Slow Supertrend of Change and Chaos

[Tobeornot]

I just came back after being overseas, for 5 weeks with no US news or US Garbage mass media and then i watch this and all i can say is we are done for
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1JdUX ... el=FoxNews

[bpcw]

There is a 90% probability that we will allocate a significant sum of funds to help many kids once the situation cools down.

Total respect!

[Tobeornot]

Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West

In their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, nato as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world.

“Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is more than a collection of the usual tropes, Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, told me. Although it falls short of a formal alliance, like nato, the agreement reflects a more elaborate show of solidarity than anytime in the past. “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” Daly said. “This statement might be looked back on as the beginning of Cold War Two.” The timing and clarity of the communiqué—amid tensions on Russia’s border with Europe and China’s aggression around Taiwan—will “give historians the kind of specific event that they often focus on.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-co ... d-the-west

[deepthinker]

This speech from 2007 is quite interesting. It seems a lot of these things that Putin discussed is playing out today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6 ... erspective

[SOL]

It is now at a 5 year high to the Euro



USD to Rouble now below 60


The next move will be to price Oil and other commodities in Rouble. They are not messing around with their demand for payments in Rouble. Finland has been shut out now. Watch Finland's industries crumble if they don't find a cheap alternative. It's easy to find alternatives, but it all comes down to having some competitive advantage in this global landscape. With high wages and high energy costs, companies in Finland will have zero advantage and that is why Germany, Italy and France for all their big talk caved in and crumbled like cookies

[SOL]

My book “Super Imperialism” was about how the United States has gained a free lunch by establishing the dollar as international reserve currency by replacing gold. I also showed that the U.S. balance of payments deficit is almost entirely military related to support its 800 bases around the world. Ending the gold-exchange standard in 1971 created a situation in which the excess U.S. dollars thrown of by the U.S. payments deficit end up in foreign central banks.

For these central banks, the inflow of surplus dollars poses the problem of what do we do with them. Central banks don’t buy stocks and bonds, or control of corporations, because that is risky and also does not directly help their own economy. So central banks buy US Treasury bonds and bills – IOUs of the U.S. Government. For the United States, the money that is spent on running a balance-of-payments deficit on account of the military and on American investors buying Chinese stocks and Chinese companies, dollars are recycled back to the United States to buy US Treasury bonds.

That is how the U.S. balance of payments deficit serves to finance the domestic government budget deficit. The larger the U.S. balance of payments deficit grows as the U.S. spends more militarily and politically around the world, the more foreign central banks end up financing the domestic budget deficit.

That frees the United States Treasury from having to balance its budget to avoid having to borrow from US investors. More and more of the U.S. federal debt has been owed to foreign central banks. That means that foreign countries are, in effect, financing the costs of surrounding them(selves) with the 800 U.S. military bases. This enables the United States to make military threats, in case they cannot conquer you intellectually by making you follow the University of Chicago and IMF financialization policy.

Another reason not to use the dollar is to avoid taking the risk of being victimized in the way that the United States has treated Iran and other countries. U.S. strategists have threatened to isolate foreign banks from using the Swift bank-clearing system. They have imposed sanctions on European investors in the Nordstream gas pipeline, and had imposed unilateral penalties on other governments that do not favor U.S. investors.

The U.S. strategy is to control your economy in order to force you to sell your most profitable industrial sectors to US investors, to force you to invest in your industry only by borrowing from the United States.

So the question is, how do China, Russia, Iran and other countries break free of this U.S.
dollarization strategy? As now constituted, dollarization creates a circular flow that finances American military spending by forcing the costs onto foreign central banks holding dollars.

The solution obviously is to avoid using dollars in order to break free of American control of your economy. To do this, you have to have a non-Dollar currency. This currency alternative has to be large enough to have a critical mass, so that it can be used internationally. That’s why China, Russia, Iran and their allies are trying to create their own currency area, incorporating largely the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The aim is denominate your foreign trade, investment and government spending in your own currency.

It is necessary to break away not only from the U.S. dollar, but also from the International Monetary Fund. The objective of U.S. and IMF monetary policy is basically to make your economy much more expensive and inefficient than that of the United States. Its government runs a budget deficit and balance-of-payments deficit by creating its own money. It does not expect or intend to repay its debt. Other countries are to treat it as their own monetary backing, in place of gold.

