Days ago Russia’s defense ministry (MoD) publicized a video showing off its ability to quickly deploy a powerful nuclear ICBM anywhere within the country – with a range capable of striking anywhere in Europe or the United States – as it was seen being loaded into a missile silo after being rapidly transported via land.

Below is video released by the Russian MoD, subsequently republished and circulated in Western press reports: 

The Kremlin described that the military had loaded an “intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo launcher” in Kozelsk, in western Russia, soon after the Biden administration said it is mulling providing Ukraine with Patriot missile anti-air defenses, which would mark yet another significant escalation of Washington’s involvement in the war.

The MoD statement identified the missile as a “Yars” – possessing a nuclear warhead – which was the same type test-fired by Russian nuclear forces in October.

According to Newsweek, citing regional press reports: 

Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the Yars missile complex which was loaded in the Kaluga region had the capacity that was “12 times greater than the American bomb that destroyed Hiroshima,” referring to the atomic weapon dropped on the Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

The mass circulation paper’s report also outlined some of the missile’s specifications, which included an operational range of up to 12,000 kilometers which can strike the U.S. or anywhere in Europe, and a payload of up to 500 kilotons.

The Kremlin’s release of the footage, coming so close in time to prior ICBM tests, seems a clear response to the White House saying it might send Patriots to Kiev.

President Putin recently restated the country’s traditional nuclear doctrine, underscoring he doesn’t seek to deploy nuclear arms, but also warned he is ready to do so if Russian territory comes under existential threat. This after Ukraine has over the past months launched a series of brazen drone, missile, and sabotage attacks inside Russia-held Crimea, and even deep into Russian territory itself in cross-border raids. Western media took Putin’s words as another nuclear threat aimed at Ukraine and its military backers.

Authored by Dale Steinreich via The Mises Institute,

December 16, 2022, was the fifteenth anniversary of the modern Tea Party. That fact will come as a surprise to many readers who take the mainstream narrative about the Tea Party at face value. The mainstream account begins on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, live on CNBC from the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), declared a rebellion against “socialism” one month into the Obama administration.

If you’re already sensing something amiss, that’s understandable. An editor at establishment NBC lighting the fire of an anti-establishment rebellion? An uprising over mere proposed Obama bailouts of mortgage holders coming four months after silence over (if not a defense of) George W. Bush’s $700 billion TARP bailout of Wall Street? If this mainstream narrative seems fishy the more you delve into it, that is because it is.

What really happened 15 years ago and how was the Tea Party transformed from a libertarian grass-roots movement to today’s almost completely dead establishment version? What are some of the lessons that can be learned?

The Ron Paul Revolution (October 2007)

The ground-zero event that founded the Tea Party was the registration of the domain TeaParty07.com on October 24, 2007, by supporters of Ron Paul’s first presidential campaign. Here is archive.org’s snapshot of the site on November 13, 2007 displaying the famous original curled flyer:

Twelve days after the site registration came Guy Fawkes Night on November 5, 2007, when Paul supporters set off the first “money bomb,” a campaign fundraiser which (for Internet fundraising) raked in a record $4.3 million. Then on December 16, 2007, came the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Paul supporters in Boston re-enacted the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor and a newcomer to politics, ophthalmologist Rand Paul, spoke at Faneuil Hall. A second money bomb set off on this commemoration of the Tea Party raised over $6 million, shattering the previous record set 41 days earlier.

What was this schism on the American Right about? It was a rebellion against the Republican Party’s wars (in particular, the twin disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq), its drunken-sailor federal spending (e.g., a $500 billion unfunded expansion of Medicare for a new prescription drug program), and its burgeoning post-9/11 federal spy and police state (for example, the Patriot Act signed into law on October 26, 2001).

From Grass-Roots Activism to Big-Money Corporatism (February 2009)

By February 2009, the GOP lay in complete tatters. In addition to its endless wars and domestic spending spree, it had added a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street after the financial crisis of 2008. This in addition to a series of earlier post-9/11 outrages including a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in November of 2001 (by all common sense, a massive encroachment on a function each airline should have been responsible for to begin with), the so-called No Child Left Behind Act in January of 2002, and a Frankenstein consolidation of 22 executive-branch agencies into a new, gigantic Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November of 2002. 

As if all that weren’t bad enough, instead of nominating Ron Paul in 2008, the GOP had nominated conservative “war hero” John McCain and Alaska governor Sarah Palin. A war-weary public completely rejected the ticket in favor of a younger, articulate Barack Obama who promised peace and a revived economy. 

The Santelli rant sprang the conservative and GOP establishments into action to transform a marketing vehicle that would serve to not only distract the public from their recent colossal policy failures, but also serve as a gold mine of self-enrichment: t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, Taxed Enough Already (TEA) yard signs, fluff books from the conservative pundit class, Glenn Beck rallies promoted by the Fox News Channel, and Rush-Limbaugh brand iced tea and children’s books.

