The Greek Ministry of Tourism announced on Thursday afternoon that all hotels which operate on a 12-month basis will be forced to shut down until April 30. Source: Greekreporter
Author: Board
The total topped all but one estimate in Bloomberg’s survey and may be poised to surge into the millions next week as much of the economy shuts down to fight the pandemic. Pantheon Macroeconomics Chief Economist Ian Shepherdson estimates 2 million claims for next week’s report. “It appears from state numbers that the order of magnitude increase compared to normal is about 10,” he said Thursday. Source: Bloomberg
In total, Delta is cutting 70% of its capacity and 80% of its international operations. It is also closing the majority of its Sky Club airport lounges, making it the first major U.S. airline to take this step. Source: TechCrunch
Response comes after Israel said citizens have the right to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious and business reasons. Source: Al Jazeera
China has leapfrogged Russia to become the world’s second-largest arms producer, according to revised research for the year 2017 published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday. Source: The Moscow Times
Denmark’s Ministry of Immigration and Integration said in a press release on Monday that about 2,700 people applied for asylum in Denmark in 2019, a decrease from 3,559 in 2018 and the lowest number in 11 years. “Record low asylum numbers are a good thing,” said immigration minister Mattias Tesfaye. Source: The Copenhagen Post
- In its first rate decision of the year, the central bank’s Governing Council voted unanimously to keep the main deposit rate at a historic low of -0.5%, in line with market expectations.
- The ECB’s strategic review will assess its formulation of price stability, monetary policy toolkit, economic and monetary analyses and communication practices.
The war in Ukraine has been going on for almost a year now. There is no doubt that it is a war between Russia and the West, between Russia and NATO, between Russia and the United States. There is also no doubt that Kiev, left to its own devices, would have long since been beaten and conquered and subjugated by Moscow. The constant supply of arms, financial loans and political support coming from the West means that Ukraine continues to fight, albeit not only with its own army, but also resorting to thousands of mercenaries from a variety of nationalities. Polish and British soldiers and officers are said to be operating in Ukrainian uniforms. The West has deployed all its authority, all its diplomatic and economic muscle, to sustain Ukraine’s resistance against Russia. Is it because anyone in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin or Kiev believes that Ukraine can win this war? Is it because anyone in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin or Kiev believes that Ukrainian troops will drive out Russian troops, that Ukraine will regain not only the four provinces that have been annexed to Russia, but also the Crimea? Is it because Moscow, having been repulsed and vanquished, will start paying compensation to Ukraine and the Russian leaders will stand before the international tribunal in The Hague like the former leaders of Yugoslavia and Serbia?
Of course not! So why are they fighting this war? Why are Washington and London, Paris and Berlin encouraging Kiev to resist further? Why are Western governments subjecting millions of Ukrainians to death, starvation, cold and emigration? The answer is self-explanatory. Because if the war goes on as long as possible, then:
① Russia, a rival that the West dislikes (to put it mildly), will be weakened and bled to the maximum;
② Ukraine will incur as much debt and as many obligations to the West as possible, only to repay them for decades, i.e. to relinquish control over its own natural resources, production facilities and population (for how else can Kiev repay these gigantic obligations?); Continue reading
The mechanism is simple. The Hegemon has power. The Hegemon has power not only because it is economically powerful and because it has a powerful military force. The Hegemon has power also and perhaps above all because it has a mint where it mints the world’s coin. The Hegemon can therefore, for example, put too much money into circulation, i.e. create inflation, and since the whole world uses the Hegemon’s money in trade between countries, this inflation hits all the economies of the world! Inflation in the Hegemon translates into inflation in all the other political players. This is a political masterstroke!
We wanted to draw attention to yet another mechanism, equally efficient, equally cleverly devised. Here it is. The Hegemon looks around to select nations or states, anywhere on the globe, but especially those where there are various natural resources or developed industries. Having found a region of the world that the Hegemon would like to exploit, the Hegemon looks around for such two nations, two states or social groups that do not like each other very much. Never and nowhere in the world is this task difficult. All neighbourhoods are fraught with a long history of conflict: France-Germany, France-England, Germany-Poland, Hungary-Romania, Croatia-Serbia, Greece-Turkey, Poland-Russia, Poland-Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia… and these are just a handful of conflicts and just European ones! They all can be revived, they all can be fuelled and they all can be exploited. Religious and ideological divisions can also be skilfully manipualted: Catholic-Protestant, Catholic-Orthodox, Sunni-Shiite, believer-infidel, right-left, liberal-conservative, you name it.
