Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 29, 2022 | Sundance
The Associated Press [HERE] and more importantly the U.S. Intel Community outlet, the Washington Post [HERE], are beginning to change direction in their narration of the war in Ukraine.
Both sources of information are starting to position Eastern Ukraine as a lost cause, with the Washington Post giving specific examples of conscripted Ukraine fighters who are abandoning the effort in the donbas region. As noted, “after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions. The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine.”
The Ukraine commander, Serhi Lapko and one of his lieutenants, Vitaliy Khrus, “retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.” Together, Lapko and Khrus describe the essential elements of a fragmented Ukraine fighting force up against a committed Russian military advance.
Even the Washington Post admits the Ukraine central government is desperate to push morale boosting propaganda which seems constructed from the efforts of the U.S. State Dept, specifically the intelligence community within it. “Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.”
These examples are targeted toward a western audience and likely not being carried out by independent Ukraine government operation in Kyiv. Promoting the image of Ukraine is a construct of the U.S. state dept and U.S. intelligence.
The global impression of Ukraine must remain elevated to continue the U.S. proxy war against Russia. However, as noted, the WaPo is starting to shift the goal posts and expectations away from a Russian defeat in the donbas region.
Most notably within paragraphs like this you can see the purposeful shift. “Lapko and Khrus’s concerns were echoed recently by a platoon of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion, based nearby in the besieged city of Severodonetsk. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24, and confirmed as authentic by an aide to Haidai, volunteers said they will no longer fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support and military leadership.”
[…] Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”
Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion. The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted. (read more)
The Associated Press story flows in a similar line to the WaPo narrative; however, the AP must maintain the Western Government slant:
[…] Russia has intensified efforts to capture the cities of Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, which are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.
Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported that Ukrainian fighters repelled an assault on Sievierodonetsk but Russian troops still pushed to encircle them. He later said Russian forces had seized a hotel on the city’s outskirts, damaged 14 high-rise buildings and were fighting in the streets with Ukrainian forces.
[…] Mariupol’s port has reportedly resumed operations after Russian forces finished clearing mines in the Azov Sea. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a vessel bound for Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia entered the port early Saturday.
In the call with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin said, Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.”
[…] Ukrainian authorities have reported that Kremlin-installed officials in seized cities have started airing Russian news broadcasts, introduced Russian area codes, imported Russian school curriculum and taken other steps to annex the areas.
Russian-held areas of the southern Kherson region have shifted to Moscow time and “will no longer switch to daylight saving time, as is customary in Ukraine,” Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Krill Stremousov, a Russian-installed local official, as saying Saturday. (read more)
“2000 Mules” is the new documentary everyone has been discussing. Its current audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 100%, and interest in the film continues to rise. There is video evidence of voter fraud surrounding the mail-in ballots during the 2020 US Presidential Election. Did Joe Biden actually secure more votes than any president in the history of our nation? An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests that the American people did not vote in the current president. Democracy has shattered and our ability to hold fair elections has come to an end.
The world has been taken over by the “Greens” who want to destroy all fossil fuel production fearing that if the tide turns, they will lose this opportunity. We are seeing the same push from Germany, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The AGENDA IS TO ACTUALLY DESTROY THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE and cause so much damage that no future administration will be able to restart what they have destroyed.
There is no rational agenda, They do not care if there is any alternative available now. Even pushing for electric cars that take up to two hours to recharge after a few hundred miles are not ready to replace everything. The power grid will never support it. Worse still, the #1 target in war is the power grid. If all transportation is electric, taking out the power grid will become critical and could render the defense of a nation impossible. Add to that the push for Digital Currencies by the central banks so the government will get every penny of tax by eliminating paper money. Takedown the power grid, and you will also wipe out the financial system.
There is no discussion with these people that is even possible. Unfortunately, this is most likely the fundamental behind what our computer has forecast the rise in a civil conflict which will no down lead to civil wars and revolutions.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 28, 2022 | Sundance
In his weekly monologue today, Neil Oliver discusses the strutting peacocks at Davos who think they are masters of the universe controlling the outcomes of the sheeple masses beneath them. However, as Oliver also notes, only the brainless frogs will sit in the pot – the rest of us, but far the majority, have no time for these insufferable schemes and dictates.
The pretense of the Potemkin village can only be maintained as long as good, moral and virtuous people extend the graciousness of patience and play along with the pretending. Whether the Davos crowd want to admit it or not, the ranks of the grace-filled are diminishing, and the ranks of the vulgarian hoard are swelling. We are all becoming increasingly hardened, deliberate and refusing to pretend. The control mechanisms are starting to falter, and the messaging hits deaf ears. WATCH:
[Transcript] – The usual suspects have been in Davos again, at the World Economic Forum overseen by Klaus Schwab – the few hundred of the most unimaginably rich gathered in one place to fantasise together about what the several billions of us ought to be forced to do in order to make those billionaires’ lives better.