As Sarah Palin replaced Ron Paul as the face of the movement, a surreal change in advocacy followed. The anti-interventionist Tea Party, once outraged about the endless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, was now wanting the U.S. to bomb and invade Iran just as it had Iraq. Rally chants of “End the Fed” were replaced with “USA! USA! USA!” a paean to the U.S. military-industrial empire.

A Tea Party in February?

By 2014, the faux Tea Party’s fifth anniversary, it was clear that the mainstream media were firmly on board advancing the new, ersatz establishment narrative, as 2014 headlines such as “Tea Party Marks Fifth Anniversary” made clear.

Still, glaring inconsistencies remained. The grass-roots Paulist Tea Party began on December 16, 2007, the 234th anniversary of the original Sons of Liberty protest of 1773. The conservative and GOP forgery of February 19, 2009, was not connected to anything but the advancement of the self-serving and corporatist interests of Big Conservatism and the GOP. Even the latter’s supposed founder, Rick Santelli, was quickly pushed offstage while the Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and others took center stage.

Epilogue: Decentralization vs. Fighting to Gain Control of Leviathan

While the Ron Paul Revolution, from the spread of homeschooling to Austrian economics, continues on fifteen years later educating people around the world, conservatives and the GOP in late 2022 find themselves in circumstances much like those of early 2009. Unfortunately, they have no quick scam to hoodwink the public with this time around.

The Trump presidency, bereft of any consistent underlying philosophy seen so clearly in both Ron Paul presidential campaigns, promised to drain the D.C. swamp but then, in complete contradiction, worked to maintain the empire by hiring a series of crazed war hawks (including Bush-era fossil John Bolton), bombing Syria, assassinating Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, and creating a new wing (Space Force) of the military-industrial complex that did little more over four years of Trump’s presidency than try its best to undermine Trump at every turn. Going along with the oppressive Fauci-Birx economy-killing COVID lockdowns and other measures sealed Trump’s fate in terms of destroying his chances of re-election.

While the conservative pundit class now focuses obsessively on the recent Twitter files documenting how social media actively worked against Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, they are already quickly forgetting the 2022 midterm Big Red Wave that quickly vanished on election day, never mind their promised 2012 Mitt Romney landslide against Obama that never materialized. 

While Twitter’s spiking of the October 14, 2020, New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop undoubtedly had an impact on the 2020 election, in effect it was nowhere near the daily impact of the most successful progressive and Democratic Party super PAC that ever was: the government “schools.” The conservative pundit class has zero solutions to it other than vouchers and charter schools that only serve to shift and repackage Marxist indoctrination. They cannot comprehend the idea that once government has its hands on tax revenue, it has all the leverage and spends it in a manner that best advances its interests, which is always progressive causes.

Now pundits such as Laura Ingraham are seriously proposing that the GOP’s only way to counter the Democrats is to outdo the Democrats at their ballot-and-vote-manipulation schemes. (This from the woman who championed Mitt Romney over Ron Paul in 2012, then after Romney’s defeat, proposed reviving Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy as the new ticket to endless future GOP victories.)

A national breakup is the only way to truly save Red states from the growing pathologies in the Blue ones (high crime, taxes, onerous business-smothering red tape), but the conservative pundit class won’t go for it in a million years. As part of his legacy, Ron Paul may have persuaded them to no longer want any part of new wars such as those in Syria and Ukraine that they would have loved under George W. Bush. However, they have no intention of truly dismantling the U.S. military-industrial empire. Leave Puerto Rico and Guam? Are you kidding?! USA! USA! USA!

Journalist Matt Taibbi hit back at Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who called him a liar for suggesting that the FBI has been “analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts” instead of “chasing child sex predators or terrorists.”

Dear @mtaibbi: I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the @FBI and you are lying. The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement. https://t.co/nUcrwRyjRU

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 17, 2022

Taibbi responded to Lieu, suggesting that he could shed light on actual figures:

“Being on that committee,” Taibbi replied, referring to the House Judiciary Committee Lieu brought up, “you should know:

– How much has been spent, and how many DHS/DOJ employees have been assigned, to monitoring and flagging social media? – Why is the FBI asking for “location information” about ordinary Americans and media outlets like @RSBNetwork ?

Taibbi also asked Lieu “What “law enforcement” objective is served by asking for Billy Baldwin’s location information?” and why the FBI and DHS are in the business of analyzing and flagging social media content at all.

– What “law enforcement” objective is served by asking for Billy Baldwin’s location information?
– Why is the FBI/DHS in the business of analyzing and flagging social media content at all? When were these programs created and who approved them? pic.twitter.com/vEigT4ksKV

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 17, 2022

Your turn Ted…

*  *  *

Following the latest ‘TWITTER FILES‘ drop, which revealed that “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” journalist Matt Taibbi commented that “Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts.”

Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022

In response, California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu lashed out – telling Taibbi: “I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the @FBI and you are lying,” adding “The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement.”