States are governed by different people, not necessarily the wisest, not necessarily the most sensible, not necessarily the prudent. Since they are not the wisest or most prudent people, since they are people who have weaknesses and (often) burning ambitions, they can be skilfully controlled. This is precisely what the Hegemon does. The Hegemon seeks out individuals who have exuberant political ambitions and helps such individuals to take power in a country. The Hegemon selects people with a psychological profile that ensures they will be remotely controllable. The Hegemon can create compromising situations for such an individual or it can nurture such an individual: the Forum of Young Global(!) Leaders of the International Economic Forum or universities founded or financed by various NGOs are breeding grounds for such leaders.
Political dissidents from the countries of Central Europe before 1989, people who often emigrated to the West, acted in the West, received support from the West, these people were excellent material for the Western secret services. These services were able to pick and choose human tools, human puppets for their intelligence games and political manoeuvres, and these puppets usually did not even realise that they were someone else’s… tools. The awarding of scholarships to such people for study or research, or the granting of prizes in various fields, tied the beneficiaries to the centres that exercised power over them in an extremely strong and thus permanent manner. Who can resist an award, international recognition, acclaim, or interviews for CNN or the BBC? Continue reading
It’s not just a question of how much military power a given side to the conflict has at its disposal; it’s not even a question of whose economy is stronger. It’s more a question of which side prevails culturally, spiritually, or psychologically (psyche is Greek for soul or spirit).
Consider. The names of the months in Germanic and Romance languages, i.e. languages spoken in the West, have Latin origin. The names of the same months in Russian… also have Latin origin. Russians could have named the months giving them names in their native language, as the Poles or Czechs did; or they could have created the names of the months by drawing from Greek. The latter would have been more natural and understandable than taking those names from Latin: after all, the Russian principalities modeled themselves on Byzantium (a state that, although derived from the Roman Empire, used not Latin but Greek). Medieval Russians referred to Byzantium (and rightly so! and correctly so!) as to the Greek state; medieval Russians took Christianity from Byzantium; from the Greeks – Rus’ took (and slightly modified) the alphabet and modeled its own political system on Constantinople, which it called Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad – the city of the emperor or the city of emperors. And yet, Russians adopted the names of the months from Western languages. And not only the names of the months. Those who know the language know how many German and French and now English words have found their way into Russian. These foreign inclusions are foreign to the point that they are not even declined by grammatical cases, although all native words are. Why are we talking about this? Is it because we are interested in proper names or etymology or languages in general?
We talk about it because language reflects the soul of a nation. It’s not the Germans, French or Americans who have Russian words in their own languages, but, conversely, the Russians have plenty of French, German and English words in their language. This, in turn, attests to who has an overwhelming cultural, philosophical, mental, spiritual and psychological influence on whom. It shows who really rules over whom. This is a better litmus test for demonstrating who is subject to whom than finances, the economy or military conquests. Why? Because financial or economic advantage can be coerced, because military advantage is demonstrated through the use of brute force. In the case of language, it is quite different. No one outside Russia told Russians to adopt foreign words! They did it on their own, willingly, and they did it because they recognized the superiority of Western civilization. Patriotic Russians may deny it, but it is the language that is hard evidence that Russians have always considered themselves inferior.
To get an Oscar (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian film director; to get a Nobel Prize for literature (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian writer. Does any Western film director or Western writer dream of getting an award in Moscow or St. Petersburg?
It is the above-described sense of the inferiority complex on the part of Russians that makes rich Russians buy properties in the West and keep their money in Western banks. In other words, rich Russians are at the mercy and disfavor of the West, which can take these estates and accounts from them at any time it sees fit. Such Russians with estates and bank accounts abroad constitute a fifth column within the Russian Federation. Russians who have accounts in Western banks, who have properties in the West – what’s more – whose children study at Western universities do not think in Russian, whether they want to admit it or not. These Russians are a powerful force, scattered about the country, that works to the advantage of the West and to the detriment of their own homeland whether they want to admit it or not. Continue reading
If you ask the average Westerner which places in the world he would like to see, he will answer that he would like to see Paris, Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Florida, the Riviera, the Alps. If you ask the same question to a man from other parts of the world, he will answer that he would like to see… Paris, Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Florida, the Riviera, the Alps. Similarly, if you ask a man from the West which university he would like to study at, he will answer that Oxford, Cambridge, Sorbonne, Harvard… If you ask the same question to a man from other parts of the world, you will get the same answer. If you ask a man from the West in which banks he would like to keep his money, he will mention one of the Western banks. If you ask a non-Western man, you will get the same answer. Let’s go further. If you ask a Westerner what his favorite movies or books or music are, you will hear titles, authors and performers that belong to the Anglo-Saxon world. If you ask the same question to a non-Western man, you will get the same answer. Questions with similar content can be multiplied. The result will always be the same. And it has always been the same. Representatives of previous generations would have answered the same way, people living in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries would have answered the same way. One could say that the world is arranged in such a way that Westerners love the West and non-Westerners also love the West. Statistically speaking, no one in France, Great Britain, Germany or the United States dreams of their child studying in Poland, Hungary, Romania or even Russia. Conversely, parents from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Russia would give a lot for their children to study in France, Great Britain, Germany or the United States.
