Debt, war, collapse, the fate of all degenerate empires, suckers--happening now, as we speak, before our very eyes, in Jew S A, morons

Apollonian

Guest Columnist

Debt, Currency Debasement, & War - The Timeless Pillars Of Failure​

BY TYLER DURDEN
TUESDAY, OCT 24, 2023 - 05:30 AM
Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com,

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/debt-currency-debasement-war-timeless-pillars-failure/

Below, we follow the breadcrumbs of simple math and bond market signals toward an oft-repeated pattern of how once-great nations become, well…not so great any more.

Debt Destroys Nations

Debt, once it passes the Rubicon from extreme to just plain madness, destroys nations.
Just ask the former Spanish, British or Dutch empires. Or ask the inter-war Germans. Ask the Yugoslavians of the 1990’s or ask a historian of Ancient Rome or a merchant in modern Argentina.
It’s all pretty much the same story, just different a different stage or curtain call.
Like Hemingway’s description of poverty, the process begins slowly at first, and then all at once.
Part of this process involves currency debasement needed to pay down more desperate issuance of IOUs, a process evidenced by rising rather than “transitory” inflation.
Thereafter, comes increased social unrest, and hence increased centralization from the political left or right in the name of “what’s best for us.”
Sound familiar?

Centralization—The Last, Failed Act

Centralization never works in the long run, but that has never stopped opportunists from trying.
Just look at our central bankers.
In a centralized rather than free market, the very name “central bank” should be a dead give-away as to their real role and profile.
As private central banks have been slowly increasing their hidden power and control over national markets and hence national welfare, the very notion of free price discovery in bonds, and indirectly in stocks, is now all but an extinct financial creature in the neo-feudalism which long ago replaced genuine capitalism.

How the Central Game is Played—From Temporary Prosperity to Permanent Ruin

When central banks like the Fed repress rates and print gobs and gobs of money, bonds are artificially supported, which means their prices go up and their yields are compressed.
When yields are low, rates are low, which means the cost of credit is cheap, allowing otherwise profitless names in the stock markets to borrow money and time for years of temporary prosperity—like a 600% rise in a post-08 S&P…
In short: central bank repressed rates are a profound tailwind for otherwise mediocre risk assets.
But when central banks like the Fed raise rates (ostensibly to “fight inflation”), the opposite effect happens—and things break. I mean really break.
I’ve written and spoken ad nauseum about what has broken, is breaking and will continue to break; furthermore, I’ve written and spoken at length about the quantifiable irony that Powell’s so-called war on inflation will only end in more inflation.
Yep, the ironies just abound in this world of so-called experts, which is little more than an island of misfit toys.

Postponing Pain Only Heightens It

In normal, free-market cycles devoid of central bank “support,” bonds and hence rates rise and fall naturally based on natural demand and natural supply.
Imagine that?
This leads to frequent but healthy moments of what von Mises and Schumpeter described as “constructive destruction”—i.e., a cleaning out of debt-soaked and crappy enterprises in naturally occurring recessions and naturally occurring market drawdowns.
But central banks somehow thought they could outlaw recessions by printing money out of thin air to support bonds and repress yields. You know—solve a debt crisis with more debt. Brilliant…
This was hubris at the highest level, and the stupid just became a habit and even received a fancy name to justify it—Modern Monetary Theory.

Natural Market Forces Are Stronger than Central (Bank) Forces

But the longer central banks postponed pain to win Noble Prizes and ego-lifting acclaim from the un-informed, the greater the natural pain (ticking time bomb) these central planners created as they now slowly realize that the bond market, like an ocean, is more powerful than a band of unelected market stewards.
In fact, a bunch of FOMC officials (Kashkari, Bostic, Waller et al.) are now running around like headless chickens and declaring that higher bond yields may now be more powerful than the Fed Funds Rate.
In other words, after months of hawkish chest-puffing, they are saying that perhaps enough is enough with the “higher for longer” meme…
Central bankers, it seems, are beginning to realize what informed credit market jocks have always known, viz: The bond market is stronger than any central bank.

Price Matters

That is, eventually central bankers lose control of artificial bond pricing.
Which means that eventually the great weight of sinking bonds and hence rising yields and rates becomes more powerful than central bank money printers to keep those bonds artificially “supported.”
I’ve been saying this for years despite “journalists” at the WSJ and Financial Times calling math-based realists like me “kooks.”
But recently even the fine folks at the WSJ or Financial Times (FT) are beginning to worry out loud as UST supplies far outstrip natural demand, causing bond prices to fall and yields and rates to rise fatally higher than central bankers once thought safely under their control.
We’ve warned of this for years—and this grotesque supply and demand mis-match has only risen exponentially in recent months.

America: Running Out of Takers/Suckers for Its Ever-Increasing IOUs?

The trillions in spending forecasted for year-end and into 2024 just don’t have any real money behind it, which means more IOUs will be spitting out of DC with less and less love/demand for the same.
This, of course, has been a real problem hiding in plain site for a long, long time.
As supply outpaces demand for sovereign bonds, their prices sink, their yields rise and hence interest rates—the cost of debt—becomes fatal rather than just painful.
The journalists at the FT, most of whom never sat at a trading desk, however, still have a very hard time imaging the unspeakable—i.e., a total implosion of sovereign bonds, and hence a total implosion of the financial system.

Thinking About the Unthinkable

They still see the UST as too big to fail—or to use their own words, any failure of this sacred US Sovereign bond is “unthinkable.”
Well…think again.
But at least the main-stream-financial pundits are crying that any real threat to Uncle Sam’s IOUs “would force the state to act.”
For once, I actually agree with these “journalists.”
But let’s clarify what “forcing the state to act” really means—i.e., in simple speak.

