Homebuilder Confidence Survey Records Largest Drop in History Sans Pandemic


Posted originally on the conservative tree on July 18, 2022 | Sundance

As expected, the latest National Association of Home Builders survey [Data Here] shows the July confidence opinion of industry professionals now reflects the largest single month drop in the history of the survey (removing pandemic impact).

On a macro level, home values peaked in April/May and have been dropping ever since.  Mortage rates have increased borrowing costs and inflation is squeezing home buyers out of their savings and/or down payment.  Home sales have stalled in multiple regions and the prices of existing homes for sale are dropping, quickly.  Many home building contracts are being cancelled and builders are now dropping prices in order to retain prior sales.

(Via Forbes) – […]  Builder confidence in the market for new homes posted its seventh consecutive monthly decline in July, falling 12 points to 55 for its second-biggest single-month drop in history, according to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index released Monday.

[…] In emailed comments, Pantheon Macro chief economist Ian Shepherdson said confidence has “further to fall,” noting that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last month alluded to the housing market’s “complicated situation,” saying potential home buyers “need a bit of a reset” as mortgage rates normalize at higher levels after remaining historically low during the pandemic.

“This is a meltdown,” says Shepherdson, noting home prices should soon start to drop and warning: “Pretty soon, anyone who has bought a home in recent months will be sitting on a loss.”  (read more)

Percentage of Buyer Contract Cancellations in last 30 days

Battle Lines Being Drawn – Mike Pence Endorses Karrin Robson in Arizona, President Trump Endorses Kari Lake, Dueling Campaign Events Friday


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 18, 2022 | Sundance 

While the ranks of the MAGA rebel alliance continue to grow, it is obvious how the UniParty empire is striking back. On the presidential side of Republican politics, the Wall Street crowd are positioning their candidates:

The open-border GOPe crowd (Koch Inc.) have already put Kristi Noem into play with a book release and well financed marketing team. The foreign policy interventionist GOPe crowd (AIPAC lobby) are funding Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo respectively.  The GOPe white wine spritzer crowd (inside donor class) are funding the explorations of Mike Pence.  And the GOPe Wall Street hedge funds (political insurance experts and short sellers) are betting other people’s money on Ron DeSantis.

There will likely be other fish, but for now that’s the inside crew being financially fed by those who run the Republican Club.  Inside the death star, Decepticon Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOPe beltway control agents have contracted for the 2024 reupholstery of the club’s leather chairs, and the mahogany table is being refinished to remove scratches from the crystal brandy glasses that were slammed and shattered in prior bouts of UniParty frustration.

From the perspective of Republican club control, the MAGA rebellion must be crushed at all costs. Control over the mid-term outcome, which may include the intentional losing of key races in order to ensure full retention of club control, now heads into the championship rounds.  Mike Pence will lead the current fight in the battleground of Arizona, where the republican club cannot –and will not– permit the MAGA rebellion to interfere with their larger responsibility for open-borders and cheap labor migration.

There are trillions at stake. [Please note my emphasis below]

Washinton Post – PHOENIX — Former vice president Mike Pence is endorsing Arizona gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson, a developer who has long been involved in Republican politics, instead of former president Donald Trump’s chosen candidate, Kari Lake.

[…]  The endorsement illustrates the division in the party between Trump supporters who value loyalty to him over all else and those who want to move on from endlessly litigating the 2020 election, including those who are grateful that Pence and other Republicans blocked Trump’s attempts to overturn the results. Trump and Pence, who are each thinking about running for president in 2024, both plan to be in Arizona on Friday to campaign for their chosen candidates ahead of an Aug. 2 primary.

Pence called Taylor Robson “the best choice for Arizona’s future” in a statement provided to The Washington Post.” (more)

Well, obviously, because all the best republicans provide advanced notice of intent to The Washington Post.  [[ insert massive eyeroll here ]]

Successful republican club politics always involves the illusion of choice.