Western political scientists and politicians should be aware of this. They should know that they wield enormous soft power. They should realize that they have enormous power over non-Westerners. They can control them almost at will. All they have to do is wave a carrot or a sausage, and a non-Westerner is ready to do almost anything, including actions that will be detrimental to his own country, to his own people. The only thing the West should not do is to use a stick, to show exaggerated contempt for non-Westerners or to be too insulting to their feelings. If Westerners can’t help but show superiority or contempt, they should show this superiority or contempt in a measured way, intensifying these demonstrations gradually so that non-Westerners don’t notice it too much. If, on top of this, the West accepts at least some of the elites of non-Western nations into its club, the West’s power over the rest of the world is guaranteed.
Unfortunately, stupidity, hubris, greed, overconfidence – you name it – cause Western elites, Western leaders, Western think tanks to continually make the same mistake: they begin to ostentatiously escalate their display of contempt, they begin to ostentatiously and excessively pillage non-Western nations, they begin to hurt these nations’ sense of dignity too quickly and too violently (such as by imposing marches of sexual deviants in morally traditional societies), all of which leads to conflict. The West has made this mistake over and over again and continues to do so, and is unable to learn from the past.
Consider Russia. The elites of this country capitulated before the West at the end of the 1980s, declared the bankruptcy of their own system, behaved with allegiance to the West, began to take over and imitate everything as far as culture is concerned, and their only dream was if not to settle or at least live for a long time in the West – because, as is known, there is paradise for humanity – then at least to recreate this West at home. The elites not only of Russia, but also of Ukraine, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Romania and so on, as well as the elites of India and China would do anything to shed their own culture and to embrace the West. How many Indians and Chinese go to Great Britain or the United States to be able to study there or at least to see with their own eyes those countries they have dreamed of since the cradle! If smart people ruled in the West, they would use this soft power to rule over the rest of the world until… the end of the world. But no. Continue reading
So we have a war, a war that lasts more than six months, a civil war, a war between one Ruthenian nation and another Ruthenian nation (don’t be fooled by the propagandists that these are two different nations!), a war in which external forces support one side to keep fighting. This is reminiscent of the wars in Yugoslavia, where the Croats and Bosniaks were constantly supported by the West, were constantly turned by the West against the Serbs, were constantly encouraged not to stop resisting the Serbs, to constantly irritate the Serbs, to reject peace solutions and to renege on peace agreements, if any had already been made. Both Croats and Bosnians and Serbs speak one and the same language. Never mind that. Somewhere it was decided that Yugoslavia was to cease to exist, that Yugoslavia must disintegrate. A strange resolve, strange especially in a world where globalisation is professed, where nationalisms are condemned, where huge political blocs are formed. Why did Yugoslavia have to break up in such a world? That is a good question! Especially since, the very next day, the states, or rather pseudo-states, that emerged on the ruins of Yugoslavia, nations that never wanted to live together with the Serbs, nations that wanted sovereignty at all costs, these same states or these same nations were more than happy to apply to become members of the European Union and…. to lose that longed-for, fought-for sovereignty! Do you understand any of this?
Yugoslavia was a dress rehearsal. The break-up of Yugoslavia happened between the peaceful break-up of the Soviet Union and the… planned – and, as it appears, non-peaceful – break-up of the Russian Federation. And yet it could have been quite different! Instead of war, we could have enjoyed peace and cooperation! Is this not what we dreamt of during the Cold War? Was it not then that we did not even dare to dream that the division between political East and political West could disappear in our lifetime?
Those of us who lived during the Soviet Union’s existence did not even imagine, did not even dare to suppose that the Soviet Union would cease to exist in their lifetime. The end of this enormous state, which had at its disposal a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, seemed inconceivable. Unless…. unless there was to be another world war, which nobody wanted.
And lo and behold, the seemingly impossible happened: a giant empire hoisted the white flag. The giant empire dissolved like a failed business, the giant empire went out of business like a dissolved sports club. The individual republics – members of this empire – filed for a no-fault divorce and received this divorce overnight. Everything went smoothly and was accompanied by great enthusiasm. Do we remember the song ‘Winds of Change’ sung by the Scorpions? This is what it was like at the time. It seemed that humanity was entering a new era, an era of peace and cooperation.
