By Robert Fullem, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
Yen alarm bells are quiet. Maybe they should be ringing loudly.
Ministry officials this week warned about yen weakness several times, including Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki on Friday. His comments follow those of Bank of Japan Board Member Junko Nakagawa on Thursday who said the central bank will closely coordinate with the government in monitoring foreign-exchange rates and their impact on the economy.
The timing of the comments is interesting since they precede a G-20 leaders summit and a Bank for International Settlements meeting of central bankers in Switzerland next week, possible venues to discuss currency policy with those outside Japan.
So the Fed never counted on Biden’s Dept of Commerce, Labor, Census Bureau, etc, coming up with the most creative seasonal adjustments in history and making the economy “grow” at 5.8%, so EMs (and DMs) are about to croak
Time for an emergency CB session at Centralbahnplatz 2
The circumstances may be right for the Bank of Japan, rather the government, to address yen weakness. Core inflation is historically high and the yen weak. While Q2 GDP was revised down Friday, Cabinet Office figures show overall demand in the economy has started to outstrip supply.
One concern for Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda is the recent slowdown in money-supply growth. But monetary conditions in Japan are sufficiently easy to add a dose of tightening.
There are some signs that consumption may start to become self sustaining. Credit card use, department store sales and internet services are trending up. Moreover, Japanese equity and property prices are rising, a potential buffer for consumers down the road. Levels of equity volatility have remained subdued since April when Warren Buffett said he planned to boost investments in Japan and Ueda signaled there would be no significant policy changes.
Currency markets are pricing in volatility of 10% over the Fed and Bank of Japan meetings in a couple weeks. This seems low given that the average over the past 10 years if about 8.5%.
Tuttle Capital Management, the same genius minds that brought us the Anti-ARKK Innovation Fund ETF and the Short Jim Cramer ETF, are now launching a “Get Woke, Go Broke” ETF that’ll trade under the ticker GWGB.
It’s called the Tuttle Capital Inverse Socially Conscious ETF and it plans to launch this year.
“The Advisor seeks to achieve the Fund’s investment objective by investing in U.S. listed mid and large cap equity securities that the Advisor deems to meet its politically conservative or politically neutral criteria and by taking short positions in U.S. listed equity securities that the Advisor has deemed to be following ‘woke’ policies,” a filing with the SEC said this week.
“The Advisor believes that companies with ‘woke’ policies negatively impact their shareholders’ value by alienating conservative investors, customers, and employees, which impacts the companies’ market value; as a result, in addition to the equity investments described above, the Advisor intends to short 10 to 20 of these companies to capture some of the value of that financial impact,” it adds.
Matthew Tuttle
The filing says: “The politically conservative criteria utilized by the Advisor to select securities for the Fund include the Advisor’s qualitative opinion of a company’s adherence to conservative values and beliefs such as ‘American Exceptionalism’ (the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations), individual liberty (the liberty of those persons who are free from external restraint in the exercise of those rights that are considered to be outside the province of a government to control) and free enterprise (a belief that businesses should be free to operate for profit in a competitive system without interference by government).”
It continues: “The politically neutral criteria utilized by the Advisor to select securities for the Fund are that, in the Advisor’s opinion, a company that has no political activity at all and focuses purely on profits and sales.”
“The Advisor defines ‘woke’ policies as policies of a company that the Advisor believes are perceived as hostile to conservative values, based on such company having a negative reputation among politically conservative investors, having business activities that alienate politically conservative customers and employees, and disproportionately supporting liberal causes. Such policies could be financial, part of corporate governance, marketing, business strategy, or public activism,” it adds.
Tuttle Capital is also responsible for the newly launched Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF (ticker SJIM) and the Long Cramer Tracker ETF (LJIM) that allow investors to bet against (or with) the Mad Money host.
Its founder, Matthew Tuttle, also was first to have the idea for an ETF betting against Cathie Wood’s ARKK fund before it plunged leading into 2023.
Watching ARKK’s run up, 53 year old Tuttle thought to himself at the time: “Holy crap, that’s a great idea.”
