Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Joe Biden and his White House handlers continue to peddle misinformation if not lies about his removal of classified files…

The worst is that Biden – supposedly so unlike Trump – came forward willingly as soon as he realized that he had unlawfully, but inadvertently, removed and possessed classified files. And thus he cooperated fully and promptly with federal authorities.

The truth is far, far different.

Biden removed files improperly both as a Senator and Vice President.

He held some of them in his unlawful possession for perhaps at least 14 years without a word to authorities, dating back at least to his departure from the Senate on January 15, 2009 when he resigned to become Vice President—or if not longer over his some 36-year Senate career.

In fact, in 2017 Biden was fully aware that he had wrongly removed these classified files. As Hur noted, there is a taped conversation on record between Biden and his ghostwriter to just that effect. Biden, at home in Virginia, was recorded as remarking, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs”.

And yet Biden apparently did nothing. He never came forward to any federal authorities for nearly the next five years.

So given that knowledge, why did the attorneys belatedly disclose Biden’s possession of the files on November 2, 2022? Civic virtue? Altruism? Respect for the law?

Hardly.

Otherwise, Biden would have disclosed his unlawful possession at any time during either the intervening prior years when he was a private citizen or during the first 18 months of his presidency, when he knowingly still possessed classified files and still did nothing about it.

In truth, Biden would likely never have come forward, save for one insurmountable problem: Merrick Garland had likely decided to appoint Jack Smith as a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump files that the FBI had swooped into Mar-a-Lago looking for 3 months earlier on August 8, 2022.

In other words, knowing that Smith or a generic special counsel would very quickly be appointed (Smith was sworn in a little over two weeks later, on November 18, 2022), suddenly Biden and Co. preempted that announcement, in fear that Biden had done virtually the same thing as Trump—albeit without presidential declassification power and for at least 14 years in possession of classified files.

Had the attorneys and Biden not come forward, Trump and others would have asked whether Biden had not also removed files. So to get out in front of the formal announcement of the Smith appointment, they preempted, misleadingly and disingenuously, preening that civic virtue had prompted Biden’s “voluntary” disclosures and “cooperation”.

A final note: one of the more disturbing moments in Biden’s catastrophic press conference was his flare up at Hur’s revelation (“How dare he bring up that!”) that in formal interviews an enfeebled Biden had not remembered the general date of his son’s tragic death from a glioblastoma brain tumor on May 30th, 2015 at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC.

Biden went on to vent at Hur.

But Hur was simply documenting his analysis that Biden was severely cognitively impaired, and not as VP Kamala Harris claimed, gratuitously smearing Biden.

But who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate?

Joe Biden.

He has still a bad habit of directing attention away from grieving families of fallen soldiers, by claiming that he too experienced the same nightmare.

Biden had been pilloried in the media to cease such false narratives about his son’s tragic premature death due to natural causes back in the United States, years after his deployment in Iraq.

But to no avail, he continues spinning such myths as he did repeatedly as late as last year.

Sadly, doctoring family tragedies for his own purposes is not new to Biden, as Jack Fowler noted in 2019.

The tragic death in a December 1972 traffic accident of his first wife and daughter, and the injuries of his two sons, was raised for decades by Biden—but in a completely false context of blaming an innocent truck driver, Curtis Dunn for the death.

Dunn was innocent of any culpability. No matter, Biden in his serial retelling for years repeatedly smeared Dunn as drunk driver (“an errant driver who stopped to drink”) who had killed his wife and daughter.

Biden finally gave in to the repeated pleas for decades from the truck driver and after his death, his family.

Or as a 2010 Mark Bowden Atlantic essay on Biden noted:

“For many years, he described the driver of the truck that struck and killed his first wife and their daughter in December 1972 as drunk, which he apparently was not.

The tale could hardly be more tragic; why add in a baseless charge?

The family of the truck driver has labored to correct the record, but Biden made the reference to drunkenness as recently as 2007, needlessly resurrecting a false and painful accusation.”

Did he just “mis-remember” then troo?

Purchasing a ticket for the Super Bowl in 2024 costs roughly 11.7% of the median household income, according to a new study by Finder.