To which researcher Tracy Beanz asked FBI whistleblower Steve Friend to chime in.

Oh? Hey @RealStevefriend !! Maybe you wanna hop in here and help him?

— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) December 17, 2022

Friend, a former 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, notably came out in October to claim that the agency went into hyperdrive to track down and investigate January 6th cases to promote the appearance of right-wing domestic terrorism, at the expense of other investigations – such as child trafficking.

Friend was suspended and stripped of his gun and badge in September for refusing to participate in SWAT raids against January 6th subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses, according to the NY Post.

As Taibbi wrote in November of Friend;

He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.

Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of “terrorism” cases “opening” in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.

As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.

“They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work,” Friend says. “Now a defense lawyer can say, ‘Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution.”

And so, in response to Lieu’s tweet, Friend wrote: “Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.””

Absolutely @tracybeanz. Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.” https://t.co/iE7KJ9fZt7

— @RealStevefriend (@RealStevefriend) December 17, 2022

So far crickets from Lieu, though he’s quite the prolific Tweeter so maybe Friend will get a response.

The FBI, meanwhile, responded to Taibbi’s “The Twitter Files” thread, in which he said that between January 2020 and November 2022, former Twitter Senior Director of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth, had exchanged over 150 emails with the agency.

“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities,” the FBI said in a statement. “Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, well known for her habit of doxxing her political targets as a means to intimidate them into silence, as well as her tendency to publish false or misleading information, has just been temporarily suspended from Twitter. Following her suspension, the trust-fund tattle-tale took to her Substack to claim that she did not violate any Twitter rules that she knows of, and only had a few tweets on her accounts. Lorenz donned no less than a pound of makeup to let everyone know how OK she was with the suspension.

Watch Taylor Lorenz almost in tears as she discusses her ban.

It’s incredible watching these “journalists” just in absolute shock at finally being held to the same standard as everyone else. They’re so used to living by a different set of rules pic.twitter.com/BciVzLr0zA

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 18, 2022

What she conveniently fails to mention is that she recently erased her entire Twitter account and even had her Twitter page removed from the Internet Archive right after Elon Musk began to crack down on corporate journalists using doxxing as a form of leverage.

After Eric Weinstein expressed concern over the action, Musk said the suspension would be temporary.

Temp suspension due to prior doxxing action by this account. Will be lifted shortly.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Lorenz came under fire in April after she doxxed a private citizen operating the ‘Libs of TikTok’ Twitter account – which did nothing more than amplify public videos posted by deranged leftists.

The crux of Lorenz’s hit piece is that Libs of TikTok spreads “anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment” and should be outed and shamed for “acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem” and “affecting teachers’ ability to feel safe in their classrooms.”

We shouldn’t define the word woman because gender is a system of oppression pic.twitter.com/KYbtCeynpr

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 18, 2022

This is the same Taylor Lorenz who broke down in tears because people published her private information online, which she said led to PTSD and having to sever relationships.

When this story about @LibsOfTikTok is published …

Remember this (now-deleted) video of Cry-Bully @TaylorLorenz sobbing on TV about how she felt when people published her private information online →https://t.co/Ouopoc2IyH pic.twitter.com/67bQDOXfx8

— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) April 19, 2022

Lorenz’s ban was the latest in a string of MSM journalists that Musk accused of doxxing, him – or others, at some point in history. Those kicked off the platform (and mostly now restored) include, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, Ryan Mac of the NY Times, Anthony Webster of Bellingcat, Donnie O’Sullivan of CNN, Micah F. Lee of The Intercept, Matt Binder of Mashable and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post.

Free Speech is doing okay when a sitting member of Congress can fire off two obvious lies in one tweet and not get banned by the guy he is lying about…who owns Twitter. https://t.co/jbJ4ukg32Y

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 18, 2022

Musk has been accused of simply suspending anyone who disagrees with him, which is ironic considering the political left’s revelry whenever a conservative account was previously banned.  A year ago, leftists argued that Twitter was a “private company” that can do whatever is wants. Now, they demand access to the platform as if it is a publicly owned forum.  So far, Musk appears to only be suspending accounts that violate the website’s doxxing rules.  The only difference is that today the rules are being enforced universally rather than selectively.     

imagine being this out of touch where this is an actual headline https://t.co/wDKm4U0Kel

— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) December 16, 2022

2017: JUST
2018: FOLLOW
2019: THE
2020: TOS
2021: RULEBREAKER
2022: These suspensions for TOS violations are arbitrary, political, stifle free speech, are an affront to democracy, and unprecedented fascism!

— Razor (@hale_razor) December 18, 2022

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

While many market participants are concerned about rate increases, they appear to be ignoring the largest risk: the potential for a massive liquidity drain in 2023.

Even though December is here, central banks’ balance sheets have hardly, if at all, decreased. Rather than real sales, a weaker currency and the price of the accumulated bonds account for the majority of the fall in the balance sheets of the major central banks.

