Economics

Farmers against the European Union

Over the past few weeks, we have heard almost daily about farmer protests and other countries where farmers have taken to the streets with their tractors. According to the latest news, protests have taken place in at least 14 European Union (EU) countries, and they all had a common goal. The fight against EU policies and regulations to be introduced with the Green Deal. According to interviews with European agricultural organizations, the main reason for the protests is the increase in production costs for farmers, while the community is flooded with products that do not have to meet certain quality requirements. Farmers are protesting against EU directives that have been damaging their businesses for years by imposing significant restrictions on them. This leads to a reduction in the competitiveness of domestic agricultural production in favor of products from third countries. Worse, the new plans being considered by the EU could make agricultural production in the European Union completely unprofitable.

According to the latest information, the farmers’ protests have already begun to have an effect. For the time being, the European Commission is withdrawing from one of the projects unfavorable to farmers, but this will certainly not be enough for the protesters.

We hope that the farmers will not give up so easily and that they will get their way. The European Union and the whole world have just recently learned the lesson of the end of the globalization of supply chains, and now something as important as food is supposed to come from outside Europe? The direction in which the European Union is heading, largely due to its insane pursuit of zero emissions, is downright incomprehensible. Soon there will be nothing left to eat, home heating will become a luxury, and we will all switch to horses… unless it turns out that this mode of transportation also produces too much CO2.

Argentina’s President Milei successful against the Davos elites

In December last year, we wrote about Javier Milei – the recently elected President of Argentina. Now, with his recent speech in Davos, he has turned the bottom into the top.

To understand what happened and what Milei got himself into, you first need to comprehend what exactly the World Economic Forum (WEF) is and who makes it up. The WEF is the world’s elite: the CEOs of the world’s richest companies (only companies with billions in revenue are invited to the Forum), leading bankers and technology specialists, politicians, representatives of major business organizations, lobbyists, selected intellectuals, journalists and activists of all kinds. The WEF meetings are therefore full of people who use their connections and influence to try to steer the world in a direction that benefits them and not necessarily the majority of people. It’s about power and money, not about a better life for ordinary citizens.

The aforementioned elite meet every year in Davos to present their proposals on how they want to intervene in our lives. They negotiate agreements among themselves and exert pressure on the world’s most influential politicians. In the meantime, of course, there is a lot of empty talk and boring debates about the world’s social and economic problems. The founder of the forum is Klaus The-Great-Reset Schwab, who became known as an advocate of collectivism. He is credited with the famous saying: You will have nothing and be happy.

This is where Milei comes into play. In a place where the ideas of feminism, birth control and increased government intervention in the economy are supported year after year, where the foundations for Agenda 2030 and its associated eco-terrorism were laid, Milei looks the globalists in the eye and dismantles their propaganda simply and vividly by exposing the lies of the globalists.

In many of his interviews and speeches, Milei refers to the so-called culture war. In his view, the causes of Argentina’s decline are cultural problems and moral decay. Among other things, this gives rise to the deep belief that the state is the guarantor for the satisfaction of citizens’ needs. At the same time, the Argentinian president points out that state intervention is counterproductive, as it should only contribute to the opposite when trying to solve a problem.

Here we summarize the most important theses of his speech in Davos:

1. Capitalism creates prosperity and is moral

Socialism leads to impoverishment and is based on violence. Wherever socialism has been introduced, it has brought more harm than good.

“The West is in danger because it has opened itself up to socialist ideas. It was capitalism that liberated humanity from mass poverty and created unimaginable prosperity. (…) In the countries where we should be defending the values of the free market, private property and other institutions of libertarianism, parts of the political and economic establishment – some because of flaws in their theoretical approach, others out of a desire for power – are undermining the foundations of libertarianism by opening the door to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation. It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it has been tried. It has failed economically as well as socially and culturally. It has also contributed to the deaths of more than 100 million people.”

So capitalism, rather than today’s Western neo-Marxism, is the way to abolish poverty.

2. Socialism is a repressive and unjust system:

“(…) Social justice is neither fair nor beneficial to society. Quite the opposite. It is an inherently unjust idea because it is based on force. It is unjust because the state is financed by taxes and taxes are levied by force. Or would any of you say that you pay taxes of your own free will? In other words, the state finances itself through coercion, and the higher the tax burden, the greater the coercion and the less the freedom. Advocates of social justice assume that the entire economy is a cake that can be shared. Yet, this cake did not fall from the sky. It is wealth created by what Israel Kirzner, for example, calls the process of market discovery. If there is no demand for the goods produced by a company, that company will fail if it does not adapt to the demands of the market. If it produces a good quality product at an attractive price, then it will be successful and produce more because the market is a process of discovery in which the capitalist finds the right direction in the course of his actions. If the state, however, punishes the capitalist for his success and blocks him in this discovery process (through excessive regulation, as in the EU – author’s note), it destroys his motivation, and the result is that he produces less and the pie shrinks, which damages society as a whole. By inhibiting these processes of discovery and making it difficult to adopt what has been discovered, collectivism inhibits the entrepreneur and prevents him from flourishing.”