TicketIQ data used for the study indicates that the average price for a Super Bowl ticket on the secondary market is $9,024, equating to about 11.7% of the anticipated median household income of $77,217 for the year.

Super Bowl LVIII will be one of the most watched Super Bowls in recent memory, with 77% planning to tune in to the game, a high only seen once since 2007, when 77% watched Super Bowl XVI in 2016, the report notes.

And if you’re wondering if anyone in the country is seeing their wages outpace rampant inflation, we’ve found at least one group. The growth in NFL players’ Super Bowl paychecks has significantly outpaced the rise in median household income.

In 2012, the median household income was recorded at $51,020, and it’s forecasted to reach $77,214 by 2024, marking a 51.3% increase. However, during the same period, Super Bowl player earnings have surged by 94.3%, the Finder report notes.

The winners of the Super Bowl in 2024 will be taking home more than just the prestige of being able to say they’d won a Super Bowl — they’ll be pocketing a record $171,000 for the game, according to the NFLPA’s collective bargaining agreement. This is up from the $164,000 the winners took home in 2023. And the losing team’s players won’t be walking away with chump change, pocketing a cool $96,000.

Finally, we can’t mention insane pricing without mentioning concert tickets – and we can’t not put Taylor Swift in that category, leading the charge of costing her fans sometimes thousands of dollars per ticket. 

The study notes that the average resale ticket price for a ticket to see Taylor Swift in 2023 hit $2,183. While that number is insane, how does it compare if we look at the Super Bowl as a show in and of itself? More specifically, what bang for your buck do you get from a Super Bowl on a cost per song basis?

Beyoncé’s 2013 show was the most cost effective show, with a ticket price of $2,516 and a 9 song setlist, you were paying $280 per song. On the other end of the spectrum, if you’d paid the $9,723 for a ticket to see Katy Perry also 9 song setlist at the 2015 Super Bowl, you were looking at $1,080 per song.

You can read the full Finder report here.

Via SchiffGold.com,

Jerome Powell’s 60 Minutes portrayal of the national debt crisis as a distant concern starkly contrasts with the urgent reality we face. Peter Schiff doesn’t mince words in his most recent podcast when he highlights the immediate threat:

It’s not a problem for the future. This is not a long-term problem anymore; this is a short-term problem that could blow up any minute. It’s this generation that’s going to pay the piper, not some future generation. It’s happening right now.”

In his last podcast, Peter pointed out that the US is on the hook for over $1 trillion in debt payments every year.

We are not merely approaching a fiscal danger zone; we have already entered it:

Jerome Powell shouldn’t be worried about it because we’re on an unsustainable path; he should be worried that we’ve already arrived at an unsustainable destination.”

Despite Powell’s soothing assurances, Schiff points out the grim outlook for future generations. The Fed’s monetary policy will also cost your grandkids:

It’s going to be a problem for the future generations. We’re taxing, borrowing from the future generations. It’s unsustainable and it’s going to be a problem in the future…  That’s basically a way of saying it’s not a problem right now, so none of you who are watching 60 Minutes tonight have to worry. It’s your grandkids right that they have to worry. So who cares, right? They’ll figure out.”

Schiff warns that we’re teetering on the edge of a fiscal abyss, challenging the optimistic economic narrative:

We are on the brink of a fiscal catastrophe…Contrary to Powell’s optimistic assessments, I see an economy built on shaky foundations of debt-fueled spending and artificially low interest rates.”

Peter explains that we need immediate, proactive measures, like putting out a wildfire before it spreads:

We can’t wait for the crisis; we have to preempt the crisis. As bad as it’s going to be, waiting for the market to cause it is going to be even worse. We have to bring the crisis about under our own terms, kind of like a controlled burn, to the extent you can even control it, rather than waiting for an uncontrollable wildfire to just develop.”

Schiff accuses Powell of playing politics, particularly in the run-up to an election, painting a rosy picture of the economy to avoid making tough decisions that might jeopardize Biden:

[Powell is] a politician; he wants to pretend that everything is great, to let the politicians off the hook from having to actually make any of the difficult political choices. And it’s only difficult because it jeopardizes their reelection…Powell is basically doing an infomercial for the Biden Administration, talking about how great the economy is… claiming victory over inflation.”