Those poor billionaires – for whom everything on Earth might finally be perfect, if only someone would invent the vacuum cleaner big enough to suck every last one of us peasants, inconsequential specks of dust that we are, into outer space once and for all.
While listening to whichever one on stage is pontificating about this or that technological advance, or about how better to structure civilization itself, I find it best to imagine they have the high pitched, excitable voices of children – like in those TV adverts for chewy, jelly sweeties.
When I do that, I am reassured by their evident ridiculousness, their patent lack of a grasp on the reality of what this human species of ours is all about.
Some of their ilk talk blithely about the millions, billions of “useless eaters” who might best be controlled and placated by drugs and video games.
I hear it announced that it is already time to “hack” the human animal and implant technologies to make us better at being alive in the world. Some of them are apportioning to themselves nothing less than the power of God.
It is precisely that genetic failing of theirs, demonstrably present in one billionaire or technocrat authoritarian after another, that will always be their undoing in the end. That glitch, that Achilles Heel common to all of them, is their failure to note the still limitless potential of the unadulterated Human Being Mark I. They think they have us mapped – tracked and traced already – but they don’t.
There’s another thing they collectively overlook – or deny, at least to themselves – while making their plans and cooking up their little magic potions.
And it is fear – their own fear. Their all but overwhelming fear of all of us. Whether or not they’re aware of it, they are motivated, those few hundred Richey Richests, by fear of the billions of us. They look out at us, down on us, from their castle walls, and our presence – in all our endless, untidy, unpredictable variety – and they are afraid. They don’t really understand us, they don’t really get us, and it’s that which has made them fearful.
People always fear what they don’t understand. When you get right down to it, they would probably rather we just weren’t here. But we are here. We are here and every last one of us, white, black or brown, tall or short, good at maths or good at growing plants, or good at putting smiles on the faces of those around us, or whichever small fragment of the miraculous each of us has within us – every last one of us has the same unalienable right to a place on this planet as any one of them. Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates – whoever – has no more right to be here, to live the best life available here, than you or me.
You may have heard or read by now about the slowly boiled frog. It’s that notion that you can put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn on the heat beneath. Poor frog doesn’t know what’s happening and so, according to the story, is slowly and unknowingly cooked to death. We are invited to think that we are like that frog, that we are helpless to identify the danger we are in, far less to extricate ourselves from our plight. Here’s the thing: it’s not true.
Back in the 19th century a scientist of sorts removed a frog’s brain and found it would, indeed, remain in the steadily heating water until dead. But much more recently, in the 20th century, biologists tried the experiment with healthy, complete frogs – and found that every single one of them leapt out long before it was in any real danger. Sometimes, the frog wouldn’t stay in the pot even when there was no heat under it at all.
Clearly the lesson there is that only brainless frogs get boiled alive.
I would offer here a helpful analogy: we placed ourselves in a pot called the social contract. This is a way of describing the relationship we proles have with the State. Put simply, under the terms of the social contract, we agreed to behave and do our bit, and in return the State kept us safe from crime and undue suffering and protected our rights and freedoms. That was the deal.
A while ago, though – even before the adventures of Covid-19 – the State turned the heat on under the pot. It takes a while – and each one of us frogs becomes aware of the change at a different moment – but sooner or later one frog after another realises the water has become unpleasantly warm … and jumps out. I feel this is what is happening now – that’s what’s been happening for years. More and more healthy frogs, with brains intact, are getting out of the pot, turning their backs on the social contract.
For those who thought they could cook us, without us knowing, this is a frightening time. The billionaires, technocrats and autocrats can sit together in Davos and squeak excitedly to one another all they want. But they’re in another pot – a pot of their own elitism – and the heat under theirs is rising too.
I am wired to look back in time in search of answers to problems. Given the assumption that there’s noting new under the sun – that a version of whatever is happening now has likely happened in the past – I look to see how things played out.
Nearly 2,000 years ago the Caledonians of the north faced off against a Roman army led by a Roman Governor called Agricola. Among much else, the Roman Empire wantedsubmission from those people they deemed lesser, inferior.
According to Agricola’s son in law, Tacitus, the Caledonians were led by one they called Calgacus, which means the swordsman, who rallied his forces with these words, or words like them:
“To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are … And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety … unpolluted by the contagion of slavery … the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission.
“Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches … they create a devastation and call it peace.”
I read about those Romans and see the model for every autocratic empire there ever was, and that ever shall be – from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. The Romans were the victors of the battle in question, but they never did win either the submission or the obedience of those Caledonians. The Roman Empire declined and fell, of course – as every empire must. Empires used to last for centuries. The most recent last for just years. They fall, the world kings, faster and faster every time.
