Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The Pentagon has given its tacit endorsement of Ukrainian attacks inside Russian territory and no longer fears such operations could lead to a “dramatic” Russian escalation, The Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed US defense officials. The US position appears to only be based on the fact that up to this point, Russia hasn’t responded to attacks on its territory with nuclear weapons or by attacking NATO countries.

The Times report reads: “Moscow’s revenge attacks have to date all involved conventional missile strikes against civilian targets. Previously, the Pentagon was warier of Ukraine attacking Russia because it feared the Kremlin would retaliate either with tactical nuclear weapons or by targeting neighboring NATO nations.”

The report came after Ukrainian drone attacks hit Russian air bases deep inside Russian territory, including one that killed three Russian soldiers and damaged two Russian bombers. Following the attacks, Russian missiles pounded Ukrainian energy infrastructure, worsening the already dire situation for millions of Ukrainian civilians who are without power and heat in freezing temperatures.

Russia didn’t start launching large-scale attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure until October, after the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland. US officials previously said that they support Ukrainian attacks on Crimea.

The Times report said that the US doesn’t want to publicly give Ukraine the greenlight to attack targets inside Russia. In public comments, US officials have said they are not “encouraging” or “enabling” Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory. But a US defense official said that it’s up to Ukraine where they attack and that they have limited restrictions on using US-provided weapons.

“We’re not saying to Kyiv, ‘Don’t strike the Russians [in Russia or Crimea].’ We can’t tell them what to do. It’s up to them how they use their weapons,” the official said. “But when they use the weapons we have supplied, the only thing we insist on is that the Ukrainian military conform to the international laws of war and to the Geneva conventions.”

The official’s comments appear to mark a shift in US policy as the Biden administration previously sought “assurances” from Ukraine that it wouldn’t use the HIMARS rocket launch systems to hit Russian territory. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby made similar comments in public last week.

“When we give them a weapon system, it belongs to them, where they use it, how they use it, how much ammunition they use to use that system. I mean, those are Ukrainian decisions, and we respect that,” Kirby said. So far, there has been no confirmation of Ukraine using US weapons to hit targets inside Russian territory. Russia said Ukraine used modified Soviet-made drones to launch the attacks last week that hit Russian air bases hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border.

But The Times report said that with the US now tacitly backing Ukrainian attacks inside Russia, the Biden administration will be more likely to provide longer-range weapons that Ukraine has been seeking. “Nothing is off the table,” a senior US official said.

When American retailers sell action figures of U.S. soldiers, it’s normal.

When Russian retailers sell action figures of Russian soldiers, it’s sinister brainwashing. 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/BKNKTK9lf3

— Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) December 7, 2022

Ukraine has been asking for the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles and can be fired from the HIMARS systems, although The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the US modified the HIMARS it sent to Ukraine so they can’t fire munitions with a range of greater than 50 miles.

While the US might no longer fear escalation, Russian officials have strongly warned against the US sending longer-range weapons to Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Hens Stoltenberg acknowledged on Friday that there’s a “real possibility” of a war between the alliance and Russia, which could quickly turn nuclear, but insisted the West should keep arming Ukraine despite the risk.

Authored by Ellen Brown via EllenBrown.com,

The Real Goal of Fed Policy: Breaking Inflation, the Middle Class or the Bubble Economy?

“There is no sense that inflation is coming down,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a November 2 press conference, — this despite eight months of aggressive interest rate hikes and “quantitative tightening.”

On November 30, the stock market rallied when he said smaller interest rate increases are likely ahead and could start in December. But rates will still be increased, not cut.

“By any standard, inflation remains much too high,” Powell said.

“We will stay the course until the job is done.”

The Fed is doubling down on what appears to be a failed policy, driving the economy to the brink of recession without bringing prices down appreciably. Inflation results from “too much money chasing too few goods,” and the Fed has control over only the money – the “demand” side of the equation. Energy and food are the key inflation drivers, and they are on the supply side. As noted by Bloomberg columnist Ramesh Ponnuru  in the Washington Post in March:

Fixing supply chains is of course beyond any central bank’s power. What the Fed can do is reduce spending levels, which would in turn exert downward pressure on prices. But this would be a mistaken response to shortages. It would answer a scarcity of goods by bringing about a scarcity of money. The effect would be to compound the hit to living standards that supply shocks already caused.

So why is the Fed forging ahead? Some pundits think Chairman Powell has something else up his sleeve.

The Problem with “Demand Destruction”

First, a closer look at the problem. Shrinking demand by reducing the money supply – the money available for people to spend – is considered the Fed’s only tool for fighting inflation. The theory behind raising interest rates is that it will reduce the willingness and ability of people and businesses to borrow. The result will be to shrink the money supply, most of which is created by banks when they make loans. The problem is that shrinking demand means shrinking the economy – laying off workers, cutting productivity, and creating new shortages – driving the economy into recession.