In the context of governments deficits that are hardly declining and, in some cases, increasing, investors must take into account the danger of a significant reduction in the balance sheets of central banks. Both the quantitative tightening of central banks and the refinancing of government deficits, albeit at higher costs, will drain liquidity from the markets. This inevitably causes the global liquidity spectrum to contract far more than the headline amount.

Liquidity drains have a dividing effect in the same way that liquidity injections have an obvious multiplier effect in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. A central bank’s balance sheet increased by one unit of currency in assets multiplies at least five times in the transmission mechanism. Do the calculations now on the way out, but keep in mind that government expenditure will be financed.

Our tendency is to take liquidity for granted. Due to the FOMO (fear of missing out) mentality, investors have increased their risk and added illiquid assets over the years of monetary expansion. In periods of monetary excess, multiple expansion and rising valuations are the norm.

Since we could always count on rising liquidity, when asset prices corrected over the past two decades, the best course of action was to “buy the dip” and double down. This was because central banks would keep growing their balance sheets and adding liquidity, saving us from almost any bad investment decision, and inflation would stay low.

Twenty years of a dangerous bet: monetary expansion without inflation. How do we handle a situation where central banks must cut at least $5 trillion off their balance sheets? Do not believe I am exaggerating; the $20 trillion bubble generated since 2008 cannot be solved with $5 trillion. A tightening of $5 trillion in US dollars is mild, even dovish. To return to pre-2020 levels, the Fed would need to decrease its balance sheet by that much on its own.

Keep in mind that the central banks of developed economies need to tighten monetary policy by $5 trillion, which is added to over $2.50 trillion in public deficit financing in the same countries.

The effects of contraction are difficult to forecast because traders for at least two generations have only experienced expansionary policies, but they are undoubtedly unpleasant. Liquidity is dwindling already in the riskiest sectors of the economy, from high yield to crypto assets. By 2023, when the tightening truly begins, it will probably have reached the supposedly safer assets.

In a recent interview, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said that the ECB will begin to reduce its balance sheet in 2023 and added that “a recession may be insufficient to get inflation back on target.” This suggests that the “anti-fragmentation tool” currently in use to mask risk in periphery bonds may begin to lose its placebo impact on sovereign assets. Additionally, the cost of equity and weighted average cost of capital increases as soon as sovereign bond spreads begin to rise.

Capital can only be made or destroyed; it never remains constant. And if central banks are to effectively fight inflation, capital destruction is unavoidable.

The prevalent bullish claim is that because central banks have learned from 2008, they will not dare to allow the market to crash. Although a correct analysis, it is not enough to justify market multiples. The fact that governments continue to finance themselves, which they will, is ultimately what counts to central banks. The crowding out effect of government spending over private sector credit access has never been a major concern for a central bank. Keep in mind that I am only estimating a $5 trillion unwind, which is quite generous given the excess produced between 2008 and 2021 and the magnitude of the balance sheet increase in 2020–21.

Central banks are also aware of the worst-case scenario, which is elevated inflation and a recession that could have a prolonged impact on citizens, with rising discontent and generalized impoverishment. They know they cannot keep inflation high just to satisfy market expectations of rising valuations. The same central banks that assert that the wealth effect multiplies positively are aware of the disastrous consequences of ignoring inflation. Back to the 1970s.

The “energy excuse” in inflation estimates will likely evaporate, and that will be the key test for central banks. The “supply chain excuse” has disappeared, the “temporary excuse” has gotten stale, and the “energy excuse” has lost some of its credibility since June. The unattractive reality of rising core and super-core inflation has been exposed by the recent commodity slump.

Central banks cannot accept sustained inflation because it means they would have failed in their mandate. Few can accurately foresee how quantitative tightening will affect asset prices and credit availability, even though it is necessary. What we know is that quantitative tightening, with a minimal decrease in central bank balance sheets, is expected to compress multiples and valuations of risky assets more than it has thus far. Given that capital destruction appears to be only getting started, the dividing effect is probably more than anticipated. And the real economy is always impacted by capital destruction

On Sunday South Korea’s military condemned the latest missile launch from the north as “a serious provocation” – after Pyongyang fired a pair of mid-range ballistic missiles into the sea. 

The south’s military described “a serious provocation that harms peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula as well as the international community.” It was the latest in a significant uptick in tests over the past few months. 

The launches resulted in Japan’s prime minister issuing an emergency alert for the large island-nation, given the the projectiles traveled over 300 miles before splashing down in waters between Korea and Japan. In a recent test a ballistic missile reportedly flew over the island, panicking residents.

The Associated Press reports, “The launches came two days after the North claimed to have performed a key test needed to build a more mobile, powerful intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the U.S. mainland.”

“The two missiles traveled from the country’s northwest Tongchangri area about 500 kilometers (310 miles) at a maximum altitude of 550 kilometers (340 miles) before landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, according to the South Korean and Japanese governments,” the report details. 