But outside the United States, countries are told to finance their budget deficits by selling off whatever is in their public domain – namely, their land, real estate and natural resources, their commanding heights in the form of basic infrastructure and electric utilities.

The ideal the United States would like China to do is to let U.S. investors do to it what they did to Russia after 1991. They told Russia that it needed to back its domestic Ruble issues by holding an equivalent amount of U.S. dollars, in the form of private dollar loans or dollar-denominated U.S. Treasury securities. This involved borrowing dollars from the United States instead of simply issuing domestic rubles. Russia paid 100 percent interest a year to U.S. investors in 1993-1994.

Yet Russia did not have enough foreign exchange to pay domestic ruble-wages or to pay for domestic goods and services. But neoliberal advisors convinced Russia to back all Ruble money or domestic currency credit it created by backing it with U.S. dollars. Obtaining these dollars involved paying enormous interest to the United States for this needless backing. There was no need for such backing. At the end of this road the United States convinced Russia to sell off its raw materials, its nickel mines, its electric utilities, its oil reserves, and ultimately tried to pry Crimea away from Russia.

Suppose China would follow the U.S. plan. At a certain point it will be asked to sell off Macau and Hong Kong as a US military base. It will be advised to sell its information technology to the United States. And politically, U.S. diplomacy would like China to divide itself into three or four countries, starting with Xinjiang as a separate country. This divide-and-conquer strategy aims at carving up China, and it uses financial policy to do this.

The U.S. has discovered that it does not have to militarily invade China. It does not have to conquer China. It does not have to use military weapons, because it has the intellectual weapon of financialization, convincing you that you need to do this in order to have a balanced economy. So, when China sends its students to the United States, especially when it sends central bankers and planners to the United States to study (and be recruited), they are told by the U.S. “Do as we say, not as we have done.”

The United States is not telling China or Russia or third world countries or Europe how to get rich in the way that it did, by protective tariffs, by creating its own money and by making other countries dependent on it. The United States does not want you to be independent and self-reliant. The United States wants China to let itself become dependent on U.S. finance in order to invest in its own industry. It wants Chinese corporations to borrow from the United States, and to sell its stocks to US investors just like Khodorkovsky in Russia was trying to sell Yukos oil to Standard Oil, and essentially turn Russia’s oil reserves to U.S. investors.

The United States is trying to convince China that its tax system should be based on raising your cost of labour. The objective of the United States is to injure China, to make it a high-cost economy by imposing the value-added tax, a VAT, which will increase the cost of consumer goods. The aim of this anti-industrial tax policy is to make you pay your labor a high enough wage to afford to pay the taxes on consumer goods.

The United States could never pass such a tax domestically. There would be a revolution. The amazing thing is that there is no revolution in China. It and other countries have been gullible in accepting the logic of U.S. economists teaching the students you send over, hoping that they will draw up a plan for China along neoliberal lines.

The neoliberal plan is not to make you independent, and not to help you grow except to the extent that your growth will be paid to US investors or used to finance U.S. military spending around the world to encircle you and trying to destabilize you in Sichuan to try to pry China apart.

Look at what the United States has done in Russia, and at what the International Monetary Fund in Europe has done to Greece, Latvia and the Baltic states. It is a dress rehearsal for what U.S. diplomacy would like to do to you, if it can convince you to follow the neoliberal US economic policy of financialization and privatization.

De-dollarization is the alternative to privatization and financialization

https://michael-hudson.com/2020/01/note-to-china/

Resistance is never futile, for if you believe this then the only option is surrender and to live under the heel of a massive boot

[SOL]

https://youtu.be/GxnJ2ERO4jc

[outof thebox]

European Parliament backs sanctions against Germany's ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder


The European Parliament is urging sanctions against former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder because of his business and political ties to Russia.

The EU legislature passed a resolution on Thursday that said sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine should be extended "to the European members of the boards of major Russian companies and to politicians who continue to receive Russian money."