Demand has indeed been shrinking, as evidenced in a November 27 article on ZeroHedge titled: “The Consumer Economy Has Completely Collapsed – ‘It’s A Ghost Town’ for Holiday Shopping Everywhere.” But retailers have cut their prices about as far as they can go. While the rate of increase in producer costs is slowing, those costs are still rising; and retailers have to cover their costs to stay in business, whether or not they have customers at their doors. Rather than lowering their prices further, they will be laying off workers or closing up shop. Layoffs are on the rise, and data reported on December 1 showed that U.S. factory activity is contracting for the first time since the lockdowns of the Covid-​19 pandemic.

It is not just activity in shopping malls and factories that has taken a hit. The housing market has fallen sharply, with pending home sales dropping 32% year-over-year in October. The stock market is also sinking, and the cryptocurrency market has fallen off a cliff. Worse, interest on the federal debt is shooting up. For years, the government has been able to borrow nearly for free. By 2025 or 2026, according to Moody’s Analytics, interest payments could exceed the country’s entire defense budget, which hit $767 billion in fiscal 2022. That means major cuts will be needed to some federal programs.

Breaking the “Fed Put”

In the face of all this economic strife, why is the Fed not reversing its aggressive interest rate hikes, as investors have come to expect? Former British diplomat and EU foreign policy advisor Alastair Crooke suggests that the Fed’s goal is something else:

The Fed … may be attempting to implement a contrarian, controlled demolition of the U.S. bubble-economy through interest rate increases. The rate rises will not slay the inflation “dragon” (they would need to be much higher to do that). The purpose is to break a generalized “dependency habit” on free money.

Danielle DiMartino Booth, former advisor to Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher, agrees. She stated in an interview with financial journalist and podcaster Julia LaRoche:

Maybe Jay Powell is trying to kill the “Fed put.” Maybe he’s trying to break the back of speculation once and for all, so that it’s the Fed – truly an independent apolitical entity – that is making monetary policy, and not speculators making monetary policy for the Fed.

The “Fed put” is the general idea that the Federal Reserve is willing and able to adjust monetary policy in a way that is bullish for the stock market. As explained in a Fortune Magazine article titled “The Stock Market Is Freaking Out Because of the End of Free Money – It All Has to Do with Something Called ‘The Fed Put:’”

For decades, the way the Fed enacted policy was like a put option contract, stepping in to prevent disaster when markets experienced serious turbulence by cutting interest rates and “printing money” through QE [quantitative easing].

… Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Fed had supported markets with ultra-​accommodative monetary policy in the form of near-​zero interest rates and quantitative easing (QE). Stocks thrived under these loose monetary policies. As long as the central bank was injecting liquidity into the economy as an emergency lending measure, the safety net was laid out for investors chasing all kinds of risk assets.

… The idea that the Fed will come to stocks’ aid in a downturn began under Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. What is now the “Fed put” was once the “Greenspan put,” a term coined after the 1987 stock market crash, when Greenspan lowered interest rates to help companies recover, setting a precedent that the Fed would step in during uncertain times.

But the “free money” era seems to be over:

The regime change has left markets effectively on their own and led risk assets, including stocks and cryptocurrencies, to crater as investors grapple with the new norm. It’s also left many wondering whether the era of the so-​called Fed put is over.

Killing the Parasite That Is Killing the Host

The Fed put favors the rich – investors in the stock market, the speculative real estate market, the multi-trillion dollar derivatives market. It favors what economist Michael Hudson calls the “financialized” or “rentier” economy – “money making money,” formerly called “unearned income” – which drives up prices without adding productive value to the “real” economy. Hudson calls it a parasite, which is sucking out profits that should be going toward building more factories and other economic development. 

By backstopping the financialized economy, the Fed has been instrumental in widening the income gap of the last two decades, pushing housing prices to heights that are unaffordable for first-time homebuyers, driving up rents and educational costs, and crushing entrepreneurs. DiMartino Booth explains:  

Fed policy feeds passive investing … because you don’t have to carefully allocate your resources. You simply have to be long the NASDAQ and sit there with your money. What does that feed? It feeds the monopolization of America. The largest companies, the companies such as Google and Microsoft … if there is a competitor in their world they simply absorb them. They acquire them, which quashes … the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country so great.… If the Fed succeeds, Main Street will be the main winner.

… [T]he trick here is for the Fed to not break anything big, and that’s the delicate balancing act, … if … they can slowly, methodically take the rot out of the system without breaking anything big that forces them to pull back.

The “rot” in the system is particularly evident in the housing market:

Since the financial crisis, there’s been a lot of private equity that’s entered the space and snapped up all these homes and they’re renting them … It’s definitely exacerbated this housing cycle. It’s added an element of speculation because so many of them are all cash buyers. Don’t get me wrong, they’re levered — it is borrowed money — but they’re coming in as all cash buyers, and that I think created a lot of these massive bidding wars …

DiMartino Booth discusses the risk of derivatives contagion using the example of AIG, a giant insurance company brought down by derivatives exposure in 2008:

During the financial crisis … we rescued AIG because we didn’t want to actually see what it looked like on the other side of that cliff had derivatives actually been unwound, and what that contagion might have looked like.… We never tested the derivatives market, so that risk continues to lurk out there…. I’m not a cheerleader for there being some kind of a systemic risk event, and I do hope again that the Fed succeeds in managing this unwind, in seeing risk pulled out of the system, but one company at a time, not something that makes the global financial system implode.