In the following weeks, he filed for The Tuttle Capital Short Innovation ETF, ticker SARK, which would seek to bet against Wood’s fund using swaps contracts.
Tuttle admitted to Yahoo that he probably wouldn’t have made the bet if ARKK had a low profile fund, before admitting that “the same fervent energy that lifted Wood to fame can be recaptured once markets change”.
Amid refinery maintenance and rising domestic fuel prices, Russia is set to cut its diesel exports from its ports on the Baltic and Black Seas by nearly 25% in September compared to the export plans for August, Bloomberg reported on Friday, quoting industry data it had seen.
The shipments of diesel out of Russia’s western ports, including some exports from Belarus, are planned at 1.874 million tons in September, or 466,000 barrels per day (bpd), down from about 600,000 bpd planned for August exports, according to Bloomberg’s calculations.
The plan for diesel exports in September lays out the lowest shipments since May this year when spring refinery maintenance was in place.
Now the autumn refinery maintenance is also slashing diesel exports out of Russia.
The primary oil refining capacity that will be offline in Russia is set to soar by 44% in September compared to August amid seasonal maintenance, according to Reuters estimates based on data from industry sources.
As much as 4.635 million metric tons of Russia’s refining capacity is expected to be offline this month, industry sources have told Reuters.
Russia’s authorities are also recommending refineries curb exports and sell more fuel domestically to meet local demand, but the recommendation is not legally binding, according to Bloomberg.
Lower diesel shipments overseas would mean lower export revenues for Russia, which continues to earn billions of U.S. dollars each month from exports of crude and products.
Russia’s crude oil and refined products exports remained steady at some 7.3 million bpd in July, while higher oil prices and narrower price differentials for Russian crude pushed Moscow’s revenues higher compared to June, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its market report in August. Russia’s export revenues, at $15.3 billion in July, rose by $2.5 billion from June, but they were $4.1 billion lower compared to July 2022, the agency’s estimates showed
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that several Biden administration officials had likely breached the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate or take down content they deemed problematic.
And here is Exhibit A of that First Amendment-crushing coercion and collusion… which obviously began in the Trump-era under Anthony Fauci. ZeroHedge was banned from Twitter one day after this email.
In an unsigned 75-page opinion, three 5th Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration “ran afoul of the First Amendment” by at times threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to law protecting them from liability.
However, as The Epoch Times’ Aldgra Fredly reports, the three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed much of an injunction issued by a Louisiana judge that restricted Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration from communicating with social media companies.
The court said that the White House, Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment.
“It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference,” the three-judge panel said in a 74-page ruling (pdf) on Sept. 8.
“But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression,” they added.
The court found that the officials made “express threats” and “inflammatory accusations” by saying that the platforms were “poisoning the public” and “killing people.” The platforms were told they needed to take “greater responsibility and action.”
“Then, they followed their statements with threats of ‘fundamental reforms’ like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions that would ensure the platforms were ‘held accountable’. But, beyond express threats, there was always an unspoken ‘or else,'” it added.
The court also said the officials encouraged social media platforms to moderate content by “exercising active, meaningful control over those decisions,” particularly concerning the platforms’ moderation policies.
According to the ruling, the FBI “regularly met with the platforms, shared ‘strategic information,’ frequently alerted the social media companies to misinformation spreading on their platforms, and monitored their content moderation policies.”
“But, the FBI went beyond that—they urged the platforms to take down content. Turning to the Second Circuit’s four-factor test, we find that those requests were coercive,” it added.
The judges emphasized that the government cannot supervise a platform’s content moderation decisions and cannot impose “legal, regulatory, or economic consequences” if they refuse to comply with a given request.
“Social media platforms’ content-moderation decisions must be theirs and theirs alone,” the court asserted.
The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, along with several social media users, had sued last year, saying Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter engaged in censorship as a result of repeated urging by government officials and threats of heightened regulatory enforcement.