Why did the Soviet Union collapse? There are many more or less convincing explanations – the economic bankruptcy of the socialist system, the effective penetration of Western intelligence, reforms that escaped the control of the reformers – we will not cite them all here. We will only point to an extremely important factor, a psychological factor: the peoples of central and eastern Europe, and therefore also the Russians (as well as the Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians, etc.), have lived, are living and will continue to live nurturing a huge inferiority complex against the West. This inferiority complex did not arise when communism took hold in the countries of central and eastern Europe. No. It existed there from the cradle of these nations, from the dawn of their history. They all adopted civilisation from the West, their elites were educated in the West, they travelled to the West, they imitated Western styles in art and literature, they modelled their legal systems on Western legal systems and they learnt Western languages. In the languages of the above-mentioned nations, there is a huge proportion of words – and everyday words! at that – taken from French, Italian, German and English. These words came along with new technology or cultural currents, and were adopted and assimilated even though more often than not they had equivalents in their native languages. Foreign words in the mouths of central and eastern Europeans gave them social status. Continue reading
Putin’s speech
On September 30, 2022, President Vladimir Putin delivered a momentous speech occasioned by the act of joining to the Russian Federation the territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson. All the diplomatic masks have fallen: the Russian leader laid down all the resentment that the Russian nation has been nurturing towards the West. It is praiseworthy to read the whole speech rather than let oneself be fooled by the media. Below we give an excerpt from it and we encourage the reader to give a simple yes-or-no answer to each question and observation made by the Russian president.
① “The last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the referendum of 1991, destroyed our great country, and simply made the people in the former republics face this as an accomplished fact.”
– Did the last leaders of the Soviet Union act against the 1991 referendum or did they not?
② “When the Soviet Union collapsed, the West decided that the world and all of us would permanently accede to its dictates.”
– True or false? Continue reading
Competing large states, the superpowers, aim to eliminate their opponent from the game. This can be done in a variety of ways. One of these, of course, is war: one rival destroys the other, subjugates it or wipes it off the world map. This is how, in three wars, ancient Rome wrestled with Carthage and brought about its annihilation; Rome did not annihilate Greece, but subjugated it, and since the Greeks did not resist in the time in which they were subject to Rome, and that’s where it ended. Another way of settling a rivalry is to weaken the state that one sees as a rival to rule over a region of the world or over the whole world. The victorious state takes away industrially or strategically important parts of territory from the defeated state. Still another way is to make the competitor economically or financially dependent. This is how perennial colonial states continue to rule former colonial territories, although they have officially withdrawn from them: they rule them through money and economic connections. The last way to subjugate an adversary, to weaken or eradicate it, is through territorial partition: the breaking up of a state territory into several smaller ones, which is generally done by exploiting frictions, resentments and hostilities that exist on national religious or anthropological grounds. This is how Yugoslavia was dealt with. This state of the southern Slavs, whose territory had an area comparable to that of Romania, was divided into several smaller political entities.
The West conceived a similar collective fate for the Russian Federation. The driving force is the United States and the United Kingdom, while the tool is the European Union and especially the countries of Central Europe, as well as so-called dissidents – citizens of the Russian Federation who act to the detriment of their own state. The idea of dividing Russia into a dozen or more parts was given the name of decolonization. The creators of this notion assume that Russia is in fact a conglomeration of the Russian centre with many colonies, and that the difference between the colonies ruled by Moscow and those once ruled by Paris, London or Berlin is only that the Russian colonies are not overseas. What is being proposed, therefore, is decolonization – as it is now fashionably said and written – 2.0 (that is, the second, as the first was either the decolonization carried out between 1950 and 1970 in Africa and Asia, or the decolonization of the USSR, a preliminary to the now proposed division of the vast territory that was under the Kremlin’s rule until 1991).