Financial blogger Tom Luongo takes this argument further. He maintains that Fed Chair Powell is out to break the offshore eurodollar market – the speculative, unregulated offshore money market where the World Economic Forum and “old European money” (including mega-funds Blackrock and Vanguard) get the cheap credit funding their massive spending power. That is a complicated subject, which will have to wait for another article; but the principle is the same. Without the backstop of the Fed’s virtually free dollars to satisfy a surge in demand for them, these highly-leveraged dollar investments will collapse. (“Leverage” is an investment strategy that uses borrowed capital to increase potential returns. The risk is that if the investment sours, losses are also increased.)

Pushing “Until Something Breaks”

Whether or not popping these raging speculative bubbles is the goal, the Fed’s interest rate hikes are having that effect. According to a November 25, 2022 article on CNBC.com, “Interest rate hikes have choked off access to easy capital ….” As a result, “Investors have lost roughly $7.4 trillion, based on the 12-month drop in the Nasdaq.”

House prices are also tumbling. The third quarter of 2022 saw the biggest home equity drop ($1.3 trillion) ever recorded. Fortune Magazine quotes Moody’s Analystics: “Before prices began to decline, we were overvalued [nationally] by around 25%. Now, this means prices will normalize. Affordability will be restored.”

In 2021, 25% of all real estate purchases were being made by institutional investors. In the third quarter of 2022, investor buying of homes tumbled 30%. Blackstone, a real estate income trust notorious for buying up homes and turning them into rentals, was reported on December 2 to be limiting withdrawals from its $125 billion property fund as investors rush for the exits. George Cipolloni, portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management, said the U.S. Federal Reserve’s sharp interest rate increases have not “worked all the way through the economy yet,” and that he expects to see “more Blackstone-type news events coming forward in the next year.”

In May 2022, BlackRock stock (BLK) was down 30% for the year. And by November, the cryptocurrency market cap had plummeted from $3 trillion to $900 billion, with Bitcoin, its largest component, down 77% year-over-year.

Currently featured in the news is the crypto exchange FTX and its 30-year-old billionaire owner Sam Bankman-Fried. FTX was exposed as a Ponzi scheme by the receding tide of dollar liquidity, catching Bankman-Fried and team “swimming naked when the tide went out.” According to Swiss bank UBS’ chief of investment, “FTX’s collapse shows Federal Reserve tightening is crushing speculative assets.” Outing FTX is thought to be only the beginning of a succession of exposures of financial frauds to come.

The Delicate Balancing Act

DiMartino Booth said in a live twitter presentation on December 8, “If Jay Powell breaks the Fed put and takes away the unfair ability of private capital to rape and pillage the system, he will have finally addressed income inequality in America.”

Looked at in that light, breaking the Fed put sounds like a good idea. But can it be done without breaking the whole economy? More reputable establishments than FTX are at risk. Rate hikes seriously impact local retailers and wholesalers. In September, risky leveraged bets brought UK pension funds near to collapse, forcing the Bank of England to reverse course and lower its interest rates. And there is the stress in the U.S. Treasury, which is dealing with an enormous interest tab on its debt.

Other disturbing outcomes are being envisioned. One podcaster posits that the economy is intentionally being driven to collapse, at which point the government will declare a “bank holiday”as Pres. Roosevelt did in 1933. When the banks reopen, he says, we will have a “currency reset” in the form of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The concern is that it will be a “programmable” currency, one that can be regulated or turned off altogether based on the user’s “social credit” score, as is already happening in China.

Alarmed observers note that the New York Fed recently embarked on a pilot project for a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). But defenders point out that it is a “wholesale” CBDC, used just for transfers between banks, particularly overseas transfers. Settlement times of foreign exchange transactions typically take two days. Project Cedar, the New York Innovation Center’s pilot project, found that settlement for foreign exchange transactions using distributed ledger technology can happen in 10 seconds or less, significantly reducing risks. Whether that technology will be developed and used by the Fed has not yet been determined. DiMartino Booth observes that Powell and other Fed officials have frequently questioned the need for a “retail” CBDC, in which Fed accounts would be opened directly with the public.In a Substack article titled “A Grand Unified Theory of the FTX Disaster,” author and educator Matthew Crawford lays out a darker possibility – that the end goal of the powerful network of players behind the FTX scheme is not just a U.S. CBDC but a “Global Digital Central Bank” run by international powerbrokers. Whether or not the Federal Reserve intended it, aggressive interest rate hikes could expose this sort of parasitic corruption and remove the money machine that is its power source.

Rising from the Ashes

Meanwhile, the supply-side issues inflating the prices of food, energy and other key resources need to be addressed. Those are matters for federal and state legislatures, not the Fed. In the 1930s, a federal financial institution called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation pulled the economy out of the Great Depression, put people back to work, and crisscrossed the country with new infrastructure, including the dams and power lines that brought electricity to rural America. (See my earlier article here.) The government acted quickly and decisively because times were desperate.