Republican party candidates, those funded by the various mechanisms that eventually all lead back to Wall Street and the multinational banking and finance interests of the professional donor class, are more akin to Russian matryoshka nesting dolls.   Remove the top of one doll and the doll underneath is an exact duplicate, only smaller.  Keep removing them and eventually you get to the least visible doll, the one easiest to control, which is the one that all others are created to hide.

Pence is the biggest and most visible DeceptiCon in the republican club’s matryoshka operation.

I suspect Noem and/or DeSantis will be the doll we will find after all the other club masks fall.

Estonia Forms New Government


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union Re-Posted Jul 18, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Yet another shake-up among Schwab’s leaders. Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas stepped down from her role on a technicality before being reappointed a day later. Kallas’ Reform Party reached an agreement with the Social Democrats and Isamaa Party to form a new three-party coalition.

Estonia shares a 180-mile border with Russia and has strongly supported Ukraine before the war began. Estonia is a small nation with a population of around 31 million and a GDP of $36.29 billion USD. Their inflation rate is among the highest in Europe after spiking to 22% in June.

Estonia has a large Russian population but has the comfort of being a NATO nation. The new government is aiming to eliminate their Russian ties by banning Russian from being spoken in school. Russians and Belarusians now have a more difficult time immigrating to Estonia or even traveling there without a visa.

Estonia is cracking down on potential spies or intelligence agencies at the border. The poster above has appeared around the border, with the government encouraging people to turn in anyone who they suspect is involved with Russian intelligence agencies. Kallas also has the epigenetic fear of her neighbor as her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were once deported to Siberia. The small nation will use its strategic position to help the West’s proxy war, and Kallas herself said that negotiating a peace deal with Putin is off the table.

For us, it is important to not make that mistake again like we did in Crimea, Donbas, Georgia,” she said. “We have done the same mistake already three times saying that, you know, negotiations, negotiated peace is the goal. … The only thing that Putin hears from this is that ‘I can do this because no punishment will follow.’”

Australia’s Rental Crisis


Armstrong Economics Blog/Australia & Oceania Re-Posted Jul 18, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Renters across the globe are in a bad spot as housing has become unaffordable. The situation is particularly bad in Australia where rentals have reached a high not seen since 2009. As of March, the average rental was A$600 per week, surpassing the mid-2018 high of A$550. The is not enough supply to meet demand.

Housing availability dropped by nearly 50% from December 2021 to March 2022. The situation worsened once borders reopened as visa holders and tourists re-entered the nation. The vacancy rate, according to the CBD, has declined to 1.5% after peaking at 5.7% during the pandemic.

Some estimate that the “economic time bomb” of under-investment in affordable housing will cost taxpayers A$25 billion per year by 2051. Housing All Australians founder Rob Pradolin believes this figure is closer to A$110 billion, and believes a $55 billion investment could deliver a 2:1 cost-benefit ratio. At least 2 million Australian low-income households will be under “housing stress” by 2051. That is an optimistic forecast.

Similar to America, the UK, and many other nations, shelter inflation has caused housing costs to become one of the biggest budget expenses.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of being out of touch by suggesting Australians simply buy a house. That is simply not possible for many, especially after the government-imposed lockdowns and shuttered countless businesses during COVID. Morrison has suggested allowing people to access their super (similar to pensions) early in order to purchase a home. Superannuation Minister Jane Hume said that this would result in rising home prices. Labor leader Anthony Albanese also criticized the plan by calling it a desperate “attack on future savings” and future generations. “If you take super away from people, then you’ll have higher deficits and bills from the government in the future,” he told reporters.

Oddly enough, Mr. Morrison vacated his own home, branded “Squat Morrison,” after losing the election to Albanese and taking his time leaving the property.

Unfortunately, Albanese has a worse plan in mind. Low-income residents will have the opportunity to buy a home, with the help of Big Brother government. The government will pay between 30% to 40% of total housing costs for 10,000 buyers annually. Instead of paying back the banks, the people must pay the government back if they can afford to do so.

You will own nothing and be happy.

