137 Comments

  1. I’ve just read “Green Murder: A life sentence of net zero with no parole” by Ian Plimer. What a takedown of all this climate nonsense. Might be a good candidate for one of your book reviews.

    1. Thanks, Jessica, for recommending Ian Plimer. I see he also wrote “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science” where he says the changes observed today are less than those of the past and that, in previous times, atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than at present but did not drive climate change. Should also be an interesting read.

  2. “the founders of Israel are behind the new high-tech Ukraine”

    You mean New Khazaria? You mean the subject about which you refused to learn for roughly 2 years?

    1. There are rumors in Saker blog comments about upcoming negotiations in September for partitioning of territory. Another question is the (temporary?) departure of the oligarch who was pushing new construction. Odessa sea port access is strategic.

      Any EU smart city-state vision (e.g. New Ukraine or displacement of Dutch farmers to create TriStateCity.nl https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/dutch-investors-launch-new-marketing-programme-for-nl-tristate-city/) needs to be evaluated in the context of other city-state visions, e.g. Saudi Arabia’s NEOM.

        1. This foundation has been publishing papers on charter city governance, building on lessons learned from Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Shenzen and other “special economic zones” where multiple systems of public governance were concurrently applied to a single physical jurisdiction: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/intro/

          Might be interesting to consider what happens in the analogous scenario where there are non-public governance systems being combined with public ones. https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/reference-guides/governance-handbook/

          Africa NXT50 cities: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/nxt50/

    2. Since you are not privy to my reading and research schedule, how would you know? Michael, you need to grow some manners. Your bitterness needs an outlet elsewhere.

    3. Michael, I find the Khazarians to be fascinating. I’m following a lead that suggests they were originally the Pharaohs from Egypt, later went to Khazaria, called themselves Khazarians, and then migrated into Europe and finally settled in Switzerland. [That explains Switzerland!] They are, after all, very good at taking on new names, new religions, and new personas. And then looking at the word “pharaoh,” I’m wondering if they were the Pharisees. Wouldn’t that be interesting if it turned out to be true!

  3. Catherine has long described Australia as being the “lucky country”, and the story regarding the CBDC pilot program triggered a thought. I’ll grossly oversimplify but this is the general premise:

    Phase 1: Gain complete authority over an isolated population via gun control, covid lockdowns, and CBDCs.

    Phase 2: Release the untapped wealth of Australia’s natural resources while importing massive amounts of cheap labor from Asia to drive the boom. No risk of a runaway reaction due to the complete control grid created in phase 1.

    Phase 3: Use this as a model to convince other populations to beg for their country to adopt the “Australia Model”

    Perhaps Australia was the “lucky” country after all

    1. Apparently the recent Zero Covid lockdowns in China are motivating migration of elite talent, not just cheap labor, to other countries in the APAC region, including Singapore and Australia.

  4. Following on your comment about linking your body to digital currency a la Face Pay: If you connect your body to a financial system your body becomes a ‘coin’ in someone else’s purse, which is the definition of slavery.

  7. Each week as I listen to the ~two hours of the Money And Markets, I mean to make comments, but end up forgetting about them by the time I get to the end, and by then it’s on to other things.

    This week I decided to comment as the things come up, after pausing the presentation.

    In the first segment, I would assemble the following facts, which are Putin not bluffing about his hypersonic missiles, nobody really fighting that hard in Ukraine nor showing their whiz-bang weapons, and the fact that the US is not rattled by the non-bluff by Putin:

    All the above could be true, but actually the US could simultaneously be in possession of weapons that they know are better than Putin’s, and he may actually know this as well, but his is a bluff to get us to reveal the underlying technology that goes with the pending UFO play. We may actually have things that do as UFOs are reputed to do, but if we use them, we would be revealing something that we’ve been trying to keep secret. That double-bind again. This game might be trickier than anyone is imagining.

    You and John often talk about stacking functions but I believe there is a corollary that involves stacking screw-ups. The IRS Army militarization is a stacked screw up in my opinion. The IRS starts out as one of the least admired agencies, and we have a government that inveighs against citizen weaponry. I don’t know how you put the two of those together comfortably. It’s hard to imagine there are hundreds of thousands of people with challengeable tax deductions, omissions and errors whose amounts are sufficient to risk potential armed conflict. If the IRS makes too big an issue out of too small an item, you are certain to have retaliation in the worst form. Most of us can certainly remember Granny Clampett grabbing her shotgun when word of revenooers coming around was in the air. The IRS exist principally as a threat to big cheaters, even if they persecute small cheaters on occasion. As with all bullies, the game is over when violence is met with violence. With US federal government at historical lows in trust and approval, this seems like an exceptionally bad move, sort of like the mistress of misinformation.

    The metaphor of Wall Street Cowboys, while interesting, is not as good as Wall Street Privateers. Pirates were originally subcontractors of the British Crown, enlisted to harass and threaten Spanish shipping. As the pickings became lush, people like Blackbeard enjoyed very high lifestyles. When the need was gone, The Crown turned on the privateers, persecuting them as illicit pirates, a la Pirates of the Caribbean. I think this is what will be going on with the people that are running all the tricky investments that the government wanted to experiment with. And Crypto Buccaneers.

    Lastly, while I claim only amateur status in chart-reading, the divergence of TLT and GLD are clearly manifest between May and September 2020, not Spring, 2021.

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