A bill for a National Infrastructure Bank modeled on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is now before Congress, H.R. 3339. For a local government bank, a viable model is the publicly-owned Bank of North Dakota, which pulled that state out of a regional agricultural depression in the 1920s. (See here.) As an iconic Depression-era poster declared, “We can do it!” We just need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

In what’s forecasted to be the first coast-to-coast major winter storm of the season across the Lower 48, traders have furiously panic bid US natural gas futures due to the prospects of increased heating demand.

On Sunday, wintery precipitation, powerful winds, and heavy rains battered Intermountain West as a powerful storm was set to traverse the rest of the country in the new week. The next stop for the storm is the Plains, South, and Northeast, according to The Weather Channel. 

Heavy mountain snow has already blanketed parts of California’s Sierra. Snow will spread across the high country of Colorado and northern New Mexico today. Then this evening, the system moves into the Northern Plains. By night into Tuesday, heavy snow and strong winds could spark blizzard conditions across eastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, western Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota.

Later in the week, moisture from the storm and cold air will be in place in the East. However, it’s still early to forecast where snow will fall in the Northeast. 

The storm is coupled with a cold blast pouring across the Lower 48 starting Friday. Temperatures are forecasted to dive between Friday and next Wednesday. 

Most of the Lower 48 could be well under average temperatures. 

Well the new GEFS coming in is just bonkers cold.

That’s it that’s the tweet.#natgas #ootthttps://t.co/NbZ8MYaz00 pic.twitter.com/MPGyWVCn2s

— BAMWX (@bamwxcom) December 11, 2022

Which means heating demand erupts. 

And why energy traders are bidding NatGas prices higher this morning. At one point, prices were up 12% to $7.010/mmbtu. 

Cold season is in — drawing down on inventories began on Nov. 10 (read: “US Flips Into Withdrawal Season” As NatGas Prices Surge). 

Also, Freeport LNG is expected to ramp up exports out of its Texas facility soon, along with cold weather; this could keep a bid under NatGas prices this heating season. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Someone has been attacking power plants all over the country, and federal authorities are trying to determine who it is.  In recent days, we have seen significant sabotage on both the east and west coasts, and so it can’t just be one individual that is responsible.  During the first eight months of this year, there were a total of 106 attacks on the electrical grid in the United States, and that represents the highest number ever recorded in a single year.  Hopefully authorities will be able to get to the bottom of this mystery, because winter will soon officially begin.  If power goes out in your neck of the woods for an extended period of time during the months ahead, what will you do?

Nobody is trying to claim that the string of attacks that we have been witnessing is “accidental”, and ABC News is reporting that “federal authorities are investigating” this very disturbing trend…

Federal authorities are investigating a number of recent reported acts of sabotage on utility companies, a senior law enforcement source told ABC News.

The move comes in the wake of substations being riddled with bullets in North Carolina, leaving tens of thousands without power for days.

After the incident, the utility companies reached out to federal authorities in recent days to investigate, the source said.

The recent incident in North Carolina was particularly alarming.

At approximately 7 PM on Saturday night, gunfire erupted at two electrical substations in Moore County.  Officials are calling this “an intentional and coordinated attack”…

Duke Energy restored power to all of its North Carolina customers Wednesday evening, four days after 45,000 customers were left in the dark after what officials have said was an intentional and coordinated attack on two substations in Moore County. Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields has said a motive for the attack is not known. It is also not clear what kind of protective measures were in place to prevent such an assault.

So who is to blame?

Well, these days authorities seem to have a rule for this sort of thing.  When in doubt, blame the right-wing people.

Apparently a drag show was going on at the same time that the attacks on the substations happened, and so investigators are now focusing on that angle…

An LGBTQ nonprofit in North Carolina had set up a drag show at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines on Saturday night around the same time when the electric facilities were targeted with gunfire around 7pm.

The incident led to officials declaring a state of emergency as about 32,000 southeastern residents were left without power until Thursday.

Investigators are now determining if the backlash the 18 or older show received leading up to the performance led to the targeted attack.

That theory may or may not turn out to be accurate, but what about all of the other attacks that have been taking place all over the nation?

Just a few days prior to the sabotage in North Carolina, two electrical substations in the Portland area were attacked…

Two power substations in the Portland metro area have been deliberately damaged, utility companies say, with both incidents preceding targeted gunfire that damaged substation equipment in North Carolina, leaving thousands without power.

Portland General Electric and the Bonneville Power Administration each had a separate substation location in Clackamas County attacked.

Did the same people that shot up substations in the Portland area hop on a plane and fly to the east coast so that they could shoot up some substations in North Carolina?

Of course not.

Something very strange appears to be happening, and a federal law enforcement memo that has been made public makes it sound like these attacks are definitely being planned in advance…

A federal law enforcement memo revealed that the Pacific Northwest substations have described attacks using ‘handtools, arson, firearms, and metal chains possibly in response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.’

‘In recent attacks, criminal actors bypassed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting nearby fires, shooting equipment from a distance or throwing objects over the fence and on to equipment,’ read the memo.

Who in the world would want to do something like this?

According to the Department of Homeland Security, “domestic extremists” have had “specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020”.

Of course when they say “domestic extremists”, they really mean “right-wing extremists”.

But is that what is really going on here?