As we stand at the crossroads of fiscal responsibility and economic fantasy, the choice is clear yet daunting. Ignoring the clarion call for immediate action in favor of complacency and political convenience not only jeopardizes our current economic stability but also mortgages the future of generations yet unborn.

Authored by Denes Albert via ReMix News,

In an exclusive poll conducted by IFOP, the National Rally (RN) candidate Marine Le Pen is predicted to win the presidency in the second round of voting against Gabriel Attal in 2027. It is the first time any poll has shown her securing victory and becoming president of the nation.

In the same poll, if she were to face off against Édouard Philippe, she would tie him with 50 percent of the vote.

The groundbreaking poll, where she earned 51 percent of the vote against Attal, who serves as the current prime minister in the Macron government, has even garnered front-page coverage in France.

In July 2022, political scientist Jérôme Fourquet told Le JDD:

“We can’t rule out a Marine Le Pen victory in 2027. Recent figures published by his institute, Ifop, seem to corroborate this prediction.”

According to the study, Marine Le Pen is predicted to beat Gabriel Attal in the second round of the presidential election in 2027 for the first time, with 51 percent versus 49 percent for Attal.

The leader of the RN group in the French National Assembly is also neck and neck with Édouard Philippe, the current mayor of Le Havre and former prime minister, with 50 percent of voting intentions.

In addition, she is well ahead of the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with 64 percent of the expected vote.

The poll is, so far, the first time she has performed so well, and only time will tell if her popularity continues to grow, especially with three years before the next presidential election.

However, it is worth noting that Marine Le Pen achieved an unprecedented score in both the second and first rounds of the last presidential election.

She obtained 42 percent of the vote against Emmanuel Macron, a result that contrasts sharply with the 17.79 percent obtained by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the second round in 2002.

Read more here…

Things are not great in Germany.

A confluence of economic stagnation, higher energy prices (due to anti-nuclear idiocy), and the highest corporate distress rates in Europe suggest Deutschland is in for a sharp contraction – a sentiment shared among fund managers, credit traders and crestfallen German executives moping around Davos last month, according to Bloomberg.

The bad news is continuing to pile up. After the economy shrank in the final quarter of last year, downbeat early surveys for 2024 signal there’s little respite ahead.

Demand from borrowers for investment in the likes of machinery, factories and technology has fallen, creating a risk that domestic growth is impeded in the longer term as companies focus on getting through the current struggle. And now there’s growing concern about some lenders’ exposure to the shaky US corporate real estate market. -Bloomberg

“Germany is really in trouble,” according to Barings fund manager Brian Mangwiro. “All the big manufacturing economies are slowing but, in Germany, this is compounded by higher energy costs. There are also challenges in the auto sector with competition coming from China.”

Meanwhile, German executives were decidedly in a bad mood at Davos last month – and were of the view that Europe’s largest economy could no longer be counted on for steady growth – and instead faces a period of chaos amid competition in everything from machinery to automobiles.

“The country’s economic outlook remains bleak,” reads the Weil European Distress Index, citing stagnant profitability on top of liquidity pressures.

Germany emerges as the most distressed market in Europe, influenced by several factors such as deteriorating investment metrics, liquidity pressures and stagnant profitability, which have persisted since the beginning of the year. The country’s economic outlook remains bleak, with both its government and the European Commission projecting a 0.4% contraction in its economy for 2024 due to high inflation, elevated energy prices and sluggish international trade. –European Distress Index

What’s more, rising interest rates over the past two years have compounded problems – particularly in the property market. On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley analysts told clients to sell senior bonds linked to Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG due to the lender’s high exposure to the US Commercial Real-Estate market.

Shares of Pfandbriefbank have slid about 15% this month, while other German financial institutions have had significant declines in a Bloomberg index of euro-dominated bank bonds – including a €750 million AT1 by Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg and €300 million note by Aareal Bank AG on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, over $13.6 billion of loans and bonds issued by German companies were distressed last month – over 13x that of Italy.