The strutting peacocks of Davos, the WEF, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation are no Romans. But they want our obedience and submission and have endeavoured to obtain as much by stealth. They thought we wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t see what they were doing, that we wouldn’t feel it, but we did and we do.
They sought to exploit our good nature. Give the devil his due – the social contract was good while it lasted. We had peace a lot of the time, rule of law, personal freedom and protected rights that passed from generation to generation.
That was then, though, and this is now. Now a handful of frightened billionaires and their enablers seek to make the pot a prison. By the manipulation of fear and the application of propaganda, they want us to be and to remain forever as frightened as they are.
They tell those of us who’ve noticed that we are being silly, that nothing of the sort is happening. This is gaslighting – and that is the gas that’s already lit under the pot. But look at what they’ve done. Having slipped and shouldered their way further and further into our lives, every aspect of our lives, they’ve only made a mess of everything. For all their wealth and their so-called wisdom we’re all about to get poorer, colder and hungrier. Already millions have had their health – physical mental or both – hopelessly compromised. It is increasingly hard not to see this as having been the plan all along. After all, surely no one in authority is stupid enough to have caused all this harm by accident.
As far as I am concerned, the social contract has been broken – not by we the many law-abiding, tax-paying majority, but by the few of the State.
Of course, an analogy only goes so far. We are not frogs. We are human beings. This is our country, our world. In the moment we decide collectively that we have nothing to fear from those who would take advantage of our good nature … in that moment the fear is gone. And somewhere in their hearts, and somewhere in their heads, the billionaires in Davos must know it too. (LINK)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 28, 2022 | Sundance
If you were to read the play-by-play of information in the U.K. Telegraph [SEE HERE], you could get whiplash from the diametrically opposed narratives coming from both sides in the propaganda war.
On one hand the western narrative is that Russia is losing, getting weaker, running out of money and weapons. On the other hand, France and Germany are asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to release all of the captured soldiers he is gathering, while western media claim all the Ukraine retreats are “strategic”. It would appear the Monty Python knight has lost all his appendages and is yelling, “come back coward, I’ll bite your kneecaps.”
(Via Telegraph) – Russia said its forces were in full control of the Ukrainian town of Lyman, a railway hub in the Donetsk region, on Saturday in a gain that would help set the stage for the next phase of the Kremlin’s offensive in the eastern Donbas.
Ukrainian and Russian forces had been fighting for Lyman for several days. The town lies 40 km (30 miles) west of Severodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still held by Ukraine but now under heavy assault from Russian forces. The governor of Luhansk region, which along with Donetsk makes up the Donbas, said on Friday that Russian troops had entered Severodonetsk.
The Russian gains indicate a shift in momentum in the war. (read more)
Meanwhile the U.S. State Department, the actual combatant command center for the U.S. proxy war, along with internationally aligned diplomatic corps and the U.S. intelligence apparatus, are continuing to push the propaganda as if we cannot see how clearly staged it is.
Indeed, with the Pentagon preferring a ceasefire and peaceful negotiations while the State Dept demands more war, these are very remarkable times on the other side of the looking glass.
In the narrative tweet below….. If you ignore the new and clean uniform, to include the fresh out of the package gloves and helmet; and if you ignore the clean, groomed and well presented appearance of the “soldier”; carefully chosen for the youthful connection needed with the targeted audience; then it’s possible to admire the cinematography as well contextualized and constructed for social media delivery. The background music is a generally good selection, and has the ‘feels’ as they say.
However, the Ukraine narrative engineers consistently run in to a problem when people start looking at the marketing aspect. World War Reddit, becomes transparent.
I have explained that we know nothing about who created blockchain, but it allows every transaction to be traced. With a credit card, they can tell if you bought something. With Bitcoin, they can tell I gave you money first, and then you bought something. Central banks are moving to cryptocurrency because this will ensure 100% tax collection. The Bank of England was saying that parents will be able to control what their children spend money on. The problem is that the government will control what we too can spend on. Here is the BIS telling you the reality of the future. They want 100% of all transactions taxed. I suppose the girl next door will have to watch your kids for payment in kind — chocolate bars or clothes.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 2, 2021 | Sundance | 106 Comments
CTH has said repeatedly the road to serfdom is cemented with the catch-phrase “a service driven economy.” The June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor statistics [BLS LINK] highlights the JoeBama economic policy exactly that way.
Approximately 850,000 jobs were gained in June; however, simultaneously the number of long-term unemployed increased by 233,000 to the current state of four million.
While we should expect to see the leisure and hospitality industries as well as education rebounding from the various COVID-19 shutdowns, and indeed they did ( +343,000 and +155,000 respectively), manufacturing was flat (+11,000), and construction was down -7,000. The details inside the data are not as great as the top-line would presume.