In recent years, left-wing extremists have sabotaged and attacked far more buildings in the United States than anyone else has.

And to be honest, it could just as easily be a foreign terror group or intelligence agents from a hostile country.

At this point, we just don’t know.

But what we do know is that the number of attacks on our electrical grid has been rising.  The following comes from NBC News…

Nearly 600 electric emergency incidents and disturbances were caused by suspected and confirmed physical attacks and vandalism on the electric grid in those nine years, the reports show. There have been 106 attack or vandalism incidents from January through August 2022, which is the latest the Energy Department data tracks. Among the years reviewed by NBC News, 2022 is the first that reached triple digits and it only contains eight months of data.

We are a nation that is absolutely teeming with “soft targets”, and I expect that we will see these attacks become even more frequent during the years to come.

And that will especially be true as more major wars erupt around the globe.

There are so many people out there that hate us, and we have a very deeply divided nation right now.

So let us hope that authorities all over the country take action to ramp up security at critical infrastructure such as power plants.

Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen any time soon.

That means that it is imperative to have a really good back up plan for when the power goes down in your area for an extended period of time.

Winter is coming, and you don’t want to freeze just because some idiots out there decide to do something really stupid.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity.

As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti details below, one of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. 

In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion.

Producing energy through nuclear fusion has been a long-held ambition for scientists and energy experts, and has prominently featured in science fiction novels and movies.

The process involves fusing nuclei together, which throws off energy – which could then provide theoretically abundant energy on earth.

Scientists have for decades tried to use nuclear fusion to produce electricity at a usable scale, however replicating the reaction on Earth is highly challenging, requiring vast amounts of heat and pressure.

So far, they have not yet managed to produce more energy from the reaction than it takes to trigger the reaction. 

But now, The FT reports, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment, US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time.

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which uses a process called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s biggest laser, had achieved net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks, the people said.

Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore.

Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years.

The fusion reaction at the US government facility produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analyzed.

The US department of energy has said energy secretary Jennifer Granholm and under-secretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby will announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday.

“If this is confirmed, we are witnessing a moment of history,” said Dr Arthur Turrell, a plasma physicist whose book The Star Builders charts the effort to achieve fusion power.

“Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal.”

Of course the big question is – will Greta be pleased?

With global energy demand expected to increase by 47% in the next 30 years, and renewables like wind and solar are intermittent and need a baseload source of clean energy to supplement them; fusion, when (not if) commercially implemented, could deliver clean, abundant, reliable, and cost-competitive energy. 

Authored by Dalwhinnie via BombThrower.com,

I used to believe the following tenets of the Club of Rome. I did so for about four years (from the age of 22 to 26) until I woke up from ecodoomism. It is apparent that millions have been sucked into this cult and have never found a way out. Yet. Indeed, eco-doomism is the world’s leading cause of depression, suicide, sexual ambiguity,  non-replacement and cultural anomie. It is immediately the cause of policies designed to immiserate the population (viz. Dutch government putting farms out of business to control world atmospheric nitrogen levels).

Here are the doctrines of the Club of Rome, circa 1972. Look familiar?

“The Limits to Growth” contains six main messages:

1. Firstly, that the environmental impact of human society had become heavier between 1900 and 1972 due to both an increase in the number of humans and the amount of resources consumed and pollution generated per person per year.

2. That our planet is physically limited, and that humanity cannot continue to use more physical resources and generate more emissions than nature is capable of supplying in a sustainable manner. In addition, it will not be possible to rely on technology alone to solve the problem as this would only delay reaching the carrying capacity of the planet by a few years.

3. The authors cautioned that it is possible, and even likely, that the human ecological footprint will overshoot the carrying capacity of the planet, further explaining that this would likely occur due to significant delays in global decision making while growth continued, bringing the human footprint into unsustainable territory.

4. Once humanity has entered this unsustainable territory, we will have to move back into sustainable territory, either through “managed decline” of activity, or we will be forced to move back through “collapse” caused by the brutal inherent processes of nature or the market.

5. The fifth message is one of hope. The authors state that: “The challenge of overshoot from decision delay is real, but easily solvable if human society decided to “act”, meaning that forward looking policy could prevent humanity from overshooting the aforementioned planetary limits.

6. Lastly, the authors advocated for an early start – in 1972 that was 1975 – to achieve a smooth transition to a sustainable world without needing to pass through the overshoot and contraction phases.

The World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab have followed as night follows day.

The key assumptions are that the current population/resource consumption mix is unsustainable, and the second is that a process of managed decline can smooth the transition to sustainability. I am about to say something at once paradoxical and true:

Humans have more to fear from the managers of population reduction than we do of civilizational collapse.

Because the population reduction is being planned by people who think they are doing good  and the old adage of C. S. Lewis applies, that the robber barons might have their greed satiated, and stop, but the person who tortures for you own good does so with a clean conscience and will not stop. Hence Stalin. Hence Klaus Schwab, and his minions and acolytes.

Collapses are random and bring their own correctives. They are chaotic. If the Roman Empire has to fall, it is better that it occur without central planning, administered by mad tyrants. I realize this is offensive to those who believe that civilizational change can be planned, but it cannot.