“Distress is spreading to other sectors,” beyond real estate, construction and retail – according to Christian Ebner, managing director of Alvarez & Marsal’s financial restructuring advisory team. “Manufacturing is starting to be affected,” he continued – adding that automotive “will continue to be a problem child.”

Also a factor is Germany’s changing politics – with Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing recently expressing concern that the conservative AfD party is contributing to declining investments.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner wasted no opportunity to agree.

“The AfD is a location risk,” he said Monday. “This is a party that’s calling into question the basic consensus of our country, namely European integration.”

Opportunities abound?

While German executives fret, other Davos attendees smelled blood in the water – as whispers among bankers and advisers have revealed a significant uptick in interest from private equity firms and direct lenders, according to the report.

Leading the charge, according to insights from a Bloomberg Television interview, is Victor Kholsa, founder and chief investment officer at Strategic Value Partners. Kholsa wants to secure high-rate loans, and/or acquire significantly leveraged companies, by injecting much-needed equity.

According to Kholsa, there’s an “opportunity to make those high rate loans or to buy companies that are pretty levered where you inject equity,” adding “That opportunity set we can really see.”

The trend is underscored by the arrival of heavy hitters like Ares Management Corp. and Blackstone Inc., which have set up shop in Frankfurt with the aim of lending to German businesses or financing private equity buyouts. This influx of foreign capital seeking to capitalize on domestic distress signals a troubling dynamic, as entities such as Techem GmbH become transaction targets amidst a backdrop of quality concerns and lender takeovers due to breached loan agreements.

The scenario unfolding is not just limited to equity and debt markets. Short sellers are also in play, with a staggering €5.7 billion wager placed against German companies. Groups such as Qube Research & Technologies Ltd. are betting against national stalwarts including Deutsche Bank AG, Volkswagen AG, and Vonovia AG, pointing to a broader skepticism about the resilience of Germany’s corporate sector amidst economic turbulence.

Real Estate is screwed…

Reeling under the weight of declining residential prices and the specter of significant value declines for office spaces, the real estate sector’s woes have only been exacerbated by rising interest rates – with fallout that could precipitate severe writedowns for both borrowers and lenders. Entities like the Adler Group SA and Rene Benko’s Signa in particular are teetering on the edge of financial abysses – a precarious situation compounded by a banking sector that, despite past resilience, faces looming concerns over commercial real estate exposures and economic stagnation.

The Bundesbank warned in November that at the start of 2023, the “present value of the banking book” was negative for 15 savings banks and 37 credit cooperatives,” adding they seem particularly vulnerable to an increase in interest rates. Since then, ECB rates have risen by 2 percentage points.

One-third of commercial real estate loans in Germany face higher borrowing costs over three years, which could cause credit defaults and impairments to rise more sharply, the watchdog said.

Fixed-income investors have become more reluctant to add exposure to lenders exposed to CRE, as seen in the issuance of covered bonds, the safest type of debt that banks can sell. Aareal Bank AG had to lean on its lead managers, who put €125 million in the order book, to get a €500m four-year offering over the line in January. Aareal declined to comment. -Bloomberg

The Bundesbank’s warnings about the vulnerabilities of savings banks and credit cooperatives to interest rate hikes underscore the fragility of the financial ecosystem. The potential for credit defaults and impairments looms large, with a significant portion of commercial real estate loans at risk. The reluctance of fixed-income investors to engage with lenders exposed to these risks highlights a growing crisis of confidence, even as companies and landlords cling to the hope of a rate reprieve under the mantra “Survive ‘Til 2025.”

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had a mini-meltdown after being exposed during the Tucker Carlson-Vladimir Putin interview for sabotaging the Ukrainian peace deal.

During the interview, Putin confirmed reporting that first emerged last year about Johnson’s role in prolonging the war.

David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, revealed that Johnson had scuppered a peace deal that would have put an end to hostilities just a few months after the Russian invasion.