CTH looks at alternative data connected to the overall economy; empirical data and sector specific trends inside industry. The biggest domestic issue is inflation, stunningly large increases in prices for fast-turn consumer goods like food and fuel. Inflation is one of the primary reasons we have stated home values and home sales have peaked on a MACRO level despite the massive amount of real estate investment purchasing underway by financial institutions.
When we look at durable good production, we focus on the primary drivers of higher cost middle-class or working class products. Seeing construction jobs decline by 7,000 at the same time real-estate values are increasing only points to the problem of working class not being able to afford new home purchases. In the real estate sector this is unsustainable; it is simply a matter of math, income stability and wages.
The same issue applies within the auto-manufacturing sector. Auto jobs were down -12,000 in June. Automotive manufacturing companies operate their production forecasts on short-term (6 month) and longer term (up to 5 year) analysis. The auto industry gets immediate (in real time) feedback throughout the supply chain, distribution and sales. They modify their employment quickly.
There are now 7,000 less construction workers and 12,000 less auto workers in June than May. This directly aligns with inflation and the substantial decline in real wages.
Additional confirmation of a weak blue-collar jobs situation shows up in work hours. In June “the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls declined by 0.2 hour to 34.1 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.) This is not a sign of a healthy, broad-based expanding economy.
25,000 day-care workers went back to work; that’s good. That reflects the service workers going back to work in leisure, hospitality, hotels, restaurants, bars, venues and other service driven sectors. However, even that gain of 25k is soft when you consider the scale of U.S. unemployment which was unmoved at 5.9%.
The top-line data looks good with 850,000 jobs created, but when you look at the “good jobs“, those jobs with higher blue-collar wage rates, the outlook is a little more concerning. Everyone is paying more for gasoline & food, and that hits the checkbook quickly. It’s not a matter of random statistics, look at the people around you, your family, friends and community…. what do you see?
We hear almost nothing about corporate investment expanding inside the U.S. economy from either foreign or domestic corporations. Wall Street earnings are being enhanced by the return to a ‘service driven economy‘, unfortunately that creates a bigger wealth gap between the working class and the investment class.
A while back you made mention that there was fear that the dollar would split. I believe this was in the 1970’s, soon after the anchor to gold was lost. If that is the case then it looks like gold reflected that lack of confidence and I wonder whether it really was oil or the lack of confidence that sent interest rates higher?
If the above is true, how can we determine lost confidence today with floating currencies and central banks buying so much sovereign debt? Is there something that will “give way” in your opinion that will be the tell tale sign?
E
ANSWER: Yes, the increased buying of debt by central banks will demonstrate that the appetite for sovereign debt has declined. This is a reflection of the shift from public to private investment. The collapse in confidence came when Jimmy Carter was elected president. Although a nice guy, he was seen as just incompetent. When Russia invaded Afghanistan, that shot gold up dramatically for fear of geopolitical events.
The OPEC price shock created inflation for everything that relied on cheap oil from car production to plastics. This set in motion a systemic wave of inflation as we are witnessing today thanks to the lockdowns which cut off supply routes. Volcker was fixated on inflation and the gold standard so he rose rates excessively to stop inflation but he failed to account for the fact that it would more than double the national debt due to higher interest expenditure. We are witnessing once again a systemic increase in inflation which is once more broad-based.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house June 26, 2021 | Sundance | 133 Comments
Several people have written to CTH for an economic review of our current status. Below this post are two primary precursor articles [Primary One and Primary Two] which outline the economic dynamic in play and how we can look forward with accuracy to what is likely to happen. Despite the deflective talking points by the professional financial pundits this massive spike in inflation is entirely predictable due to Biden economic policy and Biden monetary policy.
Keep in mind the FED has already said in April they would “support inflation” but that’s because while they will not say it openly they know there’s no way to stop it. The massive inflation is a direct result of the multinational agenda of the Biden administration; it’s a feature not a flaw, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with COVID. Also keep in mind the first group to admit what is to come are banks, specifically Bank of America, because the monetary policy is the cause.
There’s no way around this. Despite the pundit and financial class selling a counter-narrative, home prices will crash and unemployment will go up. I know this is directly against the current talking points, but the statistical reality is clear. CTH was the first place who said two months ago that home sales will plummet, that is starting to happen right now. There’s no way for it not to happen, the big picture tells us why.
You might remember when President Trump initiated tariffs against China (steel, aluminum and more), Southeast Asia (product specific), Europe (steel, aluminum and direct products), Canada (steel, aluminum, lumber and dairy specifics), the financial pundits screamed at the top of their lungs that consumer prices were going to skyrocket. They didn’t. CTH knew they wouldn’t because essentially those trading partners responded in the exact same way the U.S. did decades ago when the import/export dynamic was reversed.