Schröder, who headed the German government from 1998 to 2005, now works for the pipeline company Nord Stream and Russia's Gazprom, and has been under fire for these ties.

German government cuts Schröder's privileges

The EU parliament's call for sanctions follows a decision by Berlin to cut back Schröder's special rights as an ex-chancellor.

Germany's coalition government of Schröder's party, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) on Wednesday put forward a proposal to strip him of his state-funded office and staff. These are part of the privileges allowing former chancellors to continue political work. "The budgetary committee observes that former Chancellor Schröder no longer carries out any duties that result from his former office," the proposal read.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/eu ... id/1865906
Soon they will start to sanction anyone that uses the word Russia. It seems like top members of ward12 are in charge of the den.

Here is another case of German short nearsightedness



The Germans were afraid of Moscow's reaction to Burbock's "Nazi words" about Russia


Supporters of the former chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Oscar La Fontaine, condemned the statement of Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock about Russia, since, in their opinion, it could have serious consequences for Berlin.

Lafontaine had previously compared Burbock's words about the "destruction of Russia" to "the language of Nazi Germany", stressing that such rhetoric might well have pleased the leaders of the Third Reich.

In the comments under the post of the ex-head of the SPD, the majority expressed the opinion that the policy of the German Foreign Ministry would not lead to anything good.
"Such threats only increase Russian hatred of Germany . This can have very dire consequences," wrote one of the commentators.

“I’m afraid to imagine what more troubles the Greens government will have time to do with our foreign policy before the end of their term,” said another.

"That's right, Burbock should be retired early for her statements," the user agreed.

The “Greens” have already done so much evil that we won’t recover even in decades,” the German said.
"Thank you, Mr. Lafontaine, at least one reasonable voice among other darkness," the former politician was supported


https://ria.ru/20220521/germaniya-17899 ... 1789331828

[outof thebox]

Anti-Russia Sanctions Are Backfiring On Europeans & Americans' Says Vladimir Putin
According to Russia's state-affiliated media RT, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a government meeting on Wednesday that western sanctions on Russia are a blow to the nation but they also affect the world economy. He said that those sanctions are backfiring on the Europeans and Americans through increasing prices for gasoline, energy, food, and job losses associated with the Russian market.

“As their weapons, [Western states] choose economic, financial, trade and other sanctions against Russia. They are now backfiring on the Europeans and Americans through rising prices for gasoline, energy, food, and job losses associated with the Russian market,” said Putin.

While speaking during the Government meeting, President Putin noted that the current situation is a lesson for Russian entrepreneurs, who should learn to choose partners wisely. He said them to keep in mind that 'there is nothing more reliable than investments at home'.

READ | Trudeau says Canada to sanction Putin, Lavrov & Belarus leadership over Russian invasion
"We see the position of those foreign companies that, despite the shameless pressure … continue to work in our country. In the future, they will certainly receive additional opportunities for development. We also know those who cowardly betrayed their partners, forgot about their responsibility to employees and clients in Russia and hurried to earn illusory dividends by participating in the anti-Russia campaign," Putin said, according to RT.

READ | Jurgen Klopp gives brutally honest verdict on Abramovich sanction; 'Putin is responsible'
He also said, 'Unlike Western countries' who were swift to freeze the assets of Russian companies, Russia would 'respect the right to property' of foreign businesses operating and working in Russia and abstain from nationalising their assets.

'Blow to our entire domestic economy': Putin on sanctions
The sanctions imposed by the US, EU, and their allies, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, are a premeditated 'hit to entire domestic economy, to social humanitarian sphere, to every family, every citizen of Russia'.

He stressed that it is 'a deliberate, long-term strategy [to] destabilise Russia' which had been planned long before Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine began, reported RT.

However, Putin also assured that Russia can stand up to the sanctions' coercion. He is determined that all national development goals for the country will be achieved by 2030

https://www.republicworld.com/world-new ... eshow.html

[nicolas]

Speaking of Change and Chaos, this seems like the appropriate thread for me to share this essay.

How the Stock Market Disappeared

A work of fiction. Or is it?

Perhaps someday we'll look back at 2022 and say with nostalgia “Ah, yes, this is the year it started…”

Has the stock market already started to disappear? Imperceptibly at first, and then suddenly.