The idea of splitting the Russian Federation into multiple political entities is justified on the grounds that Russia, its elites and even the mentality of its people, grew out of dictatorial and slave traditions and as such are unreformable. It is said that Russia as it exists will be a constant threat to world peace and that a single centre of power is incapable of efficiently managing such a large territory, let alone such a large and ethnically and religiously diverse population. (One might ask, as an aside, how it is that the same judgement is not applied either to the United States, which is, after all, a territorially huge and population-diverse state, or to the European Union, which is absorbing more and more new members and seeking to administer the whole uniformly from a single centre in Brussels, but never mind). Since Russia is a nuclear-armed state, it is not proposed to provoke a war for this purpose; rather, it is recommended that the various nationalities and religions living on the territory of the Federation should peacefully assert their independence. The weapons are to be strikes, demonstrations, pickets, civil disobedience and all that makes up the technique of instigating and carrying out colour revolutions. Continue reading
Nordstream pipes have been blown up. Sure, no one knows who did it, and yet…. everyone knows. At a time when referendums in the four provinces of eastern Ukraine (historically: Novorossiya) are sealing the fate of those regions by handing them over to Russia, at a time when European countries fear the coming winter and hesitate to cut all trade ties with Moscow, at a time when right-wing parties are gaining popularity across Europe, the United States, seeing its policies falling apart, is erupting in hysteria.
Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, married to US neocon Anne Applebaum, wrote a message of thanks to the US. Was it a slip of the tongue, or did he act on American orders to indirectly show the Russians who was behind the sabotage? Either way, Russian journalists using open source airborne radar were able to trace the mysterious plane’s flight across the Baltic to Poland, and then across the Baltic again, including over the site of the sabotage: the area around Bornholm Island. That the Polish government and Polish elites are rabidly anti-Russian is well known.
Ukraine is slowly but nevertheless shrinking territorially. This is always the case when a country relies too much on Western aid. President Zelenski was ready to sit down at the negotiating table soon after the outbreak of hostilities. He was quickly barred from doing so. Now the country he leads has lost four pieces of its territory – permanently. No one in their right mind believes that Russia will ever give them back to Ukraine after what has been going on these past few months, after so much bloodshed, after all the sanctions, and now after the disruption of two gas pipelines.
In Western Europe we have the United Kingdom comprising England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; we also have the Federal Republic of Germany with its several autonomous provinces complete with their parliaments and governments; on the other hand we had the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with its six autonomous parts, and the Soviet Union with its fifteen republics, in both cases complete with their parliaments and governments. It happened so that the former – the United Kingdom and West Germany – have remained intact while the latter – Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union are history.
Observation number 1: Certain federations or unions persist, others do not. Why?
Of the two states that fell apart, one disintegration was bloody (that of Yugoslavia), the other peaceful (that of the Soviet Union). In either case external forces were involved and helped the said states to disappear in thin air. There were separatist tendencies in the United Kingdom – especially in Northern Ireland – and they somehow petered out; contrarily, two German states that had existed before 1989 united rather than fall apart. For all practical purposes in the four countries under discussion – the United Kingdom, Germany, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union – the absolute and overwhelming majority of their citizens spoke one and the same language; it was, respectively, English, German, Serbo-Croat and Russian.
Observation number 2: Some states composed of autonomous parts with separatist tendencies dissolve, others do not. How does that happen?
The separatist tendencies are separatist only in a sense of the word. The autonomous political entities that made up Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia disrupted the corresponding unions, claiming that they were in desperate need of independence only to… willingly give this independence up on the following day and eagerly become parts of the European Union. What sense does it make?
Observation number 3: Some unions of states are desired, others are not. What is the criterion? Who lays down this criterion?
The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union was only made possible because national feelings were aroused and exploited. They were exploited by external forces. Simultaneously the national, patriotic, ethnic sentiment of the indigenous populations in other parts of Europe are suppressed, discouraged or ridiculed.
Observation number 4: National feelings are either enhanced or suppressed, depending on what purpose they serve. Who controls those processes? Who decides over them?
Of the warring parties – Serbs and Croats or Russians and Ukrainians – the judgement passed by what is referred to as the international community says that one is – without a shade of a doubt – the guilty party (Serbs and Russians) while the other is an innocent victim (Croats, especially Albanians, and Ukrainians); consequently, the guilty parties allegedly spread lies, the whole lies and nothing but the lies while the innocent parties tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which is why the former need to be censured while the others supported by the media of the so called free world.
Observation number 5: How is it possible that a conflict is sparked by exclusively one party with the other being remarkably innocent? Why does the general public buy into it lock, stock and barrel?
The independence of Kosovo has been recognized by many countries and that has been approved of by the international community; the independence of the Donbass republics has been recognized by one state and this act did not meet with approval.
Observation 6: Who decides whether a political move is commendable? What makes a political move praiseworthy?
It surely is a religion: the worship of the planet earth. No doubt about that. At the same time it is risible: a peninsula attached to a huge Asiatic continent wishes to make the global climate better and – as if the movement of waters and winds could be stopped at state borders – to make its own climate better. How? By banning the fossil fuels (which means: by banning the combustion engine), relying on renewable sources of energy and developing the CO2 market (you know, the market where you buy and sell CO2 quotas). You see, in the Middle Ages people would trade in relics: in the 21st century people trade in CO2! Isn’t that one thing alone a grand exploit that the European Union has pulled off?