The lawsuit said the censored views included content questioning anti-COVID-19 measures such as masks and vaccine mandates and allegations of election fraud.
But the court excised much of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty’s broad July 4 ruling, saying mere encouragement to take down content doesn’t always cross a constitutional line.
“As an initial matter, it is axiomatic that an injunction is overbroad if it enjoins a defendant from engaging in legal conduct. Nine of the preliminary injunction’s ten prohibitions risk doing just that. Moreover, many of the provisions are duplicative of each other and thus unnecessary,” the ruling said.
The ruling also removed some agencies from the order, namely the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, and the State Department.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said they filed the lawsuit against dozens of officials in the federal government “to halt the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history.”
“The first brick was laid in the wall of separation between tech and state on July 4. Today’s ruling is yet another brick,” he said in a statement.
“Missouri will continue to lead the way in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms.”
In a posting on X, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry called Friday’s ruling “a major win against censorship.”
People who received a new COVID-19 vaccine booster were more likely to contract COVID-19 than people who received no COVID-19 vaccine doses, according to a new study of prisons in California.
Researchers analyzed data from 33 state prisons from January to July 2023 to try to assess the effectiveness of the bivalent shots, which were introduced in the fall of 2022.
Among 96,201 inmates with data on COVID-19 testing and vaccination, researchers identified 2,835 cases.
They found that 1,187 of the cases were among people who had received a bivalent vaccine, versus just 568 cases among the unvaccinated.
The rest were among people who received only monovalent, or old vaccines. That group was excluded from further analysis.
While the population of bivalent recipients was higher than the unvaccinated—36,609 compared to 20,889—the rate of infection was still elevated in the bivalent group owing to nearly double the number of infections, the researchers found.
Infection rates in the group that received bivalent shots was 3.2 percent, over the 2.7 percent in the unvaccinated.
“The bivalent-vaccinated group had a slightly but statistically significantly higher infection rate than the unvaccinated group,” Dr. Robert Mayes of the California Correctional Healthcare Services and the other authors wrote.
Stratifying by age, researchers found that the gap was larger in elderly inmates.
Among inmates at least 65 years old, the infection rate was 6.4 percent among the vaccinated and 4.5 percent among those who had not received a shot. Among inmates at least 50 years old, the rates were 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
A person receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, Calif., on Dec. 22, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
The former was not statistically significant, researchers said.
“Further research is needed to understand the reasons behind these findings and to consider other factors, such as underlying health conditions. This study underscores the importance of developing vaccines that target residual COVID-19 infections, especially in regard to evolving COVID-19 variants,” the researchers added later.
The group’s corresponding author did not respond to questions, including why they excluded vaccinated people who have not received a bivalent shot.
The group posited that the gap between the vaccinated and unvaccinated may stem from natural immunity or the protection people have after recovering from COVID-19.
They were unable to incorporate natural immunity into their calculations. They also said inmates may not report symptoms, which could skew the results.
Questionable Claims
The researchers acknowledged the negative results, writing that the research “underscores the importance of developing vaccines targeting residual COVID-19 infections, especially regarding evolving COVID-19 variants.”
They also wrote, “This study suggests that while the bivalent vaccine might offer protection against severe outcomes, it may not significantly reduce the risk of overall infections.”
Researchers did not provide evidence from their research supporting the vaccine protecting against severe outcomes.
Dr. Ray Andrews, a retired doctor, said the wording was an example of obfuscation.
“The words ‘may’ and ‘might’ make scientific thesis a personal opinion,” Dr. Andrews told The Epoch Times via email.
“The results showed the vaccines are not ineffective,” he said.
The bivalent vaccines were authorized without clinical trial data and no efficacy data has been produced to this day. U.S. officials are preparing to replace them with new shots owing to poor performance.
Syringes and vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be administered at a drive-up vaccination site from Renown Health in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 17, 2020. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Other Studies
Other papers have also found the bivalent shots provide little or no protection.