3. The fight for women’s rights or nature conservation is just a pretext:

“When the socialists realized that the workers were not getting poorer under capitalism, but richer, they changed their strategy. Today, the class struggle between capitalists and workers has been replaced by alleged conflicts between men and women or between man and nature. It is claimed that to save the environment, population growth must be controlled; abortion is promoted”.

4. Public opinion is the result of decades of “brainwashing” in the direction desired by the elites: 

“The neo-Marxists have changed public opinion in a long process of taking control of the media, the universities and even international organizations. As everyone here knows, the WEF is one of the latter. Socialist ideas must be fought frontally and vociferously.”

5. Socialists have more than one name:

“There are many varieties of socialism in the broadest sense. Socialists are not only those who call themselves socialists, but also social democrats, Christian democrats, communists, Keynesians, Nazis, nationalists and globalists. They all share a belief in regulation and the state”.

6. The real heroes are the entrepreneurs. The state, on the other hand, is only a threat to freedom:

“The real heroes of society are entrepreneurs. They are creators of wealth who can be proud of making profits by meeting the needs of others. They should not be allied with the state, not even through the WEF. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem. The state is a threat to freedom.”

Since Milei’s speech, the number of views of his video on the official WEF channel has exceeded half a million. Is that a lot? Just look at the other “great speakers” who have lagged far behind. The conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, reached 56,000, the speech by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen 42,000, and the other speeches received even less attention. (As at the end of January 2024)

An interesting case is the speech by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who, as the country’s extreme socialist leader – i.e. in complete opposition to Milei – made a staid appearance and barely reached 12,000 views. In his speech, he talks about everything and nothing. He mentions the current problems and challenges, but offers no solutions. The Spanish Prime Minister’s speech was preceded by congratulations on Spain’s strong economic growth, which the Prime Minister himself also boasted about. So let us quote here the conclusions of one of Spain’s leading independent economists, Daniel Lacalle, who summarizes it as follows: ‘The reality in which Spain finds itself today is different from the one presented by the Spanish government under Pedro Sanchez. The ruling socialists are using the same techniques that the Greek socialists resorted to at the end of the 1990s. Namely, they are increasing public spending and debt to hide the fact that investment and consumption in the country have stalled and exports are falling. Taxes are being increased because/although tax revenues have been falling in recent years. The choice between because and although in the last sentence reveals what you think about the right economic policy.

How are you, America?

The leading media keep quiet about it, or only express it here and there in some comments by vigilant editors, that the economic situation in the U.S. is not at all as brilliant as the stock market indications (still) suggest. The yield on U.S. bonds is always climbing upward, and U.S. citizens are massively pulling their money out of the banks to invest in the government’s debt instruments. The scale of this process has reached unprecedented levels, threatening U.S. regional banks in particular with insolvency. 


Change in deposits at U.S. commercial banks since 1973. source: Apollo

At the same time, discontent is rising in American society, and not just because of what is arguably the most unpopular president in many decades, Joe Biden. How to explain the paradox that during Biden’s administration, 12 million new jobs have been created, unemployment is at 3.5%, and yet in 2023 a wave of strikes not seen in 20 years is sweeping the country? Something must be ticking not quite right in the economy and in society. 

The number of lost workdays this year is already in the millions.

We think that the global recession has already started; it is not yet becoming the central topic in the media. They are always talking about a possible “soft landing” of the economy after the current energy and inflation crisis since the recovery after the pandemic and the first wave of inflation. If you take a close look at such accumulating statements from the bright minds of television and compare them with other periods in history when economists have reassured us en masse, you can safely conclude against the tide: Recession is inevitable. 

The graph above shows that every time Wall Street Journal articles piled up about a “soft landing,” a crisis or recession came right after.

In our latest bulletin (October issue), we analyze, among other things, the state of the two of the world’s largest economies – that of the U.S. and that of China – and show other signals that may point to a world recession.

Der Kampf gegen Bargeld geht weiter

People spend the night in front of ATMs with the hope that money will be brought there and they will finally be able to withdraw it after standing in line for many hours. Sometimes the fights break out, even among those waiting in front of the banks. Tensions reach their peak. Branches are set on fire and people all over the country take to the streets….

Scenes from Cyprus 2013? No. Nigeria, Laos, April this year. Old banknotes were invalidated in February and since then no new ones have been printed, only the old ones collected from the market by the central bank and destroyed. At the same time, they introduced central bank digital currency (CBDC), which was not accepted by the people at all. Over 200 million people were deprived of their money overnight. Almost no one wanted to pay or transact with the new e-currency (called eNaira). Thousands of businesses went bankrupt in a short period of time. A paradoxical situation arose in which gasoline could no longer be bought at gas stations in the country, which is one of the largest oil producers in the world.