Inflation – Real Estate – Chaos


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gold RePosted Jul 17, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: I thought you were just a Trumper warning what would happen if Biden won. I have come back to your site because I can see inflation approaching 10% as you said and the dollar is rising which made no sense as gold stalled. I think you also said that real estate will decline perhaps into 2023. Has there ever been such a wild combination of events?

Thanks

Pete

ANSWER: It gives me no pleasure to deliver such forecasts. They are NEVER my personal opinion. In all honesty, it truly takes a computer to sort out all the global trends. Personal opinions will not cut it when you enter a period that has not unfolded in a very long time.

I have told the story before that back in 1985 when we were going to open our first office in Europe, I went to lunch with one of the heads of a Swiss bank when I was there. I had a list of names we came up with like European Advisers or something like that because I knew there was a lot of anti-Americanism in Europe. He asked me to name one European analyst. I could not. I was embarrassed but he said there were none.

He then explained that everyone was using our firm on currency because “You do not give a shit if the dollar goes up or down.” He elaborated that in Europe if any analyst ever said their currency would decline it would have been seen as treason since the politicians had used currency to prove they did a good job rebuilding Europe after the war.

I learned many years ago, that the only way to operate was to call the shots as they unfold. My personal opinion means nothing. I cannot make a market rise when its trend is down. I am here to simply deliver what the computer projects. No matter how loud I could scream, it does not matter. What will be – will be.

Real Estate is undergoing three separate trends. First, there has been mass evacuation from cities and high-taxed states thanks also to draconian COVID laws. Secondly, we have the flight of capital to flee banks, etc which is part of just getting capital off the grid. Then thirdly, there has been a flight of international capital fleeing to the United States because of geopolitical instability in Europe.

The standard claim is that real estate will drop by 50% all because of interest rates pointing to some cities declining by 4% in June alone. This is merely confusing the people for they are looking at only the big cities that are already in decline for a separate reason from interest rates.

The claim that interest rate hikes imply that real estate will decline is very old school and once more it presumes everyone is buying on leverage. In 2021, cash sales represented 25% of existing home sales in the key markets that were a level unmatched since 2016. Nationally, buyers paid cash for almost 15% of the homes in 2021 in markets that were booming from migration from other states.

Florida, the Tampa market was even hotter. Single-family homes saw 45.5% more buyers paid cash than in 2020. The number of condo buyers paying cash went up 33.2%. While more people paid cash, the inventory dropped, with 29.2% fewer active listings of single-family homes in the 2021 third quarter than in 2020. Condo listings dropped even more, at 52.2% fewer available. Speaking to a local realtor, houses in excess of $1 million in the Tampa area were 95% cash deals.

This market has been LESS impacted by interest rate hikes than any previous booming market all because of the migration from interstate within the US and the flood of European buyers looking for assets outside of Europe as war keeps getting closer and closer. I have warned that real estate will decline in those states where people are fleeing. It has boomed in places they have been migrating to such as Texas and Florida. Obviously, you can no longer make a blanket forecast in real estate. Then there has been Blackrock which has bought over 20,000 homes in Florida in the lower-end of the market for cash.

I have warned many times that the standard nonsense that gold rises with inflation has been a sales pitch as trustworthy as a used car salesman. Gold rises during the collapse in the confidence of the government. Everyone will respond based on their own currency.  As the dollar rises, gold has declined in US$, but the pattern will be different for every other currency.

Ukraine Cargo Plane Crashed in Greece Carrying 11 Tons of Bombs, Mortars and Landmines to Bangladesh


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 17, 2022 | Sundance

If I had to hazard a guess about what this was, I’d say it is most likely: (a) part of the massive Ukrainian stores of mortars and landmines in eastern Ukraine that were moved in order to keep the Russians from capturing them; or (b) the actual arms that were captured by Russian and then sold on the world arms market.   Either way, somehow, they end up as part of an arms deal from Serbia to Bangladesh.