No combustion-engine cars to be manufactured after 2030 plus net CO2 emissions by 2050! Why? For what purpose? Well, to save the planet, stupid! We all know that Mother Earth is suffocating and getting overheated (or overcooled, depending on the currently valid scientific version concerning the global climate); we all know that it is man-made. If you are not convinced, then look at the children: they know it! They know it for certain! That’s why they are protesting and begging you (if that is not enough: demanding of you) that you reconsider your life choices.
You know, it is not only the climate. We are all running out of water and food. What do you think will happen once water and food are in short supply? Famine? Y-e-e-e-s. Try hard to follow the thought where it leads. Imagine a global famine and water shortages. What do you think it will lead humanity to? Yes, bingo! To war! So, to prevent war over food and war over water from breaking out, the men and women (or the representatives of the other sixty or so recognized genders) who happen to be at the helm of the European Union do their best to spare us the bleak future. Yes, we will all pay for it: prices will shoot up, but then health, life and peace are invaluable. We will all willingly sacrifice our comfort and resign from the luxuries and pleasures of the flesh to… save the flesh.
Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission or in plain English: the EU’s prime minister) and Frans Timmermans (Executive Vice-President of the European Commission or again in plain English: the EU’s deputy prime minister) along with all the Directorates-General (in plain English: ministries) indefatigably keep foisting upon us the magic phrases of European green deal, climate neutral Europe, reduction in emissions, clean transport, electric vehicles, sustainable (their beloved word!) houses, clean energy, renewable energy, protecting nature, a healthier future, support for vulnerable citizens (always the same!), and they assure us that all this is doable. Ursula von der Leyen says that she wants Europe to become the first climate-neutral continent in the world by 2050. She says verbatim: “I want Europe to become…”. You see? Occasionally, they let a word out here and there for all to hear: they want to enforce those changes, Ursula von der Leyen, Frans Timmermans, and company. Whenever they are on their guard, they say that it is the Europeans who want it, but when they are off their guard, they say as it is. Continue reading
Is this the European Union that we have dreamt of? Is this the European Union that we have been tempted with? A united continent, with no borders, a continent blessed with peace and fraternity, with the well-being of its residents, blessed with the preservation of everything that singles the continent out from the rest of the world? As it is, European values transpired as the values that are not shared by the overwhelming majority of Europeans. These are same-sex marriages, gender mainstreaming, extirpation of all traditional values and mass immigration that increasingly changes the racial make-up of the European population and – what necessarily follows – the continent’s culture.
Up to very recently it was the Western part of Europe – the so-called old Union – that was subjected to the programmed and systematic influx of peoples from the Third World. The new members of the union – especially Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary – resisted the policy of mass immigration, running afoul of the Brussels’ commissioners and ruffling a few feathers among Western intellectuals. The year 2015 – that notorious year during which Germany is believed to have accepted between 800.000 and 1,200.000 arrivals – made the blood of Eastern Europeans run cold. They wanted to mingle with the French, the British, the Italians or the Germans, but were totally unprepared to regard the Afghanis or Somalis as new Europeans! The cultural, religious, mental gap was far too large to be bridged as was the pace with which those ethnic changes were effected! It did not go unnoticed either that Third World immigrants were clearly used as a weapon: a look at Turkey’s policy said it all. Also, the acceptance of tens of thousands of Third World immigrants was perceived by both Western and Eastern Europeans as mere virtue signalling and – in the case of the new member-states – as a sign of their submission the Brussels (Paris and Berlin). Add to this the indiscriminate procedure of letting foreigners into European countries: there was no way of screening the masses of arrivals whether they contained common criminals, mafiosi, terrorists and the like. Continue reading
We have recently seen a significant increase in the price of gold, which today is approaching the mark of $ 2,000 per ounce. The appreciation we predicted in the recommendations of our bulletin was largely fueled by the liquidity crisis, which was only exacerbated by the expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and a small rate hike (25 pts) by Jerome Powell and his colleagues. It is worth noting that the market was expecting a 50 basis point hike even before the Silicon Valley Bank problems.
The Fed’s head insists that the $297 billion increase in total assets is the result of a completely unique situation related to banks’ liquidity needs. What is crucial, however, is not the reason, but the fact that further substantial funds were created out of thin air – and this is directly related to another dose of fuel for inflation, which continues to show no signs of abating. So the risk of stagflation caused by an economic slump remains.