The  assumption that needs to be challenged the most is that collapse is somehow inevitable because we have gone beyond limits set by Gaia, that this unsustainability is somehow new, and that we can plan our way out of it.

We went beyond the limits set by Gaia since we domesticated animals, invented agriculture and mined metals. I would not wish to say there are no limits, but I would say that the collective intelligence of mankind has continually found solutions to the problems we have ourselves created. We went into the realm of the “unsustainable” tens of thousands of years ago. We are still in “unsustainablity”. There is no stable state.

The Club of Rome published its manifesto in 1972. It had a tremendous negative effect over time. It resuscitated the idea of a centrally planned economy when the central conceit of Marxism had collapsed: that a planned economy could prevail over the chaotic forces of the market, or of nature.

The close relationship between the idea of sustainability and the tyranny of all-wise central planners needs to be made clear.

The population bomb is diffusing itself anyway…

Regarding solutions that appear without planning, population growth is collapsing through the very process of wealth generation that has come from burning fossil fuels. Women reach a level of prosperity where their kids will survive until adulthood, and – bingo! – they produce at most two children. It is enough to make the most hardened eco-doomist pause and reconsider.

See Bricker and Ibbetson’s Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, or more brutal yet, try David Goldman’s (known as Spengler) How Civilizations Die.

*  *  *

Bombthrower.com continues to blow up the clown world, disrupt MSM agitprop and trigger the fact checkers. Join the Bombthrower Mafia today and get a free copy of the Crypto Capitalist Manifesto, or join our Telegram.

After a pandemic, rampant inflation, a faltering global economy, and geopolitical flare-ups, it’s no surprise that people have a souring outlook on the future.

Even so, the results of this recent survey by Ipsos are eyebrow raising. As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley reports, in all 33 countries where polling took place, the majority of respondents said they believe a world war on the scale of WWI and WWII would break out between global superpowers in coming years.

Here’s a look at how various countries felt about the possibility of an impending global conflict:

Japan was the least sure of an impending global conflict – an opinion that is almost certainly shaped by the country’s historical experience in WWII.

Australia was the most certain of an impending global conflict. The country has a unique relationship with Asian and Western countries, so geopolitical tensions between superpowers may resonate more in the Land Down Under.

The Power of Fear

Given the negative slant of stories covered by mass media and the types of stories that are most widely shared on social media platforms, it’s easy to understand how people have developed such a gloomy view of the future. But “bad vibes” aside, how could this perception translate into real world action?

For one, public opinion helps shape political priorities. A narrative of impending conflict could have an impact on geopolitical policy and relationships.

Another possibility is an increase in military spending across the board. 64% of people across 30 countries somewhat or strongly agree that their home government should beef up military spending “given the dangers in the world.” Aside from Ukraine, India (84%) and Poland (81%) ranked the highest in support of increasing military spending.

One other noteworthy finding is that 85% of people in the countries surveyed believe that the world needs new international agreements and institutions to deal with the challenges faced by the world today, and that world powers are unlikely to respect agreements made through international bodies. These findings are significant since war becomes more likely as cooperation between countries breaks down.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Let’s check in on Target2 balances in the Eurozone and who owes whom money…

Target 2 balances from the ECB, numbers and caption by Mish

TARGET2 is the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system owned and operated by the Eurosystem. 

The Target2 Lead Chart is courtesy of the ECB. It shows Target 2 creditor and debtor nations. 

Tatget2 is one of the fundamental flaws of the Eurozone. 

Primary Creditors and Debtors

• Target2 surpluses to the tune of €1.23 trillion continue to mount in Germany. 

• Tiny Luxembourg is somehow a €303 billion creditor. 

• The largest Target2 deficit nations are Italy at €670 billion, Spain at €484 billion, the ECB itself at €339 billion, and Greece at €106 billion.

The ECB’s imbalance is related to its bond manipulation schemes to keep interest rates down in Italy, Spain, Greece, and the peripheral Eurozone countries in general.

Capital Flight

Capital flight is one component of Target2 imbalances. 

On the likely assumption that Italian banks are insolvent, no one in their right mind should have money in Italian banks. 

Recall the capital controls imposed by the ECB on Greece and Cyprus after bank failures in those countries. Anyone who had money in a bank in Germany had full access to it. Anyone who had money in a Greek bank didn’t. 

It’s increasing likely that corporations and wealthy individuals do not trust Italian banks, nor should they.

Unsecured Debt 

Unsecured debt is another component of Target2. The ECB assumption is that these debts will be paid back. No one explains how.

The ECB also treats all sovereign bank debt within the Eurozone as equal, and with no risk.

The market disagrees and so do I. 

ECB vs Fed

In the US there is one Central Bank. There is a single 10-year government bond. 

The Eurozone has the ECB to set interest rate policy, but each nation has its own central bank. 

If all Eurozone sovereign debt was indeed equal, then 10-year yields in Italy and Germany would be the same.

Instead, the 10-year rates in Germany and Italy are 1.94% and 3.80% respectively. Huge country-to-country differences are despite massive intervention by the ECB to equalize rates. 

Target2 is a kluge payment system that tries to make things fit but does not quite succeed. 