Anyway, if you wanted to make a whole tenant of capitalism go the way of the dodo, how would you do it? What’s the magic trick?

Intriguing, right?

But first, why would someone, anyone, even want that to happen?

After all, consider the rich and powerful, the shadow players pulling the strings of entire governments, the nameless few behind the legal entities that already own and control most of the world’s wealth.

Who else? If anyone could pull that off, it’s them.

"But… but… don’t they benefit from the stock market?" you ask, "Aren’t they using it as a wealth transfer scam?"

Yes, they do.

But remember: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” It's not a secret. It's a roadmap.

Well, that applies to you too, sophisticated but insignificant investor.

And what’s the stock market if not a formidable mechanism by which people from all walks of life can become partial owners of the pillars of our economies?

You see, the problem with this sort of capitalism, it’s just that: everyone can end up owning something… Imagine that!

So, if because of this “free market” everyone can own something, how do we make sure they own nothing?

Because again, we don’t want that. “We” must own everything, so we must ensure that “you” cannot own anything. Everything and anything of value, that is.

* drumroll for the big reveal, please *

That’s why we’re taking public companies private… We own them, but now you can’t!

And that’s how you make a (partially) free (almost) public market disappear. Slowly, methodically, irresistibly.

First, you find ways to print mind-blowing amounts of fiat money.

While everyone’s distracted. That way, you know, minds do not actually get blown…

You make sure this money finds its way into the right pockets…

Then, you manufacture crisis after crisis so that “a group of billionaires” can come to the rescue of failing companies. Aren’t you glad you, the taxpayer, aren’t footing the bill this time?

Also, you plant red herrings left and right. And since you already control the media, it’s pretty easy to do.

As you may have guessed by now, this “Elon is buying Twitter” story isn’t about “protecting your free speech”, or “making the platform politically neutral”. It’s about taking a social media giant private, so you can’t own it, but we do.

It’s not a new trick though. It’s just getting more attention this time. Albeit for the wrong reasons.

Actually, some hedgies already see PE firms as a real threat to their returns:

“When I think of all the risks to an investment, PE take-overs are the concern that never gets enough attention. Too often, hedge funds are happy with the quick bump to returns, institutions do whatever ISS says and ETFs don’t even realize they own it. Meanwhile, my returns suffer.

I wish there was something more that could be done. I’m not in the mood to go fight every fight, but this tends to happen to me a few times a year. I’m positively sick of selling rapidly inflecting companies at low-single digit multiples and letting some PE fund pick my pockets.”

- Harris Kupperman, 03/08/2022 (link to source)

Expect this to happen more and more often.

Another trick that works wonders is to simply make up a reason to restrict small investors from trading certain securities.

*cough* Russian equities *cough* leveraged and inverse ETFs *cough*

Oh sure, the stock market won’t literally disappear. The casino will remain open for business. We’ll keep pocketing your stimulus cheques and stealing your pensions.

But the companies you’d really want to be a part-owner of…

Sorry, they’re ours now. And only ours.

[Yodean]

Oh sure, the stock market won’t literally disappear. The casino will remain open for business. We’ll keep pocketing your stimulus cheques and stealing your pensions.

But the companies you’d really want to be a part-owner of…

Sorry, they’re ours now. And only ours.

This has always been the case, in different ways. The PTBs, ultra-rich, etc. get their money in early on the best, promising projects. So, let's say they 999x their return, through private equity, early funding rounds, etc.

But they are very greedy - it's never enough. So a certain number of these projects IPO in the general stock markets at much higher prices, and retail investors and some institutions are FOMO'd into buying them. Price goes up, up.

The PTBs' previous 999x return now turns into 666,666x. Then they sell and distribute to the retail investors at tops, which they manufacture. Rinse and repeat with different projects, companies, SPACs, IPOs, etc.

As you posted, the process may also be reversed. But really the same storyline.

One of the reasons I have more faith in the equity markets than in the existence of Jesus or Allah is human nature being what it is, I suspect the stock markets will always be around.

It's a great mechanism for the elites to take money from the top 13% of the population and transfer it to the top 0.13%. Apparently, roughly 10% of the population own >90% of the equity markets (excluding real estate, I think).