French researchers, for instance, estimated that a bivalent vaccine added just 8 percent protection against symptomatic infection, while South Korean researchers estimated just 12 percent added protection. Qatari researchers estimated 25 percent relative effectiveness, with lower effectiveness among people with no prior infection.
Cleveland Clinic researchers found in June that employees at the clinic who were “up to date” with their vaccines, or had received a bivalent dose, had a higher risk of becoming infected when compared to others.
“This study highlights the challenges of counting on protection from a vaccine when the effectiveness of the vaccine decreases over time as new variants emerge that are antigenically very different from those used to develop the vaccine,” Dr. Nabin Shrestha and other researchers said at the time.
Observational data has also supported the idea that boosters do not work well.
Earlier papers have provided negative effectiveness estimates for the old vaccines, including for Moderna’s vaccine and Pfizer’s vaccine.
Additional studies have examined bivalent protection against hospitalization or severe illness.
The bivalents as a second or third booster initially boosted protection against severe illness by just 25 percent in the elderly and that protection dropped to 18 percent over time, Italian researchers found.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in healthy adults, those who received a bivalent were more likely to be hospitalized.
Singaporean researchers did find that people with bivalent boosters were less likely to contract COVID-19 or go to the hospital with COVID-19, but they did not adjust for the fact that people who receive vaccines are often healthier than those who do not.
Powerful Quake Rocks Morocco, Death Toll Climbs Above 800 People
A powerful earthquake rocked Morocco late Friday night, killing over 800 people and causing buildings to crumble across the Atlas Mountains to the ancient city of Marrakech.
The epicenter of the magnitude-6.8 quake struck the High Atlas Mountains around 2300 local time at a depth of about 11 miles, the United States Geological Survey stated in a preliminary report.
Millions across Marrakesh, Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, and several other cities felt the quake in the overnight hours.
USGS said the quake was the strongest in over a century:
Earthquakes of this size in the region are uncommon but not unexpected. Since 1900 there have been 9 M5 and larger earthquakes, none of which are over M6. Most of these events have occurred east of the September 8, 2023, earthquake.
Morocco’s state television, Al Aoula, reported that the death toll had risen to 820 on Saturday afternoon. Officials expect the number of deaths to continue climbing as rescue operations are underway.
Here’s footage of the destruction:
WATCH: Horrific moment powerful earthquake hits Morocco — more than 600 people dead pic.twitter.com/l9gFfkDPWP
Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, was quoted by NRP, who said:
“The problem is that where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse resulting in high casualties.
“I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known. As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue.”
Leaders of G20 countries have offered Morocco support following the deadly quake.
French President Emmanuel Macron posted on X, “We are all shocked after the terrible earthquake in Morocco. France stands ready to help first aid responses.”
President Biden said he was “deeply saddened” by the quake: “We are working expeditiously to ensure American citizens in Morocco are safe, and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people.”
Morocco’s deadliest quake on record dates back to a magnitude 5.8 that struck Agadir in 1960 and killed about 12,000 people.
Once denounced by Zelensky as a “criminal,” gun runner Serhiy Pashinksy has become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Eyewitness testimony has fingered Pashinsky as the architect of a bloody false flag operation which propelled the 2014 Maidan coup and plunged the country into civil war.
Years before emerging as Kiev’s top private weapons trafficker, ex-legislator Serhiy Pashinsky played a key role in the 2014 US-backed coup which toppled Ukraine’s democratically-elected president and set the stage for a devastating civil war. Though the notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian parliamentarian was condemned by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “criminal” as recently as 2019, a lengthy exposé by the New York Times has now identified Pashinsky as the Ukrainian government’s “biggest private arms supplier.”
Perhaps predictably, the report makes no mention of evidence implicating Pashinsky in the 2014 massacre of 70 anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square, an incident which pro-Western forces used to consummate their coup d’etat against then-President Viktor Yanukovych.
In an August 12 report on Ukraine’s new weapons-sourcing strategy, the New York Times alleged that “out of desperation,” Kiev had no option but to adopt increasingly amoral tactics. The shift, they say, has driven up prices of lethal imports at an exponential rate, “and added layer upon layer of profit-making” for the benefit of unscrupulous speculators like Pashinsky.