With the new and improved western weapons provided by the United States, Ukraine is likely upgrading and selling their old weapons to various nefarious arms dealers.

This shipment happened to crash, and that’s the only reason we are hearing about it.

(Via Daily Mail) –  Soldiers in hazmat suits searched for signs of nuclear and chemical substances at the crash site of a Ukrainian cargo plane transporting nearly a dozen tons of mortar shells and land mines.

The Antonov An-12 light aircraft, which was transporting the weapons from Serbia to Bangladesh, had eight Ukrainian crew members onboard. They were all killed. 

An official at Kyiv cargo operator Meridian told Reuters: ‘Of course they didn’t survive this.’  Eyewitnesses filmed the fireball crash in the early hours today, with explosions continuing for two hours and the charred wreckage burning until morning.

Drone images from the scene showed debris from the bulking aircraft strewn in fields.  Serbia’s defense minister said the plane was carrying 11.5 tonnes of products made by its defense industry and the buyer was Bangladesh defense ministry.   Greek authorities could not provide any more information on the aircraft’s cargo. (more)

Previously Russia was reporting to have captured a massive Ukranian military weapons cache near Kharkov (northeastern Ukraine).  I wrote about it HERE.  However, the video (partial screengrab below) was quickly removed by the internet police.

The doomed weapons shipment supposedly originated from Serbia, so the original source could be either Ukraine or Russia.  Who knows?  Amid all of the propaganda, Ukraine corruption and furious U.S. arms shipments into Ukraine, there are multiple sketchy participants likely involved in selling the arms on the global black market.

FUBAR

Texas House Committee Releases Interim Report on Uvalde School Shooting, Press Conference and Link to Report


Posted originally on the conservative tree house July 17, 2022 | Sundance

The families of the Uvalde Robb Elementary school shooting victims met privately Sunday with a Texas House committee who released an interim report on the events that took place.  [Link to 77-Page Report Here] Following that private meeting the committee held a press conference where they spoke about the report and took questions.

The committee, led by State Rep. Dustin Burrows, shared what they learned as they looked into the school shooting.  “If there’s only one thing that I can tell you is there were multiple systemic failures. I would invite everyone to read the entire report,” Burrows said at the press conference. “You cannot cherry-pick one sentence and use it to say everything without reading and without context. But if we need a simple phrase to describe what the report says, again I would tell you multiple systemic failures.”  WATCH:

Interim Report Here

Whatever Happened to the Information of The DNC Law Firm Having an FBI Search Portal in Their DC Office?


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 17, 2022 | Sundance 

On May 31st, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made an explosive announcement as an outcome of a whistleblower providing information to him and Jim Jordan.  The claim was the FBI held a collaborative relationship with the Clinton/DNC law firm Perkins Coie. {Go Deep} Specifically, the explosive element surrounded the FBI having a workspace within the DNC law firm that would give Democrats an open portal into FBI databases for political opposition research.

Additionally, formerly indicted Clinton campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, was reportedly in charge of this arrangement within Perkins Coie for the past year.  Obviously, the potential ramifications from this joint collaboration are vast.  However, have you noticed that not a single media outlet has followed up on the claim?

Generally, in Washington DC when the media ignores an issue, especially a major issue with large consequences; and doesn’t even attempt to snarkily debunk an explosive claim or belittle the person bringing the information; it’s usually because the claim itself has merit and the DC defenders do not want to give it any fuel for further discussion or awareness. {Direct Rumble Link}

So, what happened?

Essentially, what is being claimed is that a portal exists into FBI databases within the law firm that represents democrats.  This means access to FBI database searches exists inside the office of the DNC and Clinton legal group.  Think about the ramifications here.

If the whistleblower claim is accurate, the FBI can exploit the NSA database to conduct searches of all cell phone, computer, email, text message, social media, electronic communication and all private data/communication belonging to Americans; this would include geolocation.  If the FBI was operating within Perkins Coie since 2012, then the democrats have held access to fully intrusive electronic surveillance of their political opposition, or anyone else – anywhere, for a decade.

