President Ronald Reagan was known for his peculiar approach to the exercise of power. As the leader of the state, he naturally had advisors and could consult experts in the most diverse fields of human endeavor. Reports and calculations as well as statistics were laid on his desk. Having a practical approach to life, and therefore to governing a country, Ronald Reagan made it a requirement that reports should be no longer than one page, and about the condition of individual states he formed his view perhaps if not more on the basis of the content of jokes told by the people in those states, which he ordered to be collected, written down and reported to him, than on the basis of extensive research by specialists.

When he was told that the Soviet Union was doing quite well in terms of its economy, he asked briefly how many passenger cars there were per 1,000 inhabitants: the resulting figure, compared to the number of passenger cars in the United States, Germany or France, told him much more concisely about the state of the Soviet economy than the opinions of experts on the subject.

President Ronald Reagan knew virtually everything about Romania’s economy, having heard this Romanian joke from the time when the country was run by Nicolae Ceausescu:

There is an unusually long line for hours in front of a store where one can buy an everyday good. They wait for the goods to be brought in. One of the customers can’t stand it and says to another, I’m going to kill him (he actually means Nicolae Ceaușescu). In a while he returns to the queue. The man who was standing with him asks: How was it? Did you kill him? To which the man who returned replies: No. There is an even longer line there.

This method of Ronald Reagan could be applied to the evaluation of all political and economic events and states. Statistics and scientific studies can be impressive – especially to the untrained mind – but they remain very often deceptive or are simply deliberately selective. An example? According to many economists, Lithuania has gained a great deal economically since it ceased to be a Soviet republic. Numerous statistics, tables and charts are cited to confirm this. There is only one chart, one table, one set of data missing, and that is that which states that Lithuania has lost ONE THIRD of its population since independence. What do you think? Are these people of retirement age who, with their bulging wallets, have left to spend the rest of their lives in the Balearic Islands or the Riviera? Of course not. Those who have left Lithuania are young or middle-aged people: they are producers, workers, inventors, entrepreneurs. How have Lithuanians become better off when a third of them have left the country? Probably only in such a way that the value of all assets was divided into a much smaller population and it came out that each of them became richer by the mere fact that the same amount of good is distributed among a smaller number of citizens. That’s how – using the Ronald Reagan method – we showed that things are not as good with Lithuania’s economy as it is portrayed.

Let’s apply the Ronald Reagan method to assess how the United States is doing. As we know, the Ronald Reagan method doesn’t need comprehensive studies, hundreds of pages of expert reports, think-tanks and God knows what else to do it. The Ronald Reagan method will look for a few indicators – widely available, easy to understand, as clear as a litmus test – and soon an assessment will be made about the predicament of America, its society, its economy and its moral health.

For comparison: Isn’t such a litmus test the news that in Zimbabwe, for a good few years now, the national currency (with the term national being a mockery in this case) has been the U.S. dollar? Under the stewardship of Robert Mugabe, a black racist and an idol of Western elites and intellectuals, as a result of his reforms, the country’s own currency became sick with rampant inflation and gave up the ghost. What more does one need to know about the state of the country, its economy and the people who run it?

But let’s return to the United States. What will the litmus test show us when we apply it to the American moral, social and economic reality? This litmus paper will become very brightly colored, very quickly, if applied to the following events: Continue reading →

Every move made within a chess game is recorded. The record allows us to reconstruct what has happened and also gives an insight into the current situation. Let’s look at the position of the pieces and pawns at the current point in time, recall their moves and try to predict what the players’ next moves will be.

The world is roughly divided into West and non-West. Thirty years ago, we had a division into the First (Western, capitalist), Second (Eastern, socialist) and Third (the Non-Aligned Movement, although the term Third World also connotes a backward world, but that is not the distinction meant here) worlds. The West emerged victorious from the Cold War of 1947-1991, as a result of which the Second World – the socialist camp, the Warsaw Pact – ceased to exist. The Non-Aligned Movement, in which Yugoslavia, among others, played first fiddle, also came to an end, especially when one of its keystones – precisely Yugoslavia – was subjected to crushing tests and was broken up into several political units.

It is peculiar that the break-up of the mighty Soviet Union and the takeover of the Comecon and Warsaw Pact states took place without a single shot being fired, while tiny Yugoslavia was broken up over many years in bloody and devastating wars.

The driving forces of history are economic and financial factors (of which everyone is well aware) as well as biological factors (the anthropological type inhabiting a given territory) and, among these, psychological factors (religions and ideologies; of these factors not everyone is aware). It was an idea (an ideology, a religion, the name doesn’t matter) that drove the Arabs and then the Muslims to conquer vast territories; it was socialist or communist ideas (ideas of so-called social justice) that unleashed the forces dormant in society and led to a series of successful or unsuccessful revolutions; it was the Christian faith that gradually conquered the Roman Empire from within – without a single shot – while the well-known major heresies were the driving forces behind the enormous social and political changes in Europe. The Soviet Union collapsed at the behest of the elites of that state, whose minds succumbed to the allure of all things Western, whose minds surrendered to Western ideas, and who most simply declared their own state bankrupt in exchange for the hope or promise of belonging to the elites of what they considered a better world.