According to the Times, the strategy is simple: Pashinksy “buys and sells grenades, artillery shells and rockets through a trans-European network of middlemen,” then “sells them, then buys them again and sells them once more”:
“With each transaction, prices rise – as do the profits of Mr. Pashinsky’s associates – until the final buyer, Ukraine’s military, pays the most,” the Times explained, adding that while using multiple brokers may technically be legal, “it is a time-tested way to inflate profits.”
As the seemingly endless supply of cash from Western taxpayers provides a bonanza for arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, it similarly benefits war profiteers like Pashinsky. His company, Ukrainian Armored Technology, “reported its best year ever last year, with sales totaling more than $350 million” — a whopping 12,500% increase from its $2.8 million in sales the year before the war.
Pashinsky is not the only racketeer benefitting from the elimination of anti-corruption measures in wartime Ukraine. Several suppliers previously placed on an official blacklist after they “ripped off the military” are now free to sell again, according to the Times investigation. The outlet downplayed this as an unfortunate, but ultimately necessary measure.
“In the name of rushing weapons to the front line, leaders have resurrected figures from Ukraine’s rough-and-tumble past and undone, at least temporarily, years of anticorruption [sic] policies,” the Times asserted, describing “the re-emergence of figures like Mr. Pashinsky” as “one reason the American and British governments are buying ammunition for Ukraine rather than simply handing over money”:
“European and American officials are loath to discuss Mr. Pashinsky, for fear of playing into Russia’s narrative that Ukraine’s government is hopelessly corrupt and must be replaced.”
However, even the seemingly critical Times report overlooks a key aspect of Pashinsky’s unsavory biography. Conspicuously absent from the coverage was any explanation of his role in carrying out the infamous massacre of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014.
A defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, the death of 70 at the hands of mysterious snipers triggered an avalanche of international outrage that led directly to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. Even today, these killings officially remain unsolved.
However, firsthand testimony by individuals who claimed to have helped carry out the false flag attack suggest Kiev’s most prolific gun runner was intimately involved in the grisly affair.
Maidan massacre organizer ‘takes no prisoners’
In November 2017, Italy’s Matrix TV channel published eyewitness accounts by three Georgians who say they were ordered to kill protesters by Mamuka Mamulashvili. Then the top-ranking military aide to Georgian president Mikhael Saakashvili, Mamulashvili later founded the infamous mercenary brigade known as the Georgian Legion, whose fighters were widely condemned after they published a gruesome video of themselves gleefully executing unarmed and bound Russian soldiers in April 2022.
The documentary, “Ukraine: The Hidden Truth,” features an Italian journalist’s interviews with three Georgian fighters allegedly sent to orchestrate the coup. All described Pashinsky as a key organizer and executor of the Maidan massacre, even alleging the corrupt arms dealers provided weapons and selected specific targets. The film also featured footage of him personally evacuating a shooter from the Square, after they had been caught with a rifle and a scope by protesters and surrounded.
One of the Georgian fighters recalled how he and his two associates arrived in Kiev in January, “to arrange provocations to push the police to charge the crowd.” For almost a month, however, “there were not many weapons around,” and “molotov [cocktails], shields and sticks were used to the maximum.”
This changed around mid-February, they said, when Mamualashvili personally visited them alongside a US soldier named Brian Christopher Boyenger, a former officer and sniper in the 101st Airborne Division, who personally gave them orders they “had to follow.”
Pashinky then personally moved them along with sniper rifles and ammunition to buildings overlooking Maidan Square, they alleged. At that point, Mamualashvili reportedly insisted that “we have to start shooting, so much, to sow some chaos.”
So it was that the Georgian fighters “started shooting two or three shots at a time” into the crowd below, having been ordered to “shoot the Berkut, the police, and the demonstrators, no matter what.” Once the killing was over, Boyenger moved to the Donbas front to fight in the ranks of the Georgian Legion, which Mamulashvili commands to this day.