International media is acknowledging a record year in terms of numbers of launches from Pyongyang.  Nuclear policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Ankit Panda has described that North Korea is flexing as a new “missile power” in the region and on the world stage. “The bigger picture is that North Korea is literally turning into a prominent operator of large-scale missile forces,” Panda said.

“The word test is no longer appropriate to talk about most North Korean missile launches,” he said. “Most of the missiles they’ve launched this year are parts of military exercises. They are rehearsing for nuclear war. And that I think, is the big picture this year.”

In response, last week the Pentagon deployed a US Space Force unit at Osan Air Base outside Seoul in order to better monitor South Korea’s missile activity.

The @SpaceForceDoD has established its 1st overseas base in South Korea to counter North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threat. pic.twitter.com/mcQHFmOVTp

— TaiwanPlus (@taiwanplusnews) December 15, 2022

“Just 48 miles north of us exists an existential threat; a threat that we must be prepared to deter, defend against, and – if required – defeat,” Lt. Col. Joshua McCullion, chief of the new space unit, announced of their mission. 

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

Propaganda, lies and censorship are all part of desperate governments actions as the economy disintegrates.

We are today seeing both news and history being rewritten to suit the woke trends that permeate society at every level, be it covid, the number of genders, the Ukraine war or government finances.

I have in many articles covered the explosion of money printing and debt which is an obvious sign that the global financial system is approaching collapse and default . The consequences will be  far reaching to every corner of the globe and all parts of society.

See my recent article “In The End The Dollar Goes To  Zero And The US Defaults” which outlines the probable course of events in 2023 and afterwards.

Later on in this article, I will look at the consequences in relation to markets and what ordinary people (investors?) can do to prepare themselves.

ORWELL PREDICTED THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY 73 YEARS AGO

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”― George Orwell, 1984

Let’s just look at government finances. As we are entering the end of an era with deficits and debts running out of control, the truth becomes an inconvenience to governments and must therefore be suppressed or rewritten.

If we just look at the US Doublespeak in regards to the 2021-2 budget deficit, we find that the US Treasury reported on Oct 21 this year:

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Friday reported that its fiscal 2022 budget deficit plunged by half from a year earlier to $1.375 trillion, due to fading COVID-19 relief spending and record revenues fuelled by a hot economy, but student loan forgiveness costs limited the reduction. The U.S. Treasury said the $1.400 trillion reduction in the deficit was still the largest-ever single-year improvement in the U.S. fiscal position as receipts hit a record $4.896 trillion, up $850 billion, or 21% from fiscal 2021.

FANTASTIC!!

What an achievement by the Treasury Secretary Ms Yellen and her team to halve the deficit to only $1.4 trillion!

But let’s look a bit more closely what really happened.

If the deficit was “only” $1.4 trillion we must assume that the Federal Debt also increased by the same amount?

But ALAS, the debt increased by $2.5 trillion to $31T  in the same period and not by the assumed $1.4T. 

Hmmmm.

So again we can look at the 1984 Orwell quote above “Every record has been destroyed or falsified….”

The deficit wasn’t halved at all. Instead hal

f of it was stated below the line as a budget adjustment. So they can lie about the Budget Deficit but so far they are not lying about the level of the Debt. But that will certainly happen one day too. Remember that the Clinton so called surpluses in the late 1990s were produced with the same type of creative accounting. There were no real surpluses. They were just shuffled below the line since debt continued to grow.

Good old Mark Twain gave us the useful quote about lies and statistics:

So there we have it, 2022 seems more and more like 1984!

AWARDS FOR FAILURE

In this upside down world, warmongers and money printers get prestigious awards.

Zelensky is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And Bernanke wins the Nobel Prize in Economics.

In the Ukraine war 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died according to the US Chief of Staff Gen. Milley.

Instead of handing out a reward for a war resulting in 200,000 dead soldiers and another 40,000 dead civilians, it would be much more appropriate if the world focused on making peace rather than sending more weapons and more money to perpetuate the war.

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” – George Orwell

Ben Bernanke was Chairman of the Fed from 2006 to 2014. During his period the US Debt doubled from $8.2 trillion to $17.5T, a feat that no head of the Fed had achieved before.

And for that accomplishment the Nobel Prize is awarded.

The fact that the Swedish Riksbank (Central bank) selects the winner makes it easier to understand since they are all Keynesians

2023 AND BEYOND

The clouds look extremely dark for 2023 and beyond.

As I have pointed out above, there is no attempt to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine. Weapons and money are pouring in to keep the war going. And the sanctions forced upon Europe by the US are having a devastating effect for the citizens of most European countries. Energy costs are up 2-3X or more for many consumers and food inflation in Germany for example jumped 21% year on year in November.

In the UK, many ordinary people cannot afford to keep their heating on or to eat properly. And this is before the cold winter sets in.

The situation in Ukraine seems to deteriorate and with Russia and the US involved, as well as China in the periphery, it could easily escalate.

But as I have spelt out numerous times, $300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero and sovereign borrowers defaulting.