Trump’s massive, and in some instances targeted, import tariffs against China, SE Asia, Canada and the EU not only did not increase prices, the prices of the goods in the U.S. actually dropped. Trump’s policies led the largest deflation in consumer prices in decades. At the same time Trump’s domestic economic policies drove employment and wages higher than any time in the past forty years. With Trump’s policies we were in an era where job growth was strong, wages were rising and consumer prices were falling… The net result was more disposable income for the middle class, more demand for stuff, and ultimately that’s why the U.S. economy was so strong.
♦Going Deep – To retain their position China and the EU responded to U.S. tariffs by devaluing their currency as an offset to higher prices. It started with China because their economy is so dependent on exports to the U.S.
China first started subsidizing the targeted sectors hit by tariffs. However, as the Chinese economy was under pressure they stopped purchasing industrial products from the EU, that slowed the EU economy and made the impact of U.S. tariffs, later targeted in the EU direction, more impactful.
When China (total communist control over their banking system) devalued their currency to avoid Tariff price increase, it had an unusual effect. The cost of all Chinese imports dropped, not just on the tariff goods. Imported stuff from China dropped in price at the same time the U.S. dollar was strong. This meant it took less dollars to import the same amount of Chinese goods; and those goods were at a lower price. As a result we were importing deflation…. the exact opposite of what the financial pundits claimed would happen.
In response to a lessening of overall economic activity, the EU then followed the same approach as China. The EU was already facing pressure from the exit of the U.K. from the EU system; so when the EU central banks started pumping money into their economy and offsetting with subsidies they essentially devalued the euro. The outcome for U.S. importers was the same as the outcome for U.S-China importers. We began importing deflation from the EU side.
In the middle of this there was a downside for U.S. exporters. With China and the EU devaluing their currency the value of the dollar increased. This made purchases from the U.S. more expensive. U.S. companies who relied on exports (lots of agricultural industries and raw materials) took a hit from higher export prices. However, and this part is really interesting, it only made those companies more dependent on domestic sales for income. With less being exported there was more product available in the U.S for domestic purchase…. this dynamic led to another predictable outcome, even lower prices for U.S. consumers.
From 2017 through early 2020 U.S. consumer prices were dropping. We were in a rare place where deflation was happening. Combine lower prices with higher wages and you can easily see the strength within the U.S. economy. For the rest of the world this seemed unfair, and indeed they cried foul – especially Canada.
However, this was America First in action. Middle-class Americans were benefiting from a Trump reversal of 40 years of economic policies like those that created the rust belt.
Industries were investing in the U.S. and that provided leverage for Trump’s trade policies to have stronger influence. If you wanted access to this expanding market those foreign companies needed to put their investment money into the U.S. and create even more U.S. jobs. This was an expanding economic spiral where Trump was creating more and more economic pies. Every sector of the U.S. economy was benefiting more, but the blue-collar working class was gaining the most benefit of all.
♦ REVERSE THIS… and you now understand where we are with inflation. The Joebama economic policies are exactly the reverse. The monetary policy that pumps money into into the U.S. economy via COVID bailouts and federal spending drops the value of the dollar and makes the dependency state worse.
With the FED pumping money into the U.S. system the dollar value plummets. At the same time JoeBama dropped tariff enforcement to please the Wall Street multinational corporations and banks that funded his campaign. Now the value of the Chinese and EU currency increases. This means it costs more to import products and that is the primary driver of price increases in consumer goods.
Simultaneously a lower dollar means cheaper exports for the multinationals (Big AG and raw materials). China, SE Asia and even the EU purchase U.S. raw materials at a lower price. That means less raw material in the U.S. which drives up prices for U.S. consumers. It is a perfect storm… Higher costs for imported goods and higher costs for domestic goods (food). Combine this dynamic with massive increases in energy costs from ideological policy and that’s fuel on a fire of inflation.
Annualized inflation is now estimated to be around 8 percent, and it will likely keep increasing. This is terrible for wage earners in the U.S. who are now seeing no wage growth and higher prices. Real wages are decreasing by the fastest rate in decades. We are now in a downward spiral where your paycheck buys less. As a result consumer middle-class spending contracts. Eventually this means housing prices drop because people cannot afford higher mortgage payments.
Gasoline costs more (+50%), food costs more (+10% at a minimum) and as a result real wages drop; disposable income is lost. Ultimately this is the cause of Stagflation. A stagnant economy and inflation. None of this is caused by COVID-19. All of this is caused by economic policy and monetary policy sold under the guise of COVID-19.
This inflationary period will not stall out until the U.S. economy can recover from the massive amount of federal spending. If the spending continues, the dollar continues to be weak, as a result the inflationary period continues. It is a spiral that can only be stopped if the policies are reversed…. and the only way to stop these insane policies is to get rid of the Wall Street democrats and republicans who are constructing them.
Hope that makes sense, and love to all.
~ Sundance
.