In the meantime, Ukrainian journalist Volodymyr Boiko, who headed the civic council of the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine after Maidan, has alleged that in order to obscure his role, Pashinsky personally hand-picked the figures leading the official investigation into the massacre, and even bribed the prosecutor who headed it.
Despite these shocking claims, Pashinsky’s involvement in the Maidan massacre has never been officially investigated, let alone punished, and his most recent experiences with the Ukrainian judicial system suggest it is unlikely to be heavily scrutinized by officials in Kiev. While a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, he was arrested for shooting and wounding a pedestrian in a traffic-related dispute, but was ultimately acquitted in 2021.
When Israeli journalists confronted Pashinsky about his role in the Maidan massacre, the arms dealer warned that they would be tracked down in their home country, where his associates would “tear them apart.” They could be forgiven for believing it was not an idle threat; there is a troubling tendency for Pashinky’s detractors to end up viciously beaten or shot dead in the street.
The bombshell investigative report by a Swedish newspaper revealed how the Swedish underworld is converting its dirty cash into legitimate income via the streaming platform…
Swedish criminal gangs are using Spotify to launder money by engineering artificial hits on songs owned by gang affiliates to receive big payouts from the streaming platform.
The revelation comes from an investigative report by the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), which cites a whistleblower who recounted how gangs are exploiting the Swedish streaming giant to convert their dirty cash into legitimate income.
The informant, known by the fake name of Ismet, told SvD how the gangs, swimming in illegal cash generated through drugs, robberies, fraud, and people trafficking, are converting the proceeds of crime into cryptocurrency before paying individuals, whom he referred to as “Telegram bots,” after recruiting them on the encrypted messaging service to set up fake listens on Spotify on tracks under their control.
“We paid people who did this for us systematically,” Ismet explained.
“The bots ensured that we ended up on the top charts, by creating high pressure on a song. When we entered the top charts, we also got real streams,” he added.
The tracks were usually linked to Swedish gangster rap, which experienced a surge in popularity a few years ago and which has a close affiliation with organized crime groups.
One million streams generate around 60,000 Swedish krona which converts to just over €5,000, and Swedish gangster rap is receiving tens of millions of hits via the platform.
Spotify, which is a Swedish company, offers both free and paid-for premium accounts, the latter of which generates more revenue from streams. As such, the Swedish gangs often seek out rap artists to assist with the money laundering exercise while simultaneously boosting their streaming hits, albeit initially artificially, which pushes their content via the algorithm to help reach more genuine users.
Ismet revealed that the promotion of the tracks was not just a money-making exercise but also a useful recruitment tool for influencing impressionable minors who can then be exploited by gangs. He, himself, was recruited as a teenager into Sweden’s notorious underworld, which has been responsible for a growing number of bombings and shootings in Stockholm and across wider Sweden in recent years.
“I don’t want to sell people out, this is very sensitive. It’s about more than buying streams. If you’re a network and you want to attract kids and you have a rapper who’s going big, that’s half the job for you. It is very good for recruiting purposes,” the whistleblower said.
The Swedish newspaper said its report had been confirmed by “four independent sources from the criminal environment.”
In response, Spotify insisted that the company is committed to tackling the problem and has taken down a number of questionable free accounts over suspected illegal activity.
The company added that it “detects and fixes artificial behavior from both free and premium accounts.”
An analyst, referred to as Johan who works for Sweden’s secret National Operations Department (NOA), told SvD that Spotify has “become an ATM” for criminal networks.
“There is a direct connection to the gangs and therefore also to the deadly violence,” he added.
In July of last year as the hype surrounding the Covid pandemic was finally dying out, I came across a video promoting a barely publicized project called the “Council for Inclusive Capitalism.”
The group, headed by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is the culmination of decades of various globalist agendas combined to represent the ultimate proof of conspiracy.
Remember when people used to say that global governance by elitists was a paranoid fantasy?
Well, now it’s openly admitted reality.