Putin reiterated in his interview with Tucker Carlson that Russia supports a negotiated settlement with Ukraine, and plans were very much underway to making that happen before Boris Johnson stopped it. pic.twitter.com/85LGRfJZzY

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 9, 2024

Putin confirmed this when he stated, “He had fixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said, we were ready to sign it, and the war would have been over long ago. 18 months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talk to us out of it and we missed that chance. Well, you missed it. You made a mistake.”

Johnson was clearly rattled by the revelation.

🔥The only losers in this sorry affair are Boris Johnson, the hundreds of thousands needlessly killed in an avoidable war and the UK taxpayer whose billions have been squandered on a third rate actor whose only skill is to play the piano with his dick. pic.twitter.com/9xWygJqA4j

— banthebbc 𝕏 (@banthebbc) February 10, 2024

He responded with a short video intended to go viral on social media promoting his lengthier response in a Daily Mail article.

“Around the world people are watching that ludicrous interview with Vladimir Putin conducted by Tucker Carlson,” raged Boris.

“And we must not fall for this tissue of lies, above all the notion that Putin is somehow fated to succeed in Ukraine, on the contrary, he is doomed to fail,” he added.

Johnson failed to mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved if he hadn’t intervened to scupper the peace deal.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries also revealed in her book that Johnson sabotaged the peace deal.

In her book The Plot, former Tory MP Nadine Dorries, a hardcore Boris partisan, proudly wrote that Boris was responsible for killing a peace deal with Russia over Ukraine as it was “the right thing to do,” in Boris’s apparent words.

— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) February 9, 2024

Apparently, no reporters are curious enough to challenge Johnson on the revelation.

Has any reporter asked Boris Johnson if he interfered with the Ukraine Russia peace deal?

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 10, 2024

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

After nearly 40 years, mutated wolves roaming the deserted streets of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) appear to have developed cancer resistance, according to Princeton evolutionary biologist and ecotoxologist, Cara Love – who has been studying how the Chernobyl wolves have survived for generations while facing exposure to radioactive particles, Sky News reports.

Roughly 100,000 people were evacuated from the 1,000 square-mile CEZ in 1986, and it has remained abandoned ever since, as radiation still poses a risk.

And with no humans around, wildlife such as wolves and horses has flourished.

In 2014, Love and a team of researchers visited the CEZ, and attached radio collars to the wolves in order to track them. She said they were able to obtain “real-time measurements of where [the wolves] are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to.”

What’s more, after taking blood samples, the team discovered that the wolves were exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation daily for their entire lives – more than 6x the legal safety limit for a human. Love found that the wolves’ immune systems displayed similar properties to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment – including specific parts of the animals’ genetic information that appears resilient to increased cancer risk.

A lot of research in humans has found mutations that increase cancer risk – with the presence of the variant BRCA gene making it more likely a woman might develop breast or ovarian cancer, for example.

But Ms Love’s work has sought to identify protective mutations that increase the odds of surviving cancer. -Sky

Love presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.

Authored by David Thrunder via The Brownstone Institute,

Many major arteries connecting Europe have been obstructed or brought to a standstill in recent days by a wave of protests by farmers against what they claim are overly burdensome environmental targets and unsustainable levels of bureaucracy associated with EU and national farming regulations.

The warning shots of this showdown between policymakers and farmers had already been fired on 1st October 2019, when more than 2,000 Dutch tractors caused traffic mayhem in the Netherlands in response to an announcement that livestock farms would have to be bought out and shut down to reduce nitrogen emissions. Early last year, Polish farmers blocked the border with the Ukraine demanding the re-imposition of tariffs on Ukrainean grain.

But it was not until early this year that an EU-wide protest was ignited. German and French protests and tractor blockades made international news, and the blockades were soon replicated in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Netherlands, and Ireland. Major highways and ports were blocked and manure was poured over government buildings, as farmers across Europe expressed their frustration at rising farming costs, falling prices for their produce, and crippling environmental regulations that made their products uncompetitive in the global market.

It seems the farmers have European elites rattled, which is hardly surprising, given that EU elections are just around the corner. While the European Commission announced Tuesday it was still committed to achieving a 90% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 2040, it conspicuously omitted any mention of how the farming sector would contribute to that ambitious target. Even more tellingly, the Commission has backed down or fudged on key climate commitments, at least temporarily.

