There are reports on the Russian General SVR Telegram channel, which tends to be an anti-Putin station, that is claiming there was an inside-job attempt to assassinate Putin with an attack on his motorcade. He was not harmed. They are claiming that the first car of the convoy was blocked by an ambulance, but the second car made a slight detour and did not stop. A loud bang was supposedly heard from Putin’s car, but it continued and arrived safely at the president’s residence.
They further claimed that the body of a man was then found driving the ambulance. They have reported that the head of the president’s bodyguards and several other people have been suspended and are in custody. Nobody has been named and there is no other news service that has reported this claim.
When we look at our models, the real higher volatility and the turning point in Russia appear to be in October, which is also a Panic cycle in the ruble. What we do see is that the Ukrainians carried out assassination hits in Russia. They have been trying to target Putin to kill him without success so far. They tried to kill Aleksandr Dugin with a car bomb, but they killed his daughter Darya Dugina. This is the car bombing of a pro-Putin supporter in Moscow. The sheer hatred between Ukrainian and Russians is legendary and as such the likelihood of this ever reaching peace is unlikely.
My sources continue to suggest that removing Putin will escalate things, not stop them. The hardliners will seize power and that will not be good going into 2023. Claiming they have Putin on the run is not going to win the day in Ukraine. It runs the risk of really escalating things for the hardliners in Moscow are criticizing Putin for being too soft on Ukraine. He for the first time started to attack their power grid. The hardliners will push for a serious attack against Ukraine rather than just securing the Donbas.
The deadline for both the Trump Team and DOJ-NSD Team to submit their recommendations for a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago documents is tonight at midnight.
During an interview presented by Newsmax, Harvard Professor Emeritus and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz gives his impression on the appointment itself as well as the background issues surrounding the documents at the heart of the conflict.
Mr. Dershowitz recommends that a former federal judge would be the best candidate for the role of special master and supports the opinion with his viewpoint. WATCH:
Yet another head of the financial system is coming out and warning that a recession is inevitable. Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing echoed the words of BoE’s Governor Andrew Bailey and blamed the coming recession on the war in Ukraine. “We will no longer be able to avert a recession in Germany. Yet we believe that our economy is resilient enough to cope well with this recession — provided the central banks act quickly and decisively now,” Sewing said.
Going a step further, Sewing blamed China along with Russia. “When it comes to dependencies, we also have to face the awkward question of how to deal with China. Its increasing isolation and growing tensions, especially between China and the United States, pose a considerable risk for Germany,” he warned. Around 12% of German imports and 8% of exports come and go from China. Sewing would like to see a declining dependency on China rather than strengthening their relationship.
Neither China nor Russia are to blame for Germany’s situation. Russia was simply a diversion to draw attention away from the collapse of the European economy. Negative interest rates beginning in 2014 wiped out pension funds and proved that the central bank was not thinking long-term. COVID restrictions killed the supply chain, and Germany’s insistance in backing Ukraine eliminated what could have been a lucrative pipeline. Had the pipeline gone through, Europe would not have an energy crisis! Ever since COVID, we have witnessed a rising trend of civil unrest. Politicians have been working hard to create war with Russia deliberately, all cloaked in their real objective of controlling the planet.
When the energy crisis is unavoidable for the average person and the standard of living declines, the politicians will point to Russia and China. The decline began long before Russia lined the border of Ukraine, and China is demonized for simply existing. They would never blame their fiscal mismanagement or detrimental policies for the undoable damage they have created. If Germany falls, all of Europe will follow.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 8, 2022 | Sundance
Energy inflation continues to pummel all western nations as they chase the climate change agenda. Today, the European Central Bank has raised interest rates to support the goal of lowered economic activity. Lowering economic activity lowers energy use.
Absent of any desire to raise energy supply and/or energy production, monetary policy can support the goal of lowering energy use by driving down all economic activity.
In the big transition picture, the economies within the western alliance must be reduced until they match the energy output of windmills and solar farms.
FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank raised interest rates by the largest amount since the early days of Europe’s currency union, moving aggressively to combat record inflation even as an energy crisis puts Europe on the brink of recession.
The bank said in a statement that it would increase its key rate to 0.75% from zero—its second hike this year following a 50-basis-point rise in July—and signaled that further rises were likely over the coming months.
At a news conference, ECB President Christine Lagarde warned that inflation was spreading beyond energy to a range of products. She said the ECB was ready to increase rates aggressively over the next several meetings.
“We want all economic actors to understand that the ECB is serious” about combating high inflation, Ms. Lagarde said. (read more)
A few months ago, amid all of the headline warnings about inflation and prices of essential products, CTH noted that if we were to continue waiting about six months, we would see a massive backlog of unsold goods and as a consequence the prices of non-essential durable goods would begin a rapid decline. That exact scenario is unfolding. Keep watching.
Keep in mind, this is not necessarily a collapse of total global economic activity; what we are seeing is a collapse of western nation economic activity that is impacting the rest of the world. A great economic fracturing is taking place as the western nations intentionally shrink their economy. The supplier nations are feeling the consequences.