Be patient, be respectful, be kind and caring toward all. Don’t look for trouble. However, when the time comes to get in the fight, drop the moral approach and fight for your family with insane ferocity. Fight like you are the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s arc…. and damned if it ain’t starting to rain.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 26, 2021 | Sundance | 12 Comments
Reposting an earlier article by request as more people are starting to understand why CTH has focused on the financial motivations behind the political ideology for over a decade. It is critical that people understand the landscape. Underline it. Study it. Research the issues and teach everyone about it.
Consider if you will, the backdrop of current U.S. politics; the influence of Wall Street and the multinationals who align with globalism; the reality of K-Street lobbyists writing the physical legislation that politicians sell to Americans; and then overlay what you are witnessing as those same multinationals now attack the foundation of our constitutional republic. All of this is CORPORATISM, a continuum that people were ignoring for decades… Now, thankfully, there is a new awakening.
.
Positive debate on solutions and constructive criticism of approach is always appropriate for our elected officials; heck, that is the essence of our discussion. However, recently there have been many critics of President Trump; many people only just now understanding the problem and proclaiming that President Trump specifically did not do enough to block, impede, stop and counteract the globalist forces that were/are aligned against his effort to Make America Great Again.
Hindsight is 20/20, but there are people who proclaim that Donald J Trump should have been more wise in his counsel; more selective in his cabinet; more forceful in his confrontation of corporate globalists. Let me be clear….
I will never join that crew of Trump critics because I have understood his adversary for decades. CTH did not just come around to the understanding of the enemy. CTH has been outlining the scope of the enemy, the scale of the specific war and the financial and economic power of the opposition for over a decade. We understand the totality of the effort it will take to stop decades of willful blindness amid the American people. We also see with clear eyes exactly what they are doing now, even with President Trump forcefully removed from office, to destroy the threat he still represents.
Donald J Trump was/is a walking red-pill; a “touchstone”: a visible, empirical test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of anything political. I have been deep enough into the network of the Deep State to understand the scale and scope of this enemy. To think that President Trump alone could carry the burden of correcting four decades of severe corruption of all things political, without simultaneously considering the scale of the financial opposition, is naive in the extreme.
♦ POTUS Trump was disrupting the global order of things in order to protect and preserve the shrinking interests of the U.S. He was fighting, almost single-handed, at the threshold of the abyss. Our American interests, our MAGAnomic position, was/is essentially zero-sum. His DC and Wall-Street aligned opposition (writ large) needed to repel and retain the status-quo. They desperately wanted him removed so they could return to full economic control over the U.S, because it is the foundation of their power.
You want to criticize him for fighting harder against those interests than any single man has ever done before him? If so, do it without me.
I am thankful for the awakening Donald J Trump has provided.
I am thankful now for the opportunity to fight with people who finally understand the scale of our opposition.
Without Donald J Trump these entities would still be operating in the shadows. With Donald J Trump we can clearly see who the real enemy is.
In these economic endeavors President Trump was disrupting decades of financial schemes established to use the U.S. as a host for their endeavors. President Trump was confronting multinational corporations and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to the detriment of the host (USA) ie YOU. There are trillions at stake; it is all about the economics; everything else is chaff and countermeasures.
The road to a “service-driven economy” is paved with a great disparity between financial classes. The wealth gap is directly related to the inability of the middle-class to thrive.
Elite financial interests, including those within Washington DC, gain wealth and power, the U.S. workforce is reduced to servitude, “service”, of their affluent needs.
The destruction of the U.S. industrial and manufacturing base is EXACTLY WHY the middle class has struggled, and exactly why the wealth gap exploded in the past 30 years.
Behind this dynamic we find the international corporate and financial interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s “America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not, President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.
When we understand how trade works in the modern era we understand why the agents within the system are so adamantly opposed to U.S. President Trump.
♦The biggest lie in modern economics, willingly spread and maintained by corporate media, is that a system of global markets still exists.
It doesn’t.
Every element of global economic trade is controlled and exploited by massive institutions, multinational banks and multinational corporations. Institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank control trillions of dollars in economic activity.
Underneath that economic activity there are people who hold the reigns of power over the outcomes. These individuals and groups are the stakeholders in direct opposition to principles of America-First national economics. Collectively known as “The Big Club”.
The modern financial constructs of these entities have been established over the course of the past three decades. When you understand how they manipulate the economic system of individual nations you begin to understand why they are so fundamentally opposed to President Trump.
In the Western World, separate from communist control perspectives (ie. China), “Global markets” are a modern myth; nothing more than a talking point meant to keep people satiated with sound bites they might find familiar. Global markets have been destroyed over the past three decades by multinational corporations who control the products formerly contained within global markets.
The same is true for “Commodities Markets”. The multinational trade and economic system, run by corporations and multinational banks, now controls the product outputs of independent nations. The free market economic system has been usurped by entities who create what is best described as ‘controlled markets’.