Nigeria, with its 22o million people, has long since overtaken South Africa and is the largest economy on the Dark Continent. It is a country with huge raw material resources and a development potential that African mentality and corruption, which is present everywhere, wreck. It can be said that it is a rich country of poor people because almost all the capital is in the hands of politicians. One of them, the head of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefile, said in Davos that his country would soon be cashless and – lo and behold – that might end with blood in the streets. It is hard to believe that in a country where 32% of the people are illiterate, where most people do not have access to electricity, the idea of digital currency comes from below; that the shamans had whispered it in the ears of ordinary people. No, it comes from above and from outside. Third World countries have always been a training ground for Western elites, the grassroots movement of the new authoritarian world without cash. This time they are testing how far and how fast they are able to implement their ideas.

Finally, it should be remembered that the complete transition to cash, would make citizens transparent. Central banks could regulate digital money, depending on how they would like a citizen. It could also be that the validity of the money would be limited in time and could only be spent for certain purposes. Electronically, that’s easy to organize. How embarrassing that would be for the Germans, 58% of whom pay in cash! Nigeria has also been called the “cash king” in Africa.

The virtual world threatens the physical world. More on this in Gefira 73.

The battle against cash goes on

People spend the night in front of ATMs with the hope that money will be brought there and they will finally be able to withdraw it after standing in line for many hours. Sometimes the fights break out, even among those waiting in front of the banks. Tensions reach their peak. Branches are set on fire and people all over the country take to the streets….

Scenes from Cyprus 2013? No. Nigeria, Laos, April this year. Old banknotes were invalidated in February and since then no new ones have been printed, only the old ones collected from the market by the central bank and destroyed. At the same time, they introduced central bank digital currency (CBDC), which was not accepted by the people at all. Over 200 million people were deprived of their money overnight. Almost no one wanted to pay or transact with the new e-currency (called eNaira). Thousands of businesses went bankrupt in a short period of time. A paradoxical situation arose in which gasoline could no longer be bought at gas stations in the country, which is one of the largest oil producers in the world.

Nigeria, with its 22o million people, has long since overtaken South Africa and is the largest economy on the Dark Continent. It is a country with huge raw material resources and a development potential that African mentality and corruption, which is present everywhere, wreck. It can be said that it is a rich country of poor people because almost all the capital is in the hands of politicians. One of them, the head of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefile, said in Davos that his country would soon be cashless and – lo and behold – that might end with blood in the streets. It is hard to believe that in a country where 32% of the people are illiterate, where most people do not have access to electricity, the idea of digital currency comes from below; that the shamans had whispered it in the ears of ordinary people. No, it comes from above and from outside. Third World countries have always been a training ground for Western elites, the grassroots movement of the new authoritarian world without cash. This time they are testing how far and how fast they are able to implement their ideas.

Finally, it should be remembered that the complete transition to cash, would make citizens transparent. Central banks could regulate digital money, depending on how they would like a citizen. It could also be that the validity of the money would be limited in time and could only be spent for certain purposes. Electronically, that’s easy to organize. How embarrassing that would be for the Germans, 58% of whom pay in cash! Nigeria has also been called the “cash king” in Africa.

The virtual world threatens the physical world. More on this in Gefira 73.

The energy crisis is planned and desired Electricity prices skyrocket, but that’s our new better world after all

The Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) were introduced with the Kyoto Protocol and imposed on the EU and other countries by the infamous Al Gore. His idea that whoever produces more CO2 has to pay for it was seemingly clear at the beginning and many immediately embraced it, but the ETS quickly became financial instruments in the hands of large investors and thus began to serve as such for speculation. ETS became a commodity on the stock exchange, traded just like bitcoin or CFDs (Contract for Differences). The fact that in the end it is the end consumer who suffers is of no interest to high finance, the EU and US elites. Take Elon Musk, for example. Do you think he earns his money by selling electric cars? Not by any means. By 2021, he won’t have made a single cent of profit from car production. Until last year, his company made its best profits from trading CO2 certificates. In the last three years it was $3.3 billion. Another of Musk’s gold mines is trading in Bitcoin. As reported by Tagesschau at one time, Tesla had acquired Bitcoins for $1.5 billion from January to March 2021 and then resold them for the profit of $300 million. Everyone knows that Bitcoin production and transaction means enormous energy consumption. Never mind, the main thing is that it is a modern currency. Wow! Are electric cars not environmentally friendly at all because exorbitant amounts of precious and industrial metals are needed in their production? No problem. The main thing is to scrap old cars and buy new “emission-free” ones, according to the Green narrative. You have a Tesla? Wow! The ruble is rolling, one would like to say, although the ruble is just rolling towards China, as Russia has multiplied its exports to the Middle Kingdom since the sanctions were introduced, making nonsense of the West’s sanctions. Driving old diesel is yuck, but taking a tour into space with Spacex is mega cool. Isn’t that right, Greta? You’ve already circled the globe with the most environmentally unfriendly means of transport. The time is coming for the moon. Putin’s action against Ukraine is simply a good reason to speed up the green revolution in the West.  Continue reading →