[harryg]

Well I didn't want twitter anyway!

It's an interesting shift. Additionally, private companies aren't really answerable to anyone so they don't have those pesky shareholders telling them to invest in LED factories to offset their carbons.

But how do they cash out?

Private equity funds have always fascinated me. Had one for many years called Pantheon, perhaps I should look into them again. RCP also has a fair bit of private equity. Maybe more research needed.

[SOL]

Speaking of Change and Chaos, this seems like the appropriate thread for me to share this essay.

“When I think of all the risks to an investment, PE take-overs are the concern that never gets enough attention. Too often, hedge funds are happy with the quick bump to returns, institutions do whatever ISS says and ETFs don’t even realize they own it. Meanwhile, my returns suffer.

I wish there was something more that could be done. I’m not in the mood to go fight every fight, but this tends to happen to me a few times a year. I’m positively sick of selling rapidly inflecting companies at low-single digit multiples and letting some PE fund pick my pockets.”

- Harris Kupperman, 03/08/2022 (link to source)

Expect this to happen more and more often.

Another trick that works wonders is to simply make up a reason to restrict small investors from trading certain securities.

*cough* Russian equities *cough* leveraged and inverse ETFs *cough*

Oh sure, the stock market won’t literally disappear. The casino will remain open for business. We’ll keep pocketing your stimulus cheques and stealing your pensions.

But the companies you’d really want to be a part-owner of…

Sorry, they’re ours now. And only ours.

We are moving from 90 per cent of individuals that lose to 10 per cent that win to 96 to 99 per cent lose to 1 to 3 per cent win ratio. This always happens when the printing press goes out of control. And the follow-up story i will post signifies how the landscape is changing as some countries are taking a firm stand

So how will they achieve this? Besides what Nicolas posted they will win this using the battle of the trenches method. Push stocks to levels that you will assume they can never recoup before pushing them up again. if a stock can go from 1 to 10 and 10 to 3, why can't it go from 3 to 9 or even 15.

[SOL]

Well I didn't want twitter anyway!

It's an interesting shift. Additionally, private companies aren't really answerable to anyone so they don't have those pesky shareholders telling them to invest in LED factories to offset their carbons.

But how do they cash out?

Private equity funds have always fascinated me. Had one for many years called Pantheon, perhaps I should look into them again. RCP also has a fair bit of private equity. Maybe more research needed.

Make it public again, so sell portions to other twits oops i meant investors

[SOL]

Putin Ties Grain Exports to Demand That Sanctions on Russia Go

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’s willing to facilitate grain and fertilizer exports as global concern mounts about food shortages and rising prices -- but only if sanctions on his country are lifted.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-ti ... 22863.html

As Vladimir Putin’s invasion approached the 100-day mark, Russian oil exports loaded onto tankers has reached a record, with most shipments headed to India or China as other nations impose restrictions. China’s oil-trading giant Unipec has increased the number of hired tankers shipping crude from eastern Russia fivefold in May from a month ago.


Between 74 million and 79 million barrels from the OPEC+ producer were in transit and floating storage over the past week, more than double the 27 million barrels just before the February invasion of Ukraine, according to Kpler. Asia overtook Europe as the largest buyer of Russian oil for the first time in April, and that gap is set to widen in May.

The sharp jump in Russian oil in transit by sea underscores how the global energy trade has been thrown into turmoil by the invasion, with US, UK and many EU companies turning their backs on its cargoes and Moscow looking for buyers in Asia. China and India have snapped up millions of barrels to take advantage of hefty discount

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine- ... 40536.html

Next Russia will weaponize oil and almost all their commodities by pricing them in the rouble. This will make the rouble stronger, which will give them a reason to lower rates more and more without affecting the rouble that much. On a chart, the Rouble will be trending upwards and that is all it takes to attract new investors. However being able to lower rates will result in more investment, which in turn will allow them to lower rates even more. So what you will have is a vicious cycle of strength as opposed to loss. At some point I believe rates in Russia could drop well below 6% and the Rouble at that point could be trading in the 45 to 55 ranges. It's a win-win long term plan for Russia.