The CIC is intimately tied to institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but it is primarily an attempt to link all these organizations more closely to the corporate world in an open display of cooperation. The group pushes the spread of what they call “Stakeholder Capitalism.” This is the notion that international corporations are obligated to engage in social engineering. That’s another way of saying that corporations are required to manipulate citizens and governments with economic punishments and rewards.
We witnessed this agenda in action during the Covid lockdowns and the rush to enforce vaccine passports. These efforts would not have been possible without the cooperation of major corporate chains working hand-in-hand with national governments. Luckily, the strategy failed as local governments and the public fought back.
We have also seen stakeholder capitalism on display in the push for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) guidelines among major companies. Most readers are probably familiar with ESG at this point, but keep in mind, the public was oblivious to the terminology until the past 2 years. Globalists have been developing ESG rules since 2005. As Klaus Schwab of the WEF notes in his book Stakeholder Capitalism:
The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global. Economies, societies, and the environment are more closely linked to each other now than 50 years ago. The model we present here is therefore fundamentally global in nature, and the two primary stakeholders are as well.
…What was once seen as externalities in national economic policy making and individual corporate decision making will now need to be incorporated or internalized in the operations of every government, company, community, and individual. The planet is thus the center of the global economic system, and its health should be optimized in the decisions made by all other stakeholders.
The carrot and the stick
ESG was intended to be the tool that globalists and governments would use to force companies into the stakeholder capitalism model. It is a kind of social credit system, but for companies. The higher a company’s ESG score, the more access to capital and lending they would have (easy money).
Modern ESG started out in 2005, initially focused on climate controls – influencing corporations to participate in the carbon credit marketplace or face additional taxation.
But, by 2016 it became something else. ESG widely adopted woke politics including Critical Race Theory, feminism, trans ideology, various elements of Marxism, etc.
This was the modern ESG that all of us are aware of today. It was an attempt to incentivize the business world to bombard the populace with woke messaging 24/7, and it worked, for a little while anyway.
The exposure of ESG is perhaps one of the greatest triumphs of the alternative media. It was proof that the “woke-ification” of our economy and society was not the result of some grassroots activist movement or the natural evolution of civilization. No, everything woke was a product, forced into existence by corporate and globalist interests.
It is with some disappointment I’m sure that Lynn Forester de Rothschild admitted the defeat of ESG at the B20 Summit in India recently. Though, as is usually the case, Rothschild admits that the goal will be to replace the term “ESG” with something else that the public is not as privy to while continuing to institute social credit scoring for companies as a means to dominate them.
It is typical for globalists to re-brand their projects whenever they get exposed. It’s merely a way to throw the public off the scent. However, I don’t think this tactic is going to work anymore. Researchers are locked on to the ESG dynamic and changing the name will not help the establishment avoid scrutiny.
Globalists go on the defensive
I want to point out here that there has been a dramatic shift in globalist circles towards a defensive posture, rather than the offensive posture they held a couple years ago. Apparently, something went very wrong for them during Covid. They were brazen with their rhetoric not long ago, basically admitting their intentions to establish a global authoritarian system. Now they are sheepish and much more careful in the things they say.
To this end, most of the honest discussion on globalism is no longer found in the statements of the WEF or the halls of the Davos forums. Rather, the true agenda is discussed at less prominent climate change events such as B20 in India or the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris which I covered in July. These are the events where globalists now feel increasingly free to talk about what they really want.
Another admission by Rothschild at B20 should be noted as she suggests that Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” is one of the best representations of incentivizing climate controls.
This just confirms what we already suspected; the Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with inflation. Rather, it was a way to divert taxpayer funds into government subsidies for carbon taxation and green tech. Taking money out of your pocket and handing it over to corporations who toe the ESG line.
The CIC wants to dictate global mandates that force companies to adopt ESG-like policies using trillions of dollars in climate funds ($7 trillion per year, to be exact).
Think of it this way:
Any company that “volunteers” to use less efficient green tech and to promote climate ideology gets access to government funds – they get rewarded.