All of this economic turmoil is running on an identical track -on a global basis- because the entire western plan was coordinated and followed. What we are seeing right now is the outcome of the “Build Back Better” roadmap. The “global inflation” is the outcome.
Joe Biden is blocking domestic energy production as he follows through with the agenda of the Green New Deal. In Europe, not coincidentally demanded by Biden, a similar outcome comes from the sanctions and blocking of Russian energy resources.
One could make a reasonable argument that the team behind Joe Biden specifically wanted the EU sanctions against Russia, because the U.S. crew wanted to keep both industrial economies mirroring each other as the U.S. energy system was dismantled. It would make sense to avoid a spotlight on the U.S. economic collapse, by forcibly pushing the EU economy into the same situation.
Taking that line of geopolitical and economic consequence one step further, and that would be part of the strategy -albeit undiscussed- behind having a consistent global cap on the price that any nation could pay for Russian oil. That approach is not about punishing Russia, it is to make all of the economic pain and problems equal amid all western nations. Globalists, and the central bankers, are good at creating economic systems to deliver equitable misery.
Vladimir Putin believes that Washington is sacrificing Europe to maintain global dominance. The United States has always been the world police, and the top country that others turn to in times of crisis. America’s post-World War II status left it as the financial capital of the world, and the dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency. Nothing has topped the dollar.
Europe attempted to create the European Union in an effort to prevent European conflicts, but it also created the euro to compete against the dollar. I explained various times how their attempts have failed. However, the euro is now beneath the dollar and on the decline. Nations maintain diplomatic relations, but only Schwab wants a one-world government as everyone is competing for global dominance.
Putin claims that the West rushed to place sanctions on Russia. There was indeed a rush to place sanctions on Russia despite Joe Biden himself coming out and admitting sanctions never work. Peace talks were never an option. Returning land or promising to curtail NATO was never an option. Sanctions and threats were immediately imposed. Why?
“The pandemic has been replaced by new challenges of a global nature, carrying a threat to the whole world, I’m talking about the sanctions rush in the West and the West’s blatantly aggressive attempts to impose their modus vivendi on other countries, to take away their sovereignty, to submit them to their will,” Putin told delegates at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast, as reported by CNBC.
It is true that Europe is facing the brunt of these sanctions as they sacrificed their main supplier of energy to save a nation with a GDP of roughly only $200 billion. Europe did not want to allow Ukraine to join the euro, and they had no interest in the country prior to this conflict. The hatred for Russia runs deep in Europe, especially in Germany after Russia took hold of the east after the last World War. The politicians are certainly old enough to remember when Germany was split in two until 1989. There is a reason Russia’s integral support for the axis powers during World War II is diminished in Western history books.
Putin went on to say that the standard of living in Europe and overall social and economic stability was “being thrown onto the fire of sanctions.” The United States has been eager to sanction Russia since the war in Syria began. Obama tried but failed to kick Russia out of the SWIFT system in 2014, with Christine Lagarde offering her support. Zelensky, who rand the NYSE bell this week remotely, admitted that he needed America to place harsh sanctions on Russia to accelerate the war.
The dollar remains strong and is the last safe haven. The war in Ukraine has only promoted capital to rush into the dollar. So is Europe “being sacrificed in the name of preserving the US dictatorship in global affairs,” as Putin claims? Europe will suffer more than the United States due to these sanctions. In fact, had Biden not eliminated domestic oil production, the US would not be facing an energy crisis at all. One thing is clear – the support to Ukraine is not an act of kindness. The invisible hand is at play.
The Bank of England has admitted defeat, admitting they cannot prevent a recession. The pound fell to the lowest level against the USD on Wednesday afternoon after declining 0.64% to $1.145. When asked if the central bank could prevent the next recession, Governor Andrew Bailey was blunt in his answer. “Insofar as the war is having this huge effect, the answer to that would be no.”
I touched more on the decline and fall of Britain on the private blog last week. Socrates agrees with Bailey’s pessimistic stance. Inflation has surpassed 10% in the UK, and food and energy costs are expected to rise continually. The Bank of England now projects that the economy will shrink during Q4 2022, and the decline will continue until the end of 2023. Our models state that the decline will last longer than they expect.
If the new PM Truss is any indication of where policy is heading, Britain is in big trouble. Central banks do not like to admit defeat either. Look how Powell carefully changed his stance over the course of the year in terms of inflation. He did not want to create a panic by telling the public that they were screwed. The BoE has no other choice but to be brutally honest. The heads of central banks are now coming forward to offer their condolences for an issue they helped to create with artificially low rates. The BoE is still in better shape than the ECB, but that is not saying much.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 7, 2022 | Sundance
According to the U.S. Energy Information Association (IEA), U.S. storage of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is 12% below the five-year average (LINK). Additionally, the IEA is expecting the U.S. to export 11.7 billion cubic feet of LNG per day during the fourth quarter of 2022 — up 17% from the third quarter. The destination of that export is Europe.