The last notable example of an exit from stagflation in the U.S. occurred in the 1970s. In response, Paul Volcker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates above 19% to restore confidence in the economy. The positive real interest rates achieved at that time (with inflation at 13.5%) are out of reach for central bankers today.
An economic crisis will happen sooner or later for one reason or another. History simply shows that. The important question, however, is what methods will be available to central bankers when that crisis occurs (if we don’t already have it). In past decades, these were based primarily on lowering interest rates and expanding the money supply. However, the above measures are now being drastically curtailed because of their impact on the rise in inflation. A further rise in inflation would probably only prompt investors to withdraw their money from financial institutions in order to protect their capital elsewhere from the increasing loss of purchasing power. Such decisions would only lead to further liquidity problems. It also cannot be ruled out that the Fed will decide to raise interest rates further. These in turn would devalue the bonds held by banks, which would also deal a severe blow to the financial system. The impact is likely to be similar in both cases: either a liquidity crisis or inflation that is likely to spiral out of control sooner or later, or a combination of both. Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell thus seem to be caught between the hammer and the anvil, and their actions resemble those of an elephant in a china store.
Also worth mentioning is the recent news about the growing risk of a Deutsche Bank default. The banking crisis seems to be coming to a head, also in Europe. Even more important than the crisis itself, however, as already mentioned, seems to be the considerably limited room for maneuver of central bankers to counter it.
It is not inflation, nor the Fed, nor the NFP, and certainly not the hostilities in Ukraine that is attracting investors’ attention, but the major problem that the U.S. banking sector is beset with, rendering especially Silicon Valley Bank barely capable of making payments to its customers. All this reminds us of 2008, although there are no clear signs yet that we are on the verge of collapse.
SVB is a very specific bank in the US market. It is a bank that deals mainly with technology companies. Though it provides financial services to them, primarily it takes deposits from them. The bank participates in venture capital projects (venture capital), but it has also invested the surpluses in the US bond market or in MBS. The sharp rise in interest rates and the resulting significant revaluation of bonds resulted in a large financial loss in the bank’s portfolio, which is nothing unusual. In fact, this was something normal across the financial sector. However, this is where the peculiarities of SVB itself come into play. It is a bank that manages hundreds or even thousands of technology companies or start-ups. This sector, in turn, has been struggling for some time to catch its breath after the strong last 2 years. Companies have begun to slow their growth, look for savings and reach for capital from deposits. In order to get liquidity, SVB was forced to sell all liquid assets worth over $20 billion, incurring a loss of almost $2 billion! That’s a sizable hole in the bank’s balance sheet. At the same time, the bank announced an additional equity offering to close the gap, prompting investors to divest themselves of the bank’s shares. Yesterday (March 9, 2023), the shares plunged by as much as about 70%! These problems are still deepening today before the weekend, which is why some have already drawn parallels with 2008.
Of course, it’s important to remember that SVB and the tech industry are a specific sector and may have less overall impact on the overall stock market than the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the problems that occurred at Bear Stearns. The key question is whether this is just an isolated incident or a major problem across the industry.
It surely is a religion: the worship of the planet earth. No doubt about that. At the same time it is risible: a peninsula attached to a huge Asiatic continent wishes to make the global climate better and – as if the movement of waters and winds could be stopped at state borders – to make its own climate better. How? By banning the fossil fuels (which means: by banning the combustion engine), relying on renewable sources of energy and developing the CO2 market (you know, the market where you buy and sell CO2 quotas). You see, in the Middle Ages people would trade in relics: in the 21st century people trade in CO2! Isn’t that one thing alone a grand exploit that the European Union has pulled off?
No combustion-engine cars to be manufactured after 2030 plus net CO2 emissions by 2050! Why? For what purpose? Well, to save the planet, stupid! We all know that Mother Earth is suffocating and getting overheated (or overcooled, depending on the currently valid scientific version concerning the global climate); we all know that it is man-made. If you are not convinced, then look at the children: they know it! They know it for certain! That’s why they are protesting and begging you (if that is not enough: demanding of you) that you reconsider your life choices.
You know, it is not only the climate. We are all running out of water and food. What do you think will happen once water and food are in short supply? Famine? Y-e-e-e-s. Try hard to follow the thought where it leads. Imagine a global famine and water shortages. What do you think it will lead humanity to? Yes, bingo! To war! So, to prevent war over food and war over water from breaking out, the men and women (or the representatives of the other sixty or so recognized genders) who happen to be at the helm of the European Union do their best to spare us the bleak future. Yes, we will all pay for it: prices will shoot up, but then health, life and peace are invaluable. We will all willingly sacrifice our comfort and resign from the luxuries and pleasures of the flesh to… save the flesh.
Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission or in plain English: the EU’s prime minister) and Frans Timmermans (Executive Vice-President of the European Commission or again in plain English: the EU’s deputy prime minister) along with all the Directorates-General (in plain English: ministries) indefatigably keep foisting upon us the magic phrases of European green deal, climate neutral Europe, reduction in emissions, clean transport, electric vehicles, sustainable (their beloved word!) houses, clean energy, renewable energy, protecting nature, a healthier future, support for vulnerable citizens (always the same!), and they assure us that all this is doable. Ursula von der Leyen says that she wants Europe to become the first climate-neutral continent in the world by 2050. She says verbatim: “I want Europe to become…”. You see? Occasionally, they let a word out here and there for all to hear: they want to enforce those changes, Ursula von der Leyen, Frans Timmermans, and company. Whenever they are on their guard, they say that it is the Europeans who want it, but when they are off their guard, they say as it is. Continue reading
In retaliation for freezing Russian assets by the West, President Putin has signed a decree that enables Russian exporters of gas to demand rubles rather than dollars or euros. This is an interesting development in the war that is being waged between the West and Russia. The European Union depends to a very large extent on Russian gas. The efforts to create the green economy (they like to call it sustainable economy) are far from being completed. (To think of it: they have sought to put us on the green economy to spite Russia! Climate change was the bait for the gullible to join in.) Europe will need Russian gas (and oil). In order to buy it, it will need to have the Russian national currency. To acquire the Russian national currency, the West will be forced to trade dollars or euros for rubles at the Moscow stock exchange, thus raising international demand for the Russian currency and turning it into a means of international exchange. Sanctions work both ways.
On March 18, the Luzhniki Stadium gathered thousands of Russians in a patriotic rally, attended by various artists and the Russian president himself. Vladimir Putin delivered a speech in which – quoting the Gospel – he praised the efforts of the soldiers of the Russian Russian Federation fighting in Ukraine. A sea of waving Russia’s national white-blue-red flags dominated the scenery. The event was an eruption of patriotic feelings, something unknown in the West. If you think that the “regime” in Moscow is about to collapse or to be toppled, then think again.
The answer is not easy. Bill Gross, the founder of Pimco and “king of government bonds”, predicts that the yield on US 10-year bonds will rise to 2% next year. This would mean the 3% loss for investors at the current inflation rate. The dynamics of demand and supply also point to the further fall in the prices of US government bonds (rise in yield). Today, the FED is buying 60% of all US bonds as part of its quantitative easing, but will soon have no choice but to reduce the scale of US bond purchases in the face of inflation. At the same time, China, Russia are massively dumping these debt securities. So should one invest in equities? Now, when their prices are shooting through the roof? After all, shares can turn out to be rubbish if companies’ profits don’t want to rise as they have in recent years. With today’s inflation, it’s not worth holding cash either. The situation is becoming dramatic.
If you want to learn more, if you are looking for tips for your investments, please read recommendations and warnings for investors in our bulletins.
President Vladimir Putin told Gazprom PJSC to turn to refilling European gas-storage facilities next month, signaling that long-awaited additional Russian supplies could be on the way. The move will “create a more favorable situation on the European energy market,” Putin said at a meeting broadcast on state television Wednesday. Source Al Jazeera
The chaos in gas and electricity markets is set to hit one group of people the hardest this winter: the four million households that use prepayment meters (PPMs).
While most people pay their bills monthly for energy they have already used, PPMs require people to pay for energy before they use it. PPMs take whatever money is in the meter and supply energy to the household. Source Open Democracy
Russia’s Gazprom has damped hopes for additional gas exports to Europe next month as the continent struggles with record prices, despite recent hints from President Vladimir Putin that more could be forthcoming.
UK and European gas prices surged as much as 18 per cent on Monday after a keenly awaited pipeline capacity auction showed no increase from Russia either through the Ukrainian pipeline system or lines passing via Poland to north-west Europe. Source FT
As of Sunday, the national price of a litre of Diesel was €1.555, according to the European motor association ADAC. This is just above the previous record price of €1.554 per litre set on August 26th, 2012. Source The Local
French ministers floated the possibility of petrol vouchers for low-income households on Monday, as President Emmanuel Macron’s government seeks to limit the damage from surging energy prices to his economic record six months from a presidential election. Source France24
Skoda started a two-week cut in output on Monday as the Czech brand contends with the global shortage of chips and other components, the company said. The Volkswagen Group unit wants to complete 10,000 unfinished cars during the outage, which will leave only one production line running, a spokesman said. Source Automotive News