A global sovereign default should be seen as an indisputable fact and it is only a question of how long it takes.

These events are normally a process. As Hemingway said, you go bankrupt “Gradually and then suddenly”.

The beginning can be a slow process and then at some point the shock comes so fast that no one will have time to react.

So no-one must believe that there will be time to get out once the early “gradual” phase starts.

Just to be clear, the gradual phase is here already although the world is in denial. The buy the dip mentality is still prevailing as evidenced by the partial recovery in stock markets.

Few realise that this is it and the next devastating fall in stocks is going to fool practically all investors. The majority will not get out but hope for a correction so they can exit at a higher level. And once the correction comes, they will be bullish again.

Once everyone is back into the market it will fall again. Most of the investors will be fooled most of the time until their portfolio is virtually worthless.

The Western world hasn’t experienced a real bear market since 1929-32. That time it took 25 years for the Dow to recover to the 1929 high.

The generosity of Central banks has made stock investments a one way game since the early 1980s.  But now the game is up and few will realise it until they have lost everything.

So the “suddenly” will be like an earthquake seemingly coming out of nowhere. It can come in 2023 or it might take a few years.

NO WARNING

What is certain is that there will be no warning. As I said, we have already had plenty of warnings but gullible investors will not believe them. This is just like the curse of Cassandra. She was given the gift of predicting disastrous events. But her curse was that no one would believe her. I wrote about Cassandra in this article five years ago. In the same article, I also made a timely gold forecast which most investors sadly ignored.

GOLD IN LONG TERM BULL MARKET

Gold has risen strongly in this century although most investors don’t actually realise how strong it has been.

Since the beginning of the 2000s  gold has outperformed every major asset class including stock markets. But the move has been in two halves with the first 11 years being spectacular for gold which moved up 7X in dollar terms. Since then a strong dollar has made gold’s performance less spectacular.

But if we look at an annual chart of gold in US dollars it still looks very impressive.

In the 2000s, Gold in Euros has performed as a perfect wealth preservation asset with only one major correction.

This chart is more typical of Gold’s performance in most currencies since it is not affected by a temporarily strong dollar.

Sanctions, energy prices, inflation, industrial production and many more  problems in Euroland, make gold a sine qua non (necessity) in order to avoid total wealth destruction.

Both fundamentally and technically gold now looks ready for another major move. The first target is $3,000 on the way to much higher levels. But as I often point out, gold must be measured in ounces or kilos and not in what will be worthless fiat money whether paper or digital.

In February 2019, I forecast that the Maginot line at $1,350 would soon break on the upside. (See chart below) and would be followed by a strong rally. The rally started a few weeks later and gold went up $700 to over $2,000.

We now have another smaller consolidation or a mini Maginot line which is likely to break in the next few weeks. A decisive break of $1900-1950 should do it and lead to a major move.

Confirming this turn is an Aden Sisters 7 year cycle low around December 2022:

Hubert Moolman has pointed out a 23 year cycle that also bottoms this autumn and normally leads to major moves.

Technical forecasts are of course about probabilities and not certainties. But the track record of these forecasters improves the odds substantially.

THE WISDOM OF THE EAST

The East, including Russia, Turkey, India, Thailand, Vietnam and China have all made major purchases of gold in this century whilst the demand from the West has been static.

Total withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange is a reflection of total gold demand in China. As the chart below shows, the Chinese have bought 23,000 tonnes of gold since 2008. That is around 50% of the gold production during the same period. 

Although there are many factors, primarily fundamental but also technical, that point to gold soon making a major move, what is much more important are the massive risks that the world is now facing.

We are on the edge of a precipice potentially leading to catastrophes of a magnitude never experienced before.

No one knows of course how this will play out except for future historians.

As I have stated in many articles the risks are at all levels, geopolitical, economic, financial, social, human etc.

For most of us it will be impossible to protect ourselves against most of the risks.

What is highly likely is that the wealth destruction will be massive and for that physical gold and silver is the best insurance like it has been throughout history.

I am obviously not pretending that precious metals is the total panacea for what is coming. But what is quite certain is that for material survival it is critical to hold.

As I often state, a close circle of family and friends is more important than anything else.

Russian state media has cited the words of a senior official in the Russian-backed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, to report that Russian technicians are constructing a protective dome over spent radioactive fuel stores at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

According to the Russian media reports, “The dome is designed to protect the storage facilities from shrapnel and improvised explosive devices carried by drones, the official explained, adding that it would be reinforced further at a later period.”

This as “Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom had earlier warned that damage to the spent-fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences,” according to the reporting. 

The Kremlin has for the past months accused Ukrainian forces of dangerous shelling and missile attacks on the facility, which remains Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

But Ukrainian forces have instead said it is in reality Russian forces that are using the sensitive site as “nuclear blackmail”, and has more recently alleged Russia’s military is setting up missile batteries at the plant, escalating the situation further.