It is difficult to say how much of the imbalances are capital flight, debt, and knock-on effects of ECB manipulations.

However, we can see the imbalances grow nearly every month, wondering when and how it finally matters.

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Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson took to the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal to argue that a speedier end to the war in Ukraine can be achieved if only the West would supply Kyiv with longer-range missiles, as well as warplanes.

“The world can’t continue to watch as the Ukrainians are terrorised with missiles and drones,” he wrote in the article published Friday. “The Ukrainians have the valour necessary to succeed. They have shown it. They just need the equipment.” He argued that this should include more sophisticated drones, anti-aircraft missiles, planes, ATACMS longer range systems, as well as tanks and armored vehicles – to be delivered as soon as possible.

He began the op-ed with an argument that precludes the possibility of negotiated settlement: “I don’t care how often I have to say it: The war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin’s defeat,” Johnson wrote. 

It’s been previously widely reported that on a visit to Ukraine to meet with President Zelensky last spring, then PM Johnson urged the Ukrainians away from the negotiating table. For example, this is what a bombshell story in Ukrainska Pravda said in May, but which was almost completely ignored in Western mainstream media: 

According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the UK and US] are not. Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to “press him.”

Since then, Ukraine’s government has rejected even the possibility of dialogue with the Russians until all territory has been taken back, and has even launched military attacks on Russian-controlled Crimea, and even on Russia proper. 

Johnson in the WSJ op-ed backed this continued stance, writing that “It is time to look urgently at what more the West can do to help the Ukrainians achieve their military objectives, or at least to kick the Russians out of all the territories invaded this year.”

Meanwhile, for a take that’s directly opposed to Johnson and NATO’s perspective on the origins of the conflict:

🧵Thread
1 of 50> Plus Tweets.

The Russia Ukraine War Can Only Come To An End If We The Public Are Fully Informed For How & Why It Began.

2014: Here Zelensky Explains It Himself In A Performance Which Is Actually A Statement.

This thread will explain Zelensky’s 2-minute video. pic.twitter.com/rEVtxyvP8i

— Ali Mohammed (@AliActuality) December 6, 2022

Johnson not only warned about what he called “complacency” and the “consequences” of not getting Ukraine longer-range weapons fast enough, but he batted down the possibility of escalation toward nuclear conflict, something even President Biden has expressed concern over. Johnson wrote the following: 

I know the wearying counterargument that stepping up supplies to Ukraine risks escalation. We dare not risk “poking the Russian bear.” Surely to goodness, after almost a year of this hideous conflict, we can see what total nonsense this is.

Mr. Putin knows he can’t use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. He knows the consequences. The truth is that he’s the one who fears escalation.

But as a number of prominent US and Western military observers have pointed out, Putin still has a huge number of forces at his disposal which he has yet to deploy to Ukraine.

If anything, it can easily be argued in the face of Johnson’s assertions that Russia is actually still holding back…

“Ukrainian army is down to ~190,000 effectives & Russia has over half a million & those numbers continue to grow” says Col Douglas Macgregor in conversation w/ Dr. Michael Vlahos at the Army/Navy Club in DC (~30 min). Most clear eyed assessment I’ve heard. https://t.co/XdfBrNmh2d pic.twitter.com/Sghs0yfFgD

— Cate Long (@cate_long) December 11, 2022

Johnson in the op-ed recognized the “prodigious” American contribution to Ukraine’s forces to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, but then quickly pivoted to saying it’s not enough. He went so far as to say the West should not only be supplying more advanced drones, but warplanes too. He wrote:

So let’s share the burden and accelerate the denouement. First let’s give the Ukrainians the help they need against aerial attacks. Kyiv needs unmanned aerial vehicles to detect the launch sites of drones and missiles, as well as antiaircraft missiles to take them out. The drones have the same engines as Vespa scooters, so planes to shoot them down don’t have to be fast. As one Ukrainian put it to me, “Spitfires would do.” We don’t make Spitfires in the U.K. anymore, but plenty of countries have planes that would do the job.

Given he wrote the op-ed for the WSJ, at at various times appeals directly to US officials and the American public, it seems clear which country he’s fundamentally asking to supply the “planes that would do the job.” 

For a counterargument and more realist perspective in contrast to Johnson’s ultra-hawkish stance, see the below discussion between highly decorated retired Army Colonel Douglas Magcregor and military historian Michael Vlahos, who has taught at the US Naval War College…

Authored by Ted Snider via AntiWar.com,

On December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington for the first state visit of the Biden administration. After the pageantry, presents, hand holding and flattering words of fraternity and solidarity, Macron faced the gathered press.

“We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” “That,” said Helene Cooper of The New York Times, “is the money quote.”

But it wasn’t the money quote by several euros.

The money quote came days later when Macron was not standing shoulder to shoulder with Biden in front of an American audience, but standing on his own addressing a French audience. Macron told the French television network TF1, in an interview filmed during his visit to Washington but aired as he left, that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Then Macron made his full meaning clear: “One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”

The money quote was that, despite the display of solidarity, there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war. Biden and Macron both “strongly condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.” But for Biden, in the beginning, that war was wholly unprovoked, and, in the end, the settlement must reflect that and protect core US values. For Macron, though the war was illegal, Russia had legitimate security concerns that NATO had been pushing, and the settlement must reflect that too.