The FBI and DNC law firm working collaboratively on issues of joint importance goes far beyond the ‘image of impropriety or conflicted interest‘ and extends to the actual corruption within the foundational institutions of government.

Transparently, if these reports are accurate all of the inexplicable dynamics within the “two tiers of justice” suddenly reconcile.  The FBI and Perkins Coie having the ability to conduct electronic surveillance of any target is a major level of sunlight, that would reconcile years of visible issues.

Where is the follow-up?

CTH has long claimed there was some kind of direct portal link between the Clinton campaign team and the FBI databases.  There were too many trails of extracted non-minimized research evidence in the hands of the Clinton team that CTH could not trace to a transferring FBI official.  If Perkins Coie operated a portal in their office that allowed them to conduct search queries of American citizens, then everything would make sense.  That access portal is exactly what is being claimed and admitted in this report.

The start date of 2012 is important for several reasons, not the least of which is FISA presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer criticizing the scale and scope of unlawful FBI database access going back to exactly 2012.  Keep in mind a FISA-702 search, is simply an unlawful FBI warrantless electronic search of an American (“702” represents the American citizen) into the central database -maintained by the NSA- that contains all electronic data and communication.

I have been in the deep hole of the FISA-702 database search query violations for so long I don’t even need a flashlight.

The report from Matt Gaetz about Perkins Coie access to FBI databases, is in direct alignment with Rosemary Collyer’s prior report on FBI abuses of the database, 702 violations.  Notice the dates and scope Judge Collyer references [Source Link].

Non-compliant queries since 2012.

85% of the FBI and contractor searches are unlawful.

Many of those searches involved the use of the “same identifiers over different data ranges.”  Put in plain terms, the same people were continually being tracked, searched and surveilled by querying the FBI database over time.

The non-compliant searches go back to 2012.  The same date mentioned for the FBI portal to begin operating inside the Perkins Coie office.

This specific footnote is a key.  Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.

Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.

Summary: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation.  When the DOJ use of the IRS for political information on their opposition became problematic, the Obama administration needed another tool.  It was in 2012 when they switched to using the FBI databases for targeted search queries.

This information from Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz had the potential to be extremely explosive.  However, the absence of any follow-up reporting, or even debunking from the traditional guardians of the DC swamp is weird.  What’s going on?

I wrote about these suspicions in depth throughout 2017, 2018 and eventually summarized in 2019:

SEE HERE.

Terrorists Being Allowed Into The USA? (Ep. 1803) – The Dan Bongino Show


The Dan Bongino Show  Published published originally on Rumble on July 7, 2022

In this episode, I address the ongoing economic meltdown, and the puzzling response by the Biden Administration.

Neil Oliver Outlines the Foolish Pantomime of U.K. Politics as the Candidates for Prime Minister Keep Pretending


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 16, 2022 | Sundance 

While Neil Oliver is describing the insufferable lack of political leadership amid the conservative party in the U.K, almost every point of his weekly monologue could just as easily apply to the United States or any other “western democracy.”   The current candidates to replace Boris Johnson are just an extension of the high-minded political class who are pretending to be different, yet they are identical in their globalist outlooks.

….”always the same lines from one leader after another – great reset, build back better, rules based liberal order. The theatrical parallels just keep coming – soap opera, pantomime, now a chorus line of high kicking dancers in perfect time.”…

Oliver asks simple, albeit frustratingly and brutally obvious, questions about what is missing in the candidates who are asking to become the next British Prime Minister.  Where is the candidate who represents the issues that matter, the one who isn’t playing a role in a never-ending soap opera that generates nothing except more drama to keep everyone distracted.

Neil Oliver’s points could just as easily be talking about the United States republican party, where almost every elected official is quite happily playing their acting role in the political soap opera, yet no one is doing anything to stop the insane policies that are destroying the foundation of life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness. WATCH:

[Transcript] – The race for the leadership of the Conservative Party is a farce. Like a soap opera, it is no more than another distraction, something to take our minds off what’s really important in the world. It’s not just a Conservative Party problem, of course.