According to politico, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday that “she was withdrawing an EU effort to rein in pesticide use.” The climbdown on this and other Commission proposals relating to farming was rather embarrassing for the Commission but politically inevitable, given that the protests were spreading rapidly and farmers were showing no signs of going home until their demands were met. As reported by politico,

A note on the possibility of agriculture cutting down on methane and nitrous oxides by 30 percent, which was in earlier drafts of the Commission’s 2040 proposal, was gone by the time it came out on Tuesday. Similarly excised were missives on behavioral change — possibly including eating less meat or dairy — and cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, many of which go to farmers to assist with their diesel costs. Inserted was softer language about the necessity of farming to Europe’s food security and the positive contributions it can make. 

The EU Commission is playing a dangerous game. On the one hand, they are attempting to placate farmers by making expedient short-term concessions to them. On the other hand, they are holding fast to their commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 90% by 2040, while fudging on the fact that a 90% emission cut in 16 years would have drastic implications for farming.

It is clearly politically expedient, especially in an election year, to put out this fire of farming discontent as soon as possible, and buy some peace ahead of June’s European elections. But there is no avoiding the fact that the Commission’s long-term environmental goals, as currently conceived, almost certainly require sacrifices that farmers are simply not willling to accept.

Independently from the merits of EU climate policy, two things are clear:

• first, EU leaders and environmental activists appear to have vastly underestimated the backlash their policies would spark in the farming community; and

• second, the apparent success of this dramatic EU-wide protest sets a spectacular precedent that will not go unnoticed among farmers and transport companies, whose operating costs are heavily impacted by environmental regulations like carbon taxes.

The Commission’s embarrassing concessions are proof that high-visibility, disruptive tactics can be effective. As such, we can expect more of this after June’s EU elections if the Commission doubles down again on its climate policy goals.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

In a recent statement posted to social media, Tucker Carlson explained succinctly his many reasons for traveling to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. His decision, mired in an avalanche of outrage from leftist media talking heads and a multitude of western politicians, was inspired by Carlson’s concern that Americans have been misdirected by corporate propaganda leaving the public completely uneducated on the war in Ukraine and what tensions with the East might lead to.

I agree. In fact, I don’t think the majority of Americans have a clue what the real consequences of a global war with Russia and its allies would look like. Even if the conflict never resulted in shots fired and stayed confined to the realm of economic warfare, the US and most of Europe would be devastated by the effects.

Carlson specifically mentioned dangers to the status of the US dollar, and I suspect this comment probably mystified a great number of people. Most of the population cannot fathom the idea of a US dollar implosion set in motion by a foreign dump of the greenback as the world reserve currency. They really do believe the dollar is invincible.

The most delusional people are, unfortunately, those within mainstream economic circles. They just can’t seem to grasp that the west is in the midst of financial collapse already, and war would accelerate the effects to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

I have been warning about this outcome for many years. I think I have made my position clear in the past; I suspect the conflict between east and west has been carefully engineered over the course of a decade or more, and Russia is not innocent in this affair.

Russia has consistently collaborated with globalist institutions including the International Monetary Fund in the effort to create a new “global reserve currency system.” In other words, the interests of Russia and the globalists do indeed intersect in a number of ways and the war in Ukraine has not necessarily changed that.  Time Magazine even complained last year about the IMF issuing positive reports about Russia’s economy – They thought the organization was going to repeat the false NATO narrative that Russia was in the midst of fiscal implosion.  Instead, the IMF essentially praised Russia’s resiliency in the face of sanctions.

As I noted in 2014 in my article ‘False East/West Paradigm Hides Rise Of Global Currency’ in reference to the burgeoning war with Ukraine.

“I would remind pro-Putin cheerleaders that Putin and the Kremlin first pushed for the IMF to take control of the Ukrainian economy, and the IMF is now demanding that Ukraine fight Russia in exchange for financial support. This might seem like irony to more foolhardy observers; but to those who are aware of the false East/West paradigm, it is all the part of a greater plan for consolidation of power.”