Partly as a result of the fact that the Western elites did not accept the Soviet elites as partners of equals, and partly because part of the Soviet (Russian) elites espoused the idea of Russian patriotism (psychology!), there was a national revival in Russia that brought Vladimir Putin to power.

A very similar thing happened in China. There too, elites seduced by American offers of cooperation and enrichment took the American bait and were ready to subjugate the Middle Kingdom to Washington. Hu Jintao, among others, was an exponent of such aspirations. Cooperation with the United States paid off: China became an economic power, but at the price of political dependence on Washington. Not surprisingly, patriotic forces came to the fore in China (as they had done in Russia), who did not wish to play the role of America’s stooge. It was they who brought Xi Jinping to power, and he, together with a group of dedicated people, concentrated full power in his hands and led to the removal of the pro-Western group centred around Hu Jintao. This was done in a very spectacular way, when the whole world was able to see the former Chinese leader being led out of the conference hall housing the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Continue reading →

High inflation and the energy crisis have become a fact. We have warned our readers about this ahead of time and explicitly, especially in our bulletins. The mainstream media only shed light on the three topics: Russia, the aforementioned energy crisis, and inflation. However, many factors indicate that the current crisis has only just begun and that dangers lurk in the areas of previous crises. Consider some less discussed facts:

[i] The U.S. housing market, which sparked the 2008 crisis, is in steep decline. The U.S. NAHB index shows how much interest there is in buying a property and this is now dropping to lockdown and 2008 levels. What will boost the U.S. economy in the coming years? If the FED decides to pivot and start easing monetary policy again, it may save the real estate market, but it will finally bury the dollar, the current king of currencies (whose importance rose due to the Ukraine war).

[ii] The 1848 revolution in Europe resulted from economic conditions. By early 1847, staple food prices had doubled across Europe, leading to unrest and fears of famine. European governments responded with restrictive monetary policies that led to a recession. In 1848, Europe realized the political consequences of the two years of economic chaos. History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes. Today’s circumstances are reminiscent of those then, but there are two key differences: capital is abundant (albeit less so than two years ago) and labor is scarce (Europe’s fertility rate was over 3 in 1848, it is 1.5 today). So should we expect similar political instability? We cannot rule out the possibility that the Yellow Vest movement will return in one form or another in France in 2018, and that it will spread all over Europe, especially in Germany and Sweden, squeezed by green ideologues through electricity price increases and additional eco-tax burdens. The most immediate political consequence of citizen discontent is the rightward turn of European voters (see September election results in Italy and Sweden). Voters have come to understand that today’s energy crisis results from the foolish abandonment of nuclear power, the impossibility of a complete switch to green power, and the stubborn green ideology that puts “saving nature” above saving people people. Continue reading →

Why do you think the West is so insistent on imposing democracy everywhere in the world? Is it because the West wants the people to rule everywhere in the world? Is it because the West wants prosperity everywhere in the world? Is it because democracy is the best political system that mankind has known, that mankind has invented, that mankind has been endowed with? Why will this West go to war with any country (weak enough to be beaten with impunity) to overthrow a dictatorship and introduce democratic rule? Is it because Westerners have nothing better to do than think of all those nations around the world that allegedly yearn for democracy?

Yes, you guessed right. Democracy is a cover for the best system ever — for the oligarchic system, for the rule of the oligarchs. While they rule the country and the world, they also make ordinary people believe that it is…. ordinary people who rule the world! This oligarchic system is much better than monarchy or aristocracy. The monarch or a group of aristocrats are on the radar of the demos (i.e., the people) and are blamed for any failures. In a democracy, the demos cannot blame anyone but…. itself! Look, bad decisions were made by inept politicians, who in turn were elected by…. you, the people! Therefore, ultimately you, the people, are to blame!

Education, entertainment and information make everyone believe that, to quote a hackneyed saying, democracy is a bad system, but unfortunately no better one has been invented. So people believe they are living in the happiest times in history. Behind the scenes, the oligarchs – influential, wealthy individuals – do what they please and use some of their money to make democracy work. Part of the scheme is to distract the demos from the real rulers of the world: the oligarchs. How do they distract? They point the finger at dictators and tyrants elsewhere and at – yes! – oligarchs elsewhere! The Western oligarchs are busy pointing at the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, thus hiding their own influence over the governance of the countries! How clever!

This is what Gefira 67 deals with and invites you to consider.