Both sides have accused the other of seeking to create a ‘false flag’ incident at the plant, which could involve nuclear radiation leaks. 

The US and allies, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has kept inspectors on location, have long been pushing to establish a ‘demilitarized’ zone around the plant.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “I want to remind you of the words of President Vladimir Putin: There hasn’t been – and aren’t – any heavy weapons at that power station. This can easily be confirmed by the IAEA staff who are there day and night.”

Already the plant, including power stations crucial to its safe operations, have been struck by shelling, also causing multiple power outages – resulting in the plant on multiple occasions having to enact its back-up safety measures.

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

As the Qatargate scandal widens, questions are being asked as to whether its reverberations will reach the Commission, the EU’s executive branch. Recent revelations suggest the EU’s Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell could be implicated.

Since erupting last weekend with police raids on MEPs’ homes and offices in the European parliament, the Qatargate scandal has done nothing but mushroom. What began as a criminal probe into current and former MEPs and parliamentary assistants implicated in a bribery ring aimed at burnishing the public image of the current World Cup host has widened significantly — not only in terms of the number of people involved but also the number of organizations and third countries, which now also include Morocco.

As the scandal grows, both the Parliament and the European Commission are locked in a frantic damage control mission. European Parliament president Roberta Metsola on Thursday (15 December) pledged to unveil a “wide-ranging reform package” in January, which will include  measures to bolster whistleblower protections, a ban on all unofficial parliamentary friendship groups (groups of MEPs discussing relations with non-EU countries) and a review of enforcement of code of conduct rules for MEPs.

 Read More

Fallout Spreads

For the moment almost all of the focus is understandably on the European Parliament, but questions are beginning to be asked as to whether the fallout will spread to the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission. Asked whether he is worried about such an outcome, Didier Reynders, the EU Commissioner for justice, told Politico that it is “all the time a possibility”.

Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, herself no stranger to corruption allegations, both in her native Germany and in Brussels, said the following in a Monday morning press conference:

The allegations against the VP of Parliament [Eva Kaili] are of the most concern, very serious. It’s a question of confidence of our people in our institutions, it needs highest standards. I proposed the creation of an independent ethnics body that covers all EU institutions (in March).[1] For us it is very critical to have not only strong rules, but the same rules covering all the EU institutions, and not to allow for any exemptions.

Von der Leyen added that the Commission is looking at its own transparency register for all logged meetings between staff and Qatari officials. That is not as comforting as it may sound given the flagrant disregard for transparency and accountability her Commission has shown in its acquisition of billions of COVID-19 vaccines.

What’s more, as the non-profit research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory notes, the Commission’s 2014 transparency reforms apply only to the top 250 most
senior officials in the Commission. Many lower level officials from among the 30,000+
Commission staff regularly meet with lobbyists but they are not included within the rules.

EU’s Biggest Corruption Scandal in Years

Von der Leyen also refused to answer questions about the European Vice President Margaritis Schinas’ connections with Qatar, provoking umbrage from the Brussels press corps. Margaritis, also from Greece, represented the EU at the opening ceremony of the World Cup, and has been heavily criticized for lavishing praise on the “improving” labor conditions in Qatar, where at least 6,500 migrants workers from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan died between 2011, the year the World Cup was awarded to the country, and 2020.

Politico describes Qatargate as the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU in years, though it faces a run for its money from the blossoming scandal over the Commission’s deeply opaque dealings with Pfizer and other vaccine makers, which is now the subject of an investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. The EU’s ombudsman Emily O’Reilly branded the Commission’s refusal to disclose the text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla as “maladministration.”

In contrast to Qatargate, that scandal has been studiously ignored by Europe’s legacy media despite the staggering sums of money involved (tens of billions of dollars to date to buy up to 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccines), the number of people affected (anyone who pays taxes in the EU and felt compelled by the EU’s vaccine passport rules to take a medical product they didn’t want) and the seniority of those implicated, including Von der Leyen herself and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Von der Leyen herself has come under fire for concealing and/or deleting records of her conversations with Bourla prior to the Commission’s purchase of up to 1.8 billion vaccines. As for Bourla, he has twice refused to give testimony to a European Parliament special committee on the matter.

Borrell in the Mix?

For his part, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Josep Borrell described Qatargate “very, very worrisome.” But he was also at pains to emphasize that no one in the European Commission’s diplomatic service, which he heads, is under investigation: “There is nothing and no one being referred to neither from the External Action Service nor from the delegations.”

But that may change in the coming days or weeks. Former European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili, who is at the center of the bribery allegations, denies receiving the €1.5 million of cash found at her home and in her father’s possession [2] and claims she was acting exclusively on orders from above. According to Kaili’s lawyer, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, those orders came directly from EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola and Borrell.

From Euractiv:

In an interview with Greek MEGA TV channel, Dimitrakopoulos said Kaili has nothing to do with bribery from Qatar.