I also argued that:

“I have warned for quite some time that the development of East/West tensions would be used as a cover for a collapse of the dollar system. I have warned that among the American media this collapse would be blamed on an Eastern dump of foreign exchange reserves and treasuries, resulting in a global domino-effect ending U.S. world reserve status.”

From the moment Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed (many argue that this was done with the help of western intel agencies) the agenda for WWIII was set in motion. Both sides seemed to create the circumstances by which a conflagration was unavoidable.

Russia, strangely, supported the intervention of the IMF to secure Ukraine’s economy. The IMF then asserted that Ukraine would have to fight Russia to keep control of the Donbas or risk losing the financial aid that was keeping the country alive. Is this irony, or is there something else going on here?

NATO started arming Ukraine, and Ukraine used those arms to slaughter civilians in the Donbas. The eastern population wanted to join with Russia, and Ukraine had no intention of allowing this (IMF funding was on the line). In the meantime, the government began openly discussing the official inclusion of Ukraine into NATO. Russia then invaded, taking the Donbas. Now the entire region is a powder keg and both sides are ready to light the fuse.

But let’s look at this situation as if there was no globalist involvement in facilitating the crisis, just for a moment as an exercise in critical thinking…

If I had to pick a side that is “more right” in their position, it would have to be Russia, but not for the reasons many leftists might imagine when conservatives defend Russia.  The bottom line is that the left blindly follows establishment dictates while the rest of us are at least willing to look at the situation from both sides (which is the same thing Tucker Carlson is doing, and he’s being accused of treason for it).

Imagine if China was working to create a military alliance with Mexico with the potential for the Chinese military to stage long range weapons and soldiers on the American southern border? Imagine the chaos that this would cause in the US (maybe they would finally secure the border)? That’s what Russia was facing with Ukraine. Hell, America almost initiated global nuclear war when the Soviets staged missiles in Cuba in 1962. Military operations so close to the borders of major national powers are not a joke.

This was exact rationale for the war on Ukraine cited by Putin in his discussion with Tucker Carlson, and it makes sense.  Again, if we look at the events without the prospect of globalist interference.  But what if we start to consider who benefits the most from this war?

I certainly don’t trust Putin, but that doesn’t negate the Orwellian behavior of European and American political leaders. There is something going on here beyond the typical mechanisms of geopolitical brinkmanship. The conflict has wide ranging consequences and only serves the goals of a select group of elites.  I suspect elements of both Russia and NATO governments are either knowingly or unwittingly serving these interests.

It is undeniable. It is a verifiable reality – Many of our political leaders and elitist institutions are corrupt beyond comprehension. They are seeking an authoritarian reformation, a “great economic reset” and they are triggering multiple conflicts around the world. We saw the mask come off during covid. These people are not merely misguided; they are monsters, and they are hungry. It’s not beyond them to conjure a worldwide calamity and sacrifice the west like a goat on the altar to get the total centralization they desire.

The East/West paradigm plays into this plan perfectly. The BRICS nations are poised to drop the dollar as world reserve; some have already done so in bilateral trade. Make no mistake, if the conflict in Ukraine (and other parts of the world like Syria or Iran) continues to escalate nations like China will move to dump their dollar holdings just as Russia did. As the largest importer/exporter in the world, many countries would follow China’s lead and shift into a basket of currencies instead of the dollar for international trade.

What does this mean?

The dollar, which has been hyperinflated through more than a decade of Federal Reserve QE money printing, has continued to remain stable only because it is the world reserve and the petro-currency. Foreign banks hold trillions in US currency in overseas coffers for this very reason. With the loss of reserve status, an endless river of dollars will then flood back into the US as foreign investors diversify away from the Fed note. Result? Massive inflationary collapse.

This is what’s at stake. This is what Tucker Carlson was referring to, and far too many in America just don’t get it. Globalists benefit because this is what they have been working towards for decades – The deconstruction of US society and the economy so that the “old world order” can be replaced with their “new world order” of Central Bank Digital Currencies.  An IMF one-world currency basket and a host of other highly unpleasant socialist changes would swiftly follow.