Any company that refuses to go along with the plan will ultimately face heavy taxation while trying to compete with their subsidized peers – they are forced out of business.
Sound familiar? It’s not your imagination…
This is, essentially, the early stages of a global communist/collectivist economic regime.
“Inclusive capitalism” is a hoax
And here we get to the crux of the issue.
There is no “inclusive capitalism.”
There is no “stakeholder capitalism.”
There is no “ESG.”
Climate change is not an existential threat.
Covid was never as severe as they wanted you to think.
What do these things have in common? All of these issues represent smoke and mirrors, a way to distract the populace from the root intent to create total centralization in the hands of a select few elites. The prize for them is to convince the public to embrace economic micromanagement. This is what ESG was all about. This is what Inclusive Capitalism is all about.
The globalists want to hand-pick winners and losers. Worse still, they want to use your money to reward the faithful and punish the skeptical. Their goal is to build a global economic panopticon, an unescapable prison where every transaction is monitored, evaluated, authorized or denied and (of course) recorded.
A central bank digital currency (CDBC) is a crucial milestone in their progress toward this goal. Just imagine how much easier this will be when the 100 or so largest, most influential corporations in the world are on-board and enthusiastic about such a development…
I wrote about this not long ago:
All privacy in trade will be gone, except for those people engaging in barter, black markets and commodity-based transactions. This is one of the main reasons global central banks have persistently killed the idea of intrinsically-sound money, like physical gold and silver, for the last 50 years. Remember, barter and black markets are more or less by definition off the books. Untaxed, unregulated and untrackable.
But don’t be misled – this is much more than an issue of privacy.
Implementation of CBDCs would also mean that ownership of money and the ability to transact, to participate in the economy, will become privileges, not rights.
In communist China, use of digital payments is tied to a social credit system. Want access to your checking and savings accounts? Better not say anything critical of the Party, or you could be reported by a neighbor (or a stranger) using the tattletale function on their smartphone. Digital money can disappear in seconds. Want your money back? Prove that you are “loyal” to the Party. There are many subtle levels between “upstanding citizen” and “outlaw,” though, and the CCP adjust their citizens’ financial statuses constantly. Bad social credit might mean taxis won’t even stop for you. That you’re prevented from purchasing from upscale shops. (Insufficiently healthy? Your e-yuan won’t even let you buy junk food at 7-11. Seriously!) The citizen is guilty until proven innocent.
Once the economy is locked into an ideological prison and access to private trade can be denied by a handful of bureaucrats working with corporations, the establishment then has the means to dictate all of society.
For if the government has the power to determine whether you and your family eat or starve, they have the power to compel you to do anything.
This is why owning untraceable, intrinsically valuable physical precious metals is crucial to your own personal liberty. Today, now, while you still can, diversify your savings with an alternative form of money that will always be accepted, without question, anywhere in the world.
There’s a reason the globalists hate gold and silver. They’re virtually the only financial assets you can own that are “off the books.” Just as untrackable as cash (they hate cash, too, but not as much) and, better yet, uninflatable, unhackable and free from central bank meddling.
Fight the globalist agenda every step of the way. And make sure that, no matter what, you and your loved ones can endure their tyranny without compromising your beliefs.
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This exception is the United States, which boasts a prison population rate of 531.
Technically, the U.S. is featured not only once but thrice in the top 8, with American Samoa and Guam being unincorporated territories.
Other big economies mainly feature drastically lower on the ICPR’s list.
Notable exceptions to this rule include Turkey, Brazil and Russia, placing 12th, 13th and 26th, respectively.
When looking at the data from the perspective of the overall prison population, the picture is markedly different. By this indicator, the United States comes first, followed by China, Brazil, India and Russia.
Interestingly, all five current BRICS nations but only one G7 member are featured in the top 15.
While the ICPR’s dataset allows comparisons between countries, the reporting timeframes for the official figures often differ wildly from nation to nation. Given this caveat, the data doesn’t support showing the situation at one specific set date.