Consider that 43% of U.S. households use LNG for home heating, and power suppliers use LNG to create electricity. With the massive 2022 exports of LNG to Europe (+17% in fourth quarter alone), that means lower domestic supplies and increased prices here in the United States for electricity and home heating. We are seeing and feeling these massive price increases right now. As a result, consider this reality….
Not only are U.S. taxpayers directly paying for the majority of costs in Ukraine, but we are also subsidizing the European Union by exporting LNG and driving up the price here at home.
We are directly paying Ukraine, and indirectly paying Europe to maintain gas sanctions against Russia. This is the reality of the current situation as created by the Biden administration.
Now, consider this. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen held a press conference in Brussels today, announcing five initiatives to contain the expensive EU energy crisis: “The goal is clear. We must cut the revenues of Russia that Putin uses to finance this atrocious war against Ukraine. And now our work is paying off. At the start of the war, gas from Russian pipelines accounted for 40% of all imported gas. Today it has dropped to only 9% of our gas imports. These are tough times. But I am convinced that Europeans have the economic strength, the political will and the unity to maintain the upper hand,” she said. The United States and Norway are the primary suppliers of gas to the EU to fill the void.
Commissar von der Leyden’s five initiatives include:
(1) Conservation of electricity through forced and mandated cuts in electricity use. The amount of the cut has yet to be determined but reducing demand through forced curtailment of electricity use is the first approach. [Insert California as an example here in the United States.]
(2) A cap on the profit generated by energy suppliers who use renewable energy like wind and solar. The renewable industry has lower costs, yet they are profiting from the top line increase in delivered electricity. The EU commissar is proposing to confiscate the profits of Green Energy suppliers, direct the funds to the member states and then use those funds to subsidize the energy costs of poorer EU citizens.
(3) A cap on the profits generated by traditional fossil fuel energy suppliers (oil, coal, nuclear, gas electricity generation), and the diversion of those profits following the same formula as above.
(4) Banking support and financial liquidity for smaller regional energy providers who are having short term financial issues as they must pay massive amounts of money for the raw material needed to generate electricity. Essentially, the cost of coal, oil and LNG has skyrocketed, and there is a lag between the time they energy company must pay for the fuel source and the time the customer pays the electricity bill. The inbound fuel costs (new) are so extreme the inbound payments for prior electricity (old) are not covering the cost of the new supplier purchase.
(5) A price cap on Russian natural gas. To accompany the increased import of Norwegian and U.S. gas. This sounds like a bizarro effort to manipulate the market which could backfire. If Russian gas is cheaper than EU market gas, the smart energy providers will purchase the Russian gas.
Not a single word about increasing the supply of any traditional energy resource. These ideologues are so committed to the cult of climate change and renewable energy, they are intent on destroying the economy in order to lower demand to the level of their windmills and solar farms. This is madness, absolute madness.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on September 7, 2022 | Sundance
German Minister of Economics Robert Habeck is under fire after his comments during an interview with an ARD broadcaster on Tuesday evening.
The conversation surrounded the astronomical rise in the price of energy taking all the income away from people who would purchase other goods and services. As Germans no longer can afford purchases, the stores and businesses can no longer operate. Minister Habeck was asked if that means a wave of bankruptcies and business closures are forecast.
Mr. Habeck responded that businesses can stop operating, but that doesn’t mean they will go insolvent. Just because the business loses most or all of their revenue, doesn’t mean they will go bankrupt. That doesn’t make sense, Minister Habeck was pressed to apply commonsense. If businesses close to save money, workers are not employed. If workers are not employed people do not earn income. If people do not earn income, the economy worsens.
Habeck had no response other than an economically detached “Green Party” perspective that businesses will not go bankrupt just because they are not operating. However, his facial expressions reflect that he knows what comes next, total economic collapse. WATCH:
(Reuters) – German Economy Minister Robert Habeck faced a backlash on Wednesday for saying he could imagine parts of the economy stopping production due to rising energy prices that German firms say are threatening their existence.
Asked whether he expected a wave of insolvencies at the end of this winter due to companies’ rising energy bills, Habeck said “No, I don’t. I can imagine that certain industries will simply stop producing for the time being.”
The answer, in an interview with ARD broadcaster on Tuesday evening, sparked criticism of the minister in charge of Europe’s biggest economy, with mass-selling Bild newspaper saying Habeck “has no idea about the economy.”
Friedrich Merz, the conservative opposition leader, also took the opportunity to criticize Habeck, Germany’s second most popular politician, saying he and his ruling coalition were not taking energy and economy questions seriously.
“One could see how helpless Mr. Habeck you are with these questions last night on German television,” Merz told the lower house of parliament.
Habeck’s comments come as economists and industry groups warn that rising energy prices are a growing risk for Germany’s medium and small-sized businesses, which form the backbone of the economy. (read more)
Things are about to get very spicy in Germany as the reality of the unsustainable Build Back Better agenda starts to sink in. The intellectual disconnect from an economic minister to the consequences of an energy policy removing trillions of dollars from the economy is stunning.
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