Across the political spectrum it is the same – a wholesale absence of truth – not their truth, the good old fashioned truth. They might be describing themselves as rival camps – Tory, Labour, Liberal – but where it matters, they’re all on the same page of the same script, written by someone else and delivered to them one page at a time.

Whoever ends up with the leading role, in Number 10 Downing Street this time, they intend for the show to go on, week after week and year after year. Old characters will be written out and new characters will fill in the gaps.

It seemed like madness to me – encouraging belief in a fiction. Anyway, for that reason among others, but mostly because I had more to do, I stopped watching. That was the soaps, of course. More recently I’ve realized the drama of Westminster is even less believable. Westminster is a pantomime. I turned off the soaps and more recently I have turned off Westminster.

Now we’ve reached that recurrent moment of whipped up and confected high drama in any soap, that the writers, journalists among them, evidently really enjoy – like a fire, or a plane crash, or a murder. It’s the leadership race.

I watched as much as I could bear of the televised debate the other night, which was about five minutes. God help us all, they’re not even good actors. I’m prepared to accept that one or two might have their hearts in the right place, or near enough – might honestly still genuinely be labouring under the misapprehension that parliament is a place where important decisions are made. There are therefore moments of apparent sincerity now and again. For the most part, the rest of them just phoned in their performances.

In the manner of a soap opera, or a panto, the plot moves on so fast you could break your neck keeping up with it. Most alarming and dispiriting for those of us with any kind of memory of plot lines just past, is the way the disaster of the last two years has been dismissed as though it never happened. Already we’re being offered a re-run, a repeat of an old series, all about five pence cuts on fuel duty and no mention at all of self-inflicted financial Armageddon.

Where, I want to know, is the candidate who will stand up and take some responsibility for the collective decision and disaster that was lockdown? Where is the candidate who will stand up and admit what we all know – what has been acknowledged across the board by economists, medics and a slew of other professionals – that lockdown was the most disastrous public policy decision of modern times? Most importantly of all, where is the candidate who will stand up and promise that while he or she is in Number 10, on no account will lockdown or anything remotely like lockdown be inflicted upon the people of these islands?

Where is the candidate who will speak out about what matters to the lives of people who live not on a stage or on a set, but in the real world? Where is the candidate who will declare that while she or he is in Downing Street, there will be no compulsory Digital IDs or vaccine passports or anything of the sort? Where is the candidate who will vow to protect the existence of real cash as the vital off ramp and alternative to any Digital Currency, programmable or otherwise?

Where is the candidate who will admit that the injections foisted upon billions of people around the world did not and do not work as advertised – cannot reasonably be described as vaccines because they do not prevent getting or transmitting the illness in question, getting sick with or dying from the illness in question? Where is the candidate who will declare that honest truth?

Where is the candidate who will say that while he or she is in office, there will be no mandated medical procedures for any man, woman or child?

Where is the candidate who will say that a woman is an adult human female, born that way? Where is the candidate who said that all along?

Where is the candidate who will say what we all know to be true – that the Green Agenda, Agenda 2030, Net Zero and the rest are the products of crippling stupidity that are already causing misery, and that can only cause much, much more misery in the months and years ahead if someone doesn’t find the brakes on this runaway train?

Where is the candidate who will stand up say it’s summer – and that for as long as there have been summers on this planet Earth, there have been some days, even here in these islands, that are uncomfortably hot? Where is the candidate who remembers when the TV weather maps used to have little celebratory suns dotted around them, instead of the islands coloured dark red as though on the point of bursting into flames at the same temperatures holiday makers jump on jet planes and head south in hope of finding and enjoying?

People’s lives and livelihoods are being destroyed – or shortly will be destroyed – unless someone is brave enough to admit that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. For as long as all the candidates just clap along with the rest of the wilfully blind – those that see the obvious and yet refuse to say so – then the cost of lockdown crisis will only deepen until none but the self-defined elite are clear of the rising floodwater.