Macron hinted at that crucial separation at the press conference with Biden. Even then, Macron said “We want to build peace and a sustainable peace means full respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” But then, hinting at Russia’s demand to be included in a new European security structure that takes its concerns seriously, he added, “but at the same time [it means] a new architecture to make sure we have a sustainable peace in the long run.” But that didn’t make it into the money quote.

The mainstream media’s money quote missed that France, one of the two most powerful members of the EU, insists that a negotiated settlement to the war addresses Russia’s security concerns about NATO at its door and weapons at its border.

On September 16, at the Shanghai Cooperation Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Modi said, “I know that now is not an age of wars. We have spoken about this many times, in particular in our telephone conversations. Democracy, diplomacy, and dialogue are important tools for us to find solutions. It is necessary to achieve peace in the future, and I am sure that we can discuss this. I welcome the opportunity to better understand your point of view.” That was the money quote.

But the money quote was a partial quote. It omitted Modi’s next line: “Relations between Russia and India have significantly improved. We believe they are extremely important. We are friends, and for decades we have always stood shoulder to shoulder. The whole world is aware of the nature of Russian-Indian relations, and the world also knows the deep friendship, in particular the personal friendly ties that bind us. . . . . In the interests of the well-being of this region, our peoples and citizens, we are once again making efforts today, in particular within the framework of the SCO summit. . . . Bilateral relations, which we will also discuss today, mean that our relations will only improve and strengthen in the future, which is also useful for the whole world.”

The money quote was offered at a discount. India wasn’t cooperating with the US led sanctions and isolation of Russia. India was improving and strengthening relations with Russia.

At that same SCO summit, the mainstream media offered up the money quote for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Putin was forced to acknowledge that China had “questions and concerns” about the “crisis” in Ukraine, the money quote said.

It was “somewhat curious,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price observed “that President Putin would be the one to admit it and to admit it so openly.”

But Putin was happy to talk about it because it wasn’t the money quote. A more honest formulation of the money quote would have included a less reported part of the conversation. But for that part of the conversation, you had to turn to the Chinese media. According to a readout from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, XI also said that “since the beginning of this year, China and Russia have maintained effective strategic communication.” XI stressed that China and Russia “have maintained close coordination on the international stage to uphold basic norms of international relations,” and promised China would “work with Russia to fulfill their responsibilities as major countries and play a leading role in injecting stability into a world of change and disorder.”

Crucially, XI added that China “will work with Russia to extend strong mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests, and deepen practical cooperation in trade, agriculture, connectivity and other areas.” Those core interests, for China, include US and NATO provocations in Taiwan and violations of the three joint communiqués the US negotiated with China between 1972 and 1982. Those core interests, for Russia, include NATO encroachment on its most sensitive border and violations of promises made on NATO’s eastward expansion at the end of the Cold War.

Like Macron, XI’s inclusion of strong support for Russia’s core interests was an insistence that a resolution to the war include Russia’s security concerns. The money quote deposited China’s questions and concerns, but withdrew their support of Russia on key issues and the gulf between their position and the US position.

The next mainstream media money quote from China came three weeks later. Following a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, XIsaid that the international community should “oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons, advocate that nuclear weapons cannot be used and that nuclear wars must not be fought, and prevent a nuclear crisis in Eurasia.”

That was the money quote because it was reported as a shift in China’s policy of not criticizing Putin over the war in Ukraine. But China has always had a policy against nuclear first strikes and has always had a commitment to “not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states.” Besides, Putin had already clarified that Russia would not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

That wasn’t the money quote. A more honest money quote might have been the sentence that preceded the mainstream media’s selected quotation. In language that was close to Macron’s, XI”reaffirmed China’s support for Germany and Europe to play an important role in facilitating peace talks and to build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture in Europe.”

The mainstream money quotes keep missing the separation with the US and the recognition of a European security architecture that takes Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion seriously. The more inclusive money quotes from both France and China included that recognition and exposed that separation.

And the very fact that that missed money quote came out of a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz exposes the next missed money quote. The money quote wasn’t that China agreed that “nuclear wars must not be fought.” That’s a pretty affordable money quote. The money quote was that Scholz was breaking from the US by becoming the first G7 leader to go to Beijing to meet with XI That was a rebellion against both the US rule that no one hold dialogue with nations who mock the US led sanctions and censure of Russia and the rule that China be contained and opposed. Far from containing China, Scholz brought the top German industrial leaders, including the CEO’s of Volkswagen, BMW, BASF, Bayer and Deutsche Bank with him.

An even worse missed money quote is that Scholz did not only dare to dialogue with XI, he phoned Putin. On December 2, he broke with Biden and talked to Putin. It was Scholz who initiated the call, and it was the second time in two months.

Macron also said recently that “he intends to speak with the Russian president in the coming days.”

The money quote in the mainstream media is, apparently, on sale at a discount. But for the lower cost, you don’t get the context or the full story. The real cost is the truth.