U.S. President Trump understood what had taken place. He used economic leverage as part of a broader national security policy; and to understand who opposes President Trump specifically because of the economic leverage he creates, it becomes important to understand the objectives of the global and financial elite who run and operate the institutions. The Big Club.
Understanding how trillions of trade dollars influence geopolitical policy we begin to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to retain and protect.
That is, global financial exploitation of national markets.
FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS:
♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national outputs (harvests and raw materials), and ancillary industries, of developed industrial western nations. {example}
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks. (*note* in China it is the communist government underwriting the purchase)
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.
Against the backdrop of President Trump confronting China; and against the backdrop of NAFTA renegotiated; and against the necessary need to support the key U.S. steel and aluminum industries; revisiting the economic influences within the modern import/export dynamic will help conceptualize the issues at the heart of the matter.
There are a myriad of interests within each trade sector that make specific explanation very challenging; however, here’s the basic outline.
For three decades economic “globalism” has advanced, quickly. Everyone accepts this statement, yet few actually stop to ask who and what are behind this – and why?
Influential people with vested financial interests in the process have sold a narrative that global manufacturing, global sourcing, and global production was the inherent way of the future. The same voices claimed the American economy was consigned to become a “service-driven economy.”
What was always missed in these discussions is that advocates selling this global-economy message have a vested financial and ideological interest in convincing the information consumer it is all just a natural outcome of economic progress.
It’s not.
It’s not natural at all. It is a process that is entirely controlled, promoted and utilized by large conglomerates, lobbyists, purchased politicians and massive financial corporations.
Again, I’ll try to retain the larger altitude perspective without falling into the traps of the esoteric weeds. I freely admit this is tough to explain and I may not be successful.
Bulletpoint #1:♦ Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
This is perhaps the most challenging to understand. In essence, thanks specifically to the way the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995, national companies expanded their influence into multiple nations, across a myriad of industries and economic sectors (energy, agriculture, raw earth minerals, etc.). This is the basic underpinning of national companies becoming multinational corporations.
Think of these multinational corporations as global entities now powerful enough to reach into multiple nations -simultaneously- and purchase controlling interests in a single economic commodity.
A historic reference point might be the original multinational enterprise, energy via oil production. (Exxon, Mobil, BP, etc.)
However, in the modern global world, it’s not just oil; the resource and product procurement extends to virtually every possible commodity and industry. From the very visible (wheat/corn) to the obscure (small minerals, and even flowers).
Bulletpoint #2 ♦ The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
During the past several decades national companies merged. The largest lemon producer company in Brazil, merges with the largest lemon company in Mexico, merges with the largest lemon company in Argentina, merges with the largest lemon company in the U.S., etc. etc. National companies, formerly of one nation, become “continental” companies with control over an entire continent of nations.
…. or it could be over several continents or even the entire world market of Lemon/Widget production. These are now multinational corporations. They hold interests in specific segments (this example lemons) across a broad variety of individual nations.
National laws on Monopoly building are not the same in all nations. Most are not as structured as the U.S.A or other more developed nations (with more laws). During the acquisition phase, when encountering a highly developed nation with monopoly laws, the process of an umbrella corporation might be needed to purchase the targeted interests within a specific nation. The example of Monsanto applies here.
Bulletpoint #3 ♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
With control of the majority of actual lemons the multinational corporation now holds a different set of financial values than a local farmer or national market. This is why commodities exchanges are essentially dead.
In the aggregate the mercantile exchange is no longer a free or supply-based market; it is now a controlled market exploited by mega-sized multinational corporations.
Instead of the traditional ‘supply/demand’ equation determining prices, the corporations look to see what nations can afford what prices. The supply of the controlled product is then distributed to the country according to their ability to afford the price. This is essentially the bastardized and politicized function of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is also how the corporations controlling WTO policy maximize profits.
Back to the lemons. A multinational corporation might hold the rights to the majority of the lemon production in Brazil, Argentina and California/Florida. The price the U.S. consumer pays for the lemons is directed by the amount of inventory (distribution) the controlling corporation allows in the U.S.
If the U.S. lemon harvest is abundant, the controlling interests will export the product to keep the U.S. consumer spending at peak or optimal price. A U.S. customer might pay $2 for a lemon, a Mexican customer might pay .50¢, and a Canadian $1.25.
The bottom line issue is the national supply (in this example ‘harvest/yield’) is not driving the national price because the supply is now controlled by massive multinational corporations.
The mistake people often make is calling this a “global commodity” process. In the modern era this “global commodity” phrase is particularly nonsense.
A true global commodity is a process of individual nations harvesting/creating a similar product and bringing that product to a global market. Individual nations each independently engaged in creating a similar product.