“What the public opinion needs to know is that Qatar did not need to bribe Ms Kaili because she went to Qatar as a representative of the European Parliament, the speeches, the interviews she gave were after the agreement and order of the President Roberta Metsola,” Dimitrakopoulos said.

He added that documents prove this and explained that Kaili did not take any initiative or have an agenda.

“Ms Metsola sent her to Qatar, what she was going to say had Ms Metsola’s approval […] Ms Metsola had also sent EU official Mr Roberto Bendini with her to watch all of Ms Kaili’s meetings”, he explained.

“I am telling you the words of Ms Kaili, she was carrying out a plan that had started in 2019, High Representative Josep Borrell and Ylva Johansson [Commissioner for Home Affairs] had decided at the Commission level, to cooperate with Qatar, Kuwait and Oman,” the lawyer added.

For the moment, these are just leaked allegations made by the lawyer of a suspect in a very serious corruption investigation, and should be treated as such. But one thing that is clear is that Borrell, as Europe’s chief diplomat, played a leading role in forging closer ties with Qatar.

MEPs now suspect Qatar’s palm-greasing may have unduly influenced negotiations on the highly lucrative EU-Qatar aviation agreement. Signed last year, the deal granted Qatar Airlines unlimited access to the EU’s vast market of 450 million people while giving European airlines access to Qatar’s somewhat smaller market of 2.9 million people. The first deal of its kind ever to be signed by the Commission, it was heavily criticised by major EU airlines and unions, but defended by the EU, which claimed it would provide “opportunities for both sides.” An EU spokesperson said on Wednesday the agreement was reached with “full transparency.”

In the end, Europe’s desperate hunger for energy sources, which was already readily apparent even by the summer of 2021, probably played a much larger part in securing the deal than a few greased palms. On his first visit to the country as EU’s chief diplomat, in September 2021, Borrell praised Qatar as a “reliable energy partner”, which in these times, he said, is “especially important.” He also announced EU plans to build a fully fledged diplomatic mission in Doha this year, which was inaugurated in September.

As previously mentioned, Morocco is also implicated in this ever-widening scandal. According to Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero, it is the country’s foreign intelligence services, the DGED, that has been bribing MEPs, presumably to frustrate any resolutions in favor of Western Sahara, the resource-rich former Spanish colony it invaded and occupied in 1975. Morocco has also been accused this year of using Pegasus spyware to target the mobile phones of around 200 Spanish government officials, including the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz and then Defense Minister Margarita Robles.

Regular readers may recall that over the last year the North African country has garnered increasing support for its “autonomy” plan for Western Sahara among big hitters in the EU including Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. The plan would essentially involve formalizing Morocco’s permanent occupation of the resource-rich region and has already received the blessing of both Israel and the US.

Another Toothless Ethics Body

For the moment, it is far from clear just how far this burgeoning scandal will reach. One thing that is clear is that the reputational damage will be large and lasting. The European Union’s ability to lecture the misbehaving governments of Member States and third-party countries on how to govern will be further diminished.

As Hungary’s Victor Orban said in a video uploaded to his Facebook page, “It is time that we drain the swamp here in Brussels.”

And he is right. EU institutions need to get their house in order once and for all, and fast. And that is unlikely to happen. The EU ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said this week that Von der Leyen’s proposed plan for a new ethics body is likely to end up as “something with no teeth, something that will possibly sit there passively, wait for complaints to come in.”

What the body really needs, O’Reilly said, is investigatory and sanctions powers. But that might actually threaten to derail the gravy train Brussels has become.

And the problem is not just illegal cash payments stuffed away in paper bags and briefcases; it is the vast lobbying apparatus that has built up in Brussels, which is now the second largest lobbying capital in the world after Washington. As in Washington, lobbying reaches into just about every aspect of governance. In its 2015 report, CEO reported that lobbyists representing businesses and trade associations made up 75% of all high-level Commission lobby meetings and more than 80% in certain areas such as financial regulation or the internal market.

The inevitable result, as in Washington, is that policies are made almost exclusively in the service of vested corporate interests. Sometimes corporate lobbies even draft the EU’s legislation. This is the business model of modern governance.

Lastly, if Borrell is indeed caught up in this burgeoning scandal and, by some miracle, loses his job, it would be no great loss to the EU’s 450 million citizens. He is the least diplomatic of diplomats. Just about every time he speaks, whether on the wonders of European colonialism or the vast untamed jungle that lies beyond Europe’s borders, damage is inflicted on the EU’s relations with some other part of the world. Since long before the Ukraine conflict he has played a leading role in escalating tensions with Russia, the EU’s biggest neighbor and energy supplier.

He is also no stranger to scandal, having been convicted, in 2018, of insider trading in Spain. That resulted in him being placed on the Spanish market regulator’s blacklist. The ensuing scandal triggered calls for his resignation as Spain’s then-Foreign Minister. But he resisted those calls and in 2020 was bumped up to the European Commission, as so often happens with scandal-tarnished domestic politicians in the EU.