I say that’s the least we might hope for, because it is my heartfelt belief that calling out the fiction of our present parliament is as much as any candidate might do for now. The meaningful decisions are taken elsewhere – by The City of London, by bankers, by the CEOs of planet-spanning corporate entities like Vanguard and Black Rock, by the place men fronting transnational NGOs – Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, the WHO, the UN.

You don’t even have to subscribe to the idea of a one world government to acknowledge that our elected representatives are trumped by the agendas of big business and bigger banks in control of the world’s money supply. That our small fry are swimming in water dominated by whales and sharks who tell them what’s what is made plain by their use of language – always the same lines from one leader after another – great reset, build back better, rules based liberal order. The theatrical parallels just keep coming – soap opera, pantomime, now a chorus line of high kicking dancers in perfect time.

In the real world – the world we are discouraged from watching – farmers are rising in rebellion all across Europe – in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Italy, in Poland and many other places besides. Others are rising in support – the people of those countries, the truckers, the firemen.

These are real lives, real fightbacks against real imminent disasters, but we are supposed to look away and to be satisfied instead by watching to see who next warms her or his behind on the seat at the desk in Number 10 – anxiously opening the email every day that delivers the latest script – will he or she be written out next?

On the other side of the Atlantic is a soap opera that couldn’t be broadcast over here until after the watershed. President Joe Biden has to carry a cheat sheet to remind him of the script he can’t even remember from moment to moment. He has Ron Burgundy moments – Ron Burgundy, the legendary fictional news reader from the movie Anchor Man – who will read whatever is on the autocue, including his minders’ instructions about which lines to repeat for emphasis.

And then there’s the utterly compelling car crash role in the soap opera currently being performed by Biden’ own son, Hunter, not that we’re meant to tune in to that particular drama. Every day social media carries clips – apparently culled from that laptop of his, the one we’re still not supposed to know about, far less talk about – of a naked Hunter Biden, handgun in hand, or with prostitutes, or counting and weighing rocks of crack cocaine. Every time a clip is circulated, the social media platforms take them down. And then another crops up. And all the while Hunter is still at large, at events in plain view, at which the US media sees him and simply leaves him be, no questions asked either about his dodgy deals in China, Russia and Ukraine.

If we’ve got Downing Street, or The Only Way is Westminster, our cousins stateside seem to have Breaking Baddest.

I ask again – where is the candidate who will say that the sickness we need to talk about is the ideology that has infected all of our institutions, our politics, our schools, our universities, our civil service, our judiciary – the whole damned lot? Where is the candidate who will concede that we need to start again with fresh alternatives to those institutions that are beyond fixing, terminal cases?

Here is what’s needed. Here is the truth as I see it: the truckers who rose in Canada … the farmers rising in the Netherlands and across Europe … the people of Sri Lanka casting out their president … all of those are simply real people, flesh and blood with real lives, livelihoods, families, hopes and dreams, a sense of their own dignity and sovereignty.

Power belongs with the people, with us. What is wrong – and what more and more people are understanding is wrong – is control imposed upon people by corrupt institutions that long ago seized control of the creation of money.

The beginning and end of all that’s wrong now depends upon the people, the real people, regaining that control. This means remembering that governments exist to do what we tell them, not the other way around. We need a government that understands as much and that furthermore takes back control of money. Not the fantasy money banks create from nowhere and that doesn’t exist, anyway, until we pay it back with interest. I am talking about money that represents and is made real by its connection to the real wealth of the nation – its natural assets and, most of all, the creative potential of the people. Here in sovereign Britain that might be hundreds of trillions of pounds of debt-free money, unsullied by bankers’ hands.

What we’re being told and shown now … we’ve seen and heard it all before – delivered by better actors and dancers. Surely it’s time for the unalloyed truth – no fiction and no pretense. The honest truth delivered from the heart by someone real who properly cares about the people. Surely there are better songs to sing. (link)