Under modern globalism this process no longer takes place. It’s a complete fraud. Massive multinational corporations control the majority of production inside each nation and therefore control the global product market and price. It is a controlled system.
EXAMPLE: Part of the lobbying in the food industry is to advocate for the expansion of U.S. taxpayer benefits to underwrite the costs of the domestic food products they control. By lobbying DC these multinational corporations get congress and policy-makers to expand the basis of who can use Food Stamps, EBT and SNAP benefits (state reimbursement rates).
Expanding the federal subsidy for food purchases is part of the corporate profit dynamic.
With increased taxpayer subsidies, the food price controllers can charge more domestically and export more of the product internationally. Taxes, via subsidies, go into their profit margins. The corporations then use a portion of those enhanced profits in contributions to the politicians. It’s a circle of money.
In highly developed nations this multinational corporate process requires the corporation to purchase the domestic political process (as above) with individual nations allowing the exploitation in varying degrees. As such, the corporate lobbyists pay hundreds of millions to politicians for changes in policies and regulations; one sector, one product, or one industry at a time. These are specialized lobbyists.
It is ironic when we discuss corporate financial payments to government officials in foreign countries we call them corrupt. However, in the United States we call it lobbying, the process is exactly the same.
EXAMPLE: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
CFIUS is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.
CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800.
The CFIUS process has been the subject of significant reforms over the past several years. These include numerous improvements in internal CFIUS procedures, enactment of FINSA in July 2007, amendment of Executive Order 11858 in January 2008, revision of the CFIUS regulations in November 2008, and publication of guidance on CFIUS’s national security considerations in December 2008 (more)
Bulletpoint #4 ♦ With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.
The process of charging the U.S. consumer more for a product, that under normal national market conditions would cost less, is a process called exfiltration of wealth. This is the basic premise, the cornerstone, behind the catch-phrase ‘globalism’.
It is never discussed.
To control the market price some contracted product may even be secured and shipped with the intent to allow it to sit idle (or rot). It’s all about controlling the price and maximizing the profit equation. To gain the same $1 profit a widget multinational might have to sell 20 widgets in El-Salvador (.25¢ each), or two widgets in the U.S. ($2.50/each).
Think of the process like the historic reference of OPEC (Oil Producing Economic Countries). Only in the modern era massive corporations are playing the role of OPEC and it’s not oil being controlled, thanks to the WTO it’s almost everything.
Again, this is highlighted in the example of taxpayers subsidizing the food sector (EBT, SNAP etc.), the corporations can charge U.S. consumers more. Ex. more beef is exported, red meat prices remain high at the grocery store, but subsidized U.S. consumers can better afford the high prices.
Of course, if you are not receiving food payment assistance (middle-class) you can’t eat the steaks because you can’t afford them. (Not accidentally, it’s the same scheme in the ObamaCare healthcare system)
Agriculturally, multinational corporate Monsanto says: ‘all your harvests are belong to us‘. Contract with us, or you lose because we can control the market price of your end product. Downside is that once you sign that contract, you agree to terms that are entirely created by the financial interests of the larger corporation; not your farm.
The multinational agriculture lobby is massive. We willingly feed the world as part of the system; but you as a grocery customer pay more per unit at the grocery store because domestic supply no longer determines domestic price.
Within the agriculture community the (feed-the-world) production export factor also drives the need for labor. Labor is a cost. The multinational corps have a vested interest in low labor costs. Ergo, open border policies. (ie. willingly purchased republicans not supporting border wall etc.).
This corrupt economic manipulation/exploitation applies over multiple sectors, and even in the sub-sector of an industry like steel. China/India purchases the raw material, coking coal, then sells the finished good (rolled steel) back to the global market at a discount. Or it could be rubber, or concrete, or plastic, or frozen chicken parts etc.
The ‘America First’ Trump-Trade Doctrine upset the entire construct of this multinational export/control dynamic. Team Trump focused exclusively on bilateral trade deals, with specific trade agreements targeted toward individual nations (not national corporations).
‘America-First’ is also specific policy at a granular product level looking out for the national interests of the United States, U.S. workers, U.S. companies and U.S. consumers.
Under President Trump’s Trade positions, balanced and fair trade with strong regulatory control over national assets, exfiltration of U.S. national wealth is essentially stopped.
This puts many current multinational corporations, globalists who previously took a stake-hold in the U.S. economy with intention to export the wealth, in a position of holding contracted interest of an asset they can no longer exploit.
Perhaps now we understand better how massive multi-billion multinational corporations, and the political institutions they pay for, were/are aligned against President Trump; and they will never relent in their need to see the risk he/we represents destroyed.
I will never relent in my support for anyone who fights this enemy.
I will align with and encourage anyone who joins this fight.
If you are looking for criticism against the only person I have ever witnessed who actually fought our correct enemy, look elsewhere.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America