The BRICS might be working with the IMF because they see the dethroning of the dollar as an opportunity to gain greater influence over international trade.  Or, maybe they are controlled opposition and they are scrambling for a seat at the NWO table.  In the end, the fall of the dollar would be a watershed moment for the formation of a global currency system.

And the best part for globalists is, they will be seen as the “heroes” when it’s all over. They spent the better part of the last century setting up America for economic failure through their devaluation of the dollar and the creation of a national debt trap. The system was going to break anyway, but now they can divert all blame to war and the “arrogance of nation states” and then come to the rescue with their dystopian digital money.

An east/west conflict opens the door to the Great Reset.  It is, in a lot of ways, the core of the Reset.  Everything in the new world order agenda relies on it.  Right now, the only thing holding back the tide is the public’s general refusal to fight. No one is interested in going overseas to die in a meaningless battle for Ukraine (Zelensky is truly delusional if he thinks Americans will shed blood in his trenches – Even a draft would be an utter failure). No one is interested in starting WWIII, whether it be nuclear or just economic.

I think the establishment’s outrage over Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin is based on their fear that western audiences are already skeptical of the motives behind the conflict and an unfiltered discussion on the war might galvanize this feeling.  The notion of war is becoming harder and harder for the establishment to sell.

This, however, does not negate the ability of NATO or Russia in expanding the crisis beyond Ukraine into other regions or into financial subterfuge (again, keep your eyes on Syria and Iran). Ultimately, they want us to choose sides, but only from the list of sides they approve. Liberty minded groups in the west need to choose our OWN side and fight for our own interests. It can’t be about NATO vs Russia, it has to be about free people vs the globalists. This is the only way these disaster events will ever end.

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In early February, Mark Zuckerberg added $28 billion to his wealth in a matter of hours as Meta’s shares soared after the company announced its first dividend payout.

This follows a banner year for the Facebook founder, who saw his wealth surge 173% in 2023. Like Zuckerberg, many tech billionaires added huge sums to their wealth as the stock market rebounded.

Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows in the following graphic from Preyash Shah, the biggest winners and losers in billionaire wealth in 2023…

The Top Risers and Fallers

Below, we rank the world’s top 50 billionaires by their net change in wealth:

Adding $113.5 billion to his fortune, Elon Musk saw the biggest gains across the group as Tesla shares doubled in price in 2023.

This marks a sharp reversal from the previous year, when Musk lost more money than any other billionaire. In a record year, Tesla delivered 1.8 million vehicles—a 38% year-over-year increase.

Mark Zuckerberg, with the second-highest gains, raked in $78.3 billion as Meta’s shares skyrocketed. Last year, Facebook saw 5 million new users in North America. Adding to this, users’ time spent on Instagram has increased 40% since mid-2020 when Reels was launched.

As the fastest riser across the top 50, Indonesia’s energy billionaire Prajogo Pangestu saw his wealth climb an incredible 971%. The majority of gains were driven from Barito Renewables, his geothermal power company, going public in October 2023.

By contrast, India’s Gautam Adani saw the steepest decline in wealth. After a Hindenburg report accused the Adani Group of operating several shell companies to manipulate stock prices and launder money, Adani saw his wealth decline by $56.5 billion, cutting it by almost half.

Along with Adani, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance—known for its social media app TikTok—lost $6.1 billion while major Republican donor Charles Koch lost $3.8 billion over the year.

Rapidly Changing Wealth

So far, the U.S. stock market has hit record highs in 2024, boosting the fortunes of many of the world’s billionaires.

In fact, Meta recently added $196 billion to its market cap in one day, the biggest gain in the history of Wall Street. Year-to-date, Zuckerberg’s wealth has increased by $38.2 billion as of February 5. Additionally, Jeff Bezos has added $18 billion to his net worth in just over a month as Amazon shares have jumped nearly 14%.

In 2024, Warren Buffett’s net worth has already climbed by $9.9 billion.

Other billionaires have not fared as well, in particular Elon Musk, whose wealth has plummeted $55.8 billion after issuing recalls for 3.8 million vehicles. Tesla’s shares have slumped 27% year-to-date given production headwinds and a host of other setbacks, including legal troubles and increasing competition in the electric vehicle market.