securities. Breaking these figures down, private sector foreigners were net buyers, while foreign governments were net sellers. This reflects the difference between the trade deficit and the balance of payments: in other words, importers were retaining and investing most of their dollar payments on a net basis.

Table 1 shows the most recent position. Over the last year, the total value of foreign long-term and short-term investments in dollars (including bank deposits) fell by $3.531 trillion to $30.270 trillion. $2.532 trillion of this decline was in equity valuations, and with the recent rally in equity and bond markets, there will be some recovery in these numbers. But they are an indication of market and currency risks assumed by foreign holders of these assets if US bond yields start to rise again. And here we must also consider relative currency attractions.

The decline of the petrodollar and rise of the petroyuan

It is in this context that we must view Saudi Arabia’s move to replace petrodollars with petroyuan. Through its climate change policies, the western alliance against the Asian hegemons has effectively told its oil and natural gas supliers in the Gulf Cooperation Council that their carbon fuel products will no longer be welcome in a decade’s time. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Middle East sees its future trade being with China, along with her associates in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian economic Union, and the BRICS. Saudi Arabia has indicated her desire to join BRICS. Along with Egypt, Qatar, Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia are also on the list to become dialog partners of the SCO.

 Binding the membership of the SCO together is China’s plans to accelerate a communications and industrial revolution throughout Asia, and with a savings rate of 45% she has the capital available to invest in the necessary projects without undermining her currency. While America stagnates, China’s economy will be powering ahead.

There are further advantages to China’s plans with respect to the security and availability of cheap energy. While the Asians pay lip service to the western alliance’s insistence that fossil fuels must be reduced and then eliminated, in practice SCO members are still building coal-fired power stations and increasing their demand for all forms of fossil fuel. Members, associates, and dialog partners of the SCO, representing over 40% of the world’s population now include all the major oil and gas exporters in Asia.

The economic consequences are certain to impart significant advantages to China and her industrialisation plans, compared with the western alliance’s determination to starve itself of energy. While it will take some time for the Saudis to fully declare the petrodollar dead, the signal that she is prepared to accept petroyuan is an important one with more immediate consequences. We can be sure that besides geopolitical imperatives, the Saudis will have analysed the relative prospects between the two petro-currencies. They appear to have concluded that the risk of loss of the yuan’s purchasing power is at least no greater than that of the dollar. And if the Saudis are arriving at this conclusion, we can assume that other Asian governments holding dollars in their reserves will as well.

Russia is likely to stir the currency pot

With the western alliance increasing its support and involvement in the Ukraine proxy war, the military pressure on Russia is mounting. If President Putin has learned anything, it should be that military attempts to secure Eastern Ukraine carry a high risk of failure. Furthermore, with the alliance bringing more lethal weaponry to bear on his army, his prospects of military success are declining.

Compounding his military problems is the recent decline in oil and gas prices, particularly of the latter which has taken the energy squeeze off the EU. There can be little doubt that the greater these negative factors become, the greater the pressure on Putin to resort to a financial solution.

Putin’s strategy is likely to be simple and has already been telegraphed in his speech to the delegates at the St Petersburg Economic Forum last June. In short, he understands the weakness for the dollar’s position and by extension those of the other alliance currencies. Ideally, a cold snap in Middle and Eastern Europe will help lift oil and gas prices, increasing the prospects for price inflation, thereby bringing renewed pressure for interest rates in the alliance currencies to rise. This will lead to renewed losses on US and EU bonds, further falls in equities, and therefore dollar liquidation by foreigners. The eventual outcome of Triffin’s dilemma, a final crisis for the reserve currency, is certainly in the wings.

With the situation in Ukraine likely to escalate, Putin can ill afford to delay. On another front, he has authorised Russia’s National Wealth Fund to invest up to 60% in Chinese yuan and 40% in physical gold. This is probably a move to protect the fund from Putin’s view of future currency trends and from their declining value in gold. It is consistent with what the Saudis are doing with respect to getting out of dollars into yuan, and probably some gold bullion through the Shanghai International Gold Exchange. If this demand for gold extends beyond both Russia and Saudi Arabia, then the mechanism for dollar destruction could be accelerating demand for gold from multiple governments and entities in the Russian Chinese axis.