When There’s No Good Acts Left to Take

In short, this means the “state” would have to “act” by saving the bond market in particular and the global financial system in general via trillions and trillions of printed dollars to purchase otherwise unloved IOUs from Uncle Sam.
In other words, the only way to save bonds is to kill currencies.
This, by the way, is a now familiar trajectory to any one paying attention (think of the September 2019 repo crisis, the March 2020 Covid crash or the 2022 Gilt crisis in the UK) the implications of which we’ve been warning well ahead of the pundits.
Such “state action,” of course, slowly kills the USD—but as I’ve also warned for years, the last bubble to pop in every centralized, debt-soaked financial failure throughout history is always the currency.
The once exceptional USD, sadly, is no exception. It just takes longer, a lot longer, to bring down a world reserve currency.
This, by the way, is not “gold bug sensationalism” but simple history supported by simple math—two disciplines our leaders, financial journalists and even bankers either don’t grasp or do their best to ignore, cancel or dismiss.
Again, with the ironies.

Even the Media Can’t Deny the Obvious

But at least the main stream pundits are catching on. This is only because the problem of unprecedented deficits alongside rising bond yields and hence debt costs are now too obvious to ignore.
The WSJ recently wrote that “deficits finally matter.”
Hmmm. They have mattered for a long time—just saying…

Telegraphing a Weaker USD?

In the end, and as warned over and over and over (and as confirmed, it seems, even by the squawking Fed officials above), the facts and Fed-speak all point toward a talking down of the USD in favor of Uncle Sam’s broken IOU.
That is, the media is already planting the seeds for the USD’s painful endgame.
This comes as ZERO surprise, despite the Greenback’s relative status as the best horse in the global glue factory.
And, at least for now, that USD is breaking well off its prior uptrend…

This weaker USD will provide needed liquidity relief for an over-stretched UST market.
But the USD (and DXY) will have to come down much further, in my opinion, to buy sovereign bond markets needed time.

Pick Your Poison: Busted Financial System or Neutered USD?

Eventually a choice will have to be made between saving the system (of which sovereign bonds are the foundation) or sacrificing the currency.
In other words, get ready for more dollar-destroying “state action” from that non-state/private enterprise otherwise known as the Fed—all in the form of direct magical mouse-click money.

The Postponed Pivot Already Began

For over a year, this inevitable Fed pivot toward QE was delayed by back-door QE-like measures from Yellen’s Treasury Department (i.e., refilling the Treasury General Account with T-Bills) or the dual (and multi-trillion) accounting tricks of BTFP bank-bailout (by which Uncle Sam guaranteed par value return to the banks but market value losses to the suckers on Main Street…)

Or War Might Be in Order? Ask Hemingway

In fact, the only thing that could publicly justify (and partially absorb) another massive dose of 2020-like money printing (and hence currency debasement) would be a big, fat, ugly war with war-like “emergency measures” whereby our leaders can blame decades of debt-addiction on battle smoke (or COVID, Putin, and men from Mars) rather than their own bathroom mirrors.
Again, Hemingway was likely onto this trend long before the WSJ or FT:

Around and Round We Go

But with conflicts now red hot in both the Ukraine and Israel, Biden and his broken bond market are hitting an inflection point where the USA just can’t really afford more war support to its allies without thinning the USD and over-stretching its UST.
And so, folks… around and round we go in the ultimate vicious circle within which all debt-soaked nations throughout history ultimately find themselves.
That is: 1) poorly managed nations get too drunk on debt, and then 2) debase their currency to pay their debt; thereafter, 3) inflation comes, followed by 4) rising rates to fight that inflation, which in turn means 5) higher debt service costs, which means 6) more inflationary currency creation is rolled out to pay those higher rates.
Stated more simply, the USA has hit the Fiscal Dominance arc of the debt-cycle vicious circle wherein fighting inflation just creates more inflation.

The World Is Catching On…

We, of course, are not the only ones who see this.
In fact, pretty much the entire world is catching on, with the BRICS+ nations making the first steady moves (de-dollarization) as eastern and other central banks continue to stack physical gold at record-levels in preparation for the slow but steady decline (not death, nod to Brent Johnson) of the World Reserve Currency.
As I recently wrote, just like kings bring horses and canons to their borders to defend against an approaching invader, central banks are stacking physical gold to defend against a debased USD.
It’s just that obvious.
This may explain why gold continues to rise in London and NYC despite so-called “positive real rates” and a still relatively strong USD.
That is, the world, including the Shanghai gold exchange, is seeing the golden lighthouse through the smoke of burning currencies.
Are you?
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Apollonian

Guest Columnist

What Biden’s ‘new world order’ really means​

Any new “unity” proposed by such an old-world-order creature as the current US president will have one purpose only: serve Washington
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

Link: https://www.rt.com/news/585699-biden-new-world-order/

rachelmarsden.com

What Biden’s ‘new world order’ really means

© ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP

We all have that one friend who can’t stop arranging things – whether it’s matchmaking, dinner parties, or vacation itineraries programmed down to the minute. They just can’t kick back and take things in stride. The world has to revolve around them, on their time and terms.
The US has been that guy for the world for the past several decades. Everyone’s tired of it. But now it has a new invitation – to a new world order.
“I think we have an opportunity to do things, if we’re bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” US President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser this month. Washington’s boldness and confidence has led to unilateral regime-change bombings, the arming of jihadist proxies in Afghanistan against the Soviets and in Syria against President Bashar Assad, and Azov neo-Nazis in Ukraine. None of that has made the world a better place – just more chaotic. It’s not like any of these places end up better off as a result.
“We were in a post-war period for 50 years where it worked out pretty damn well, but that sort of run out of steam. It needs a new world order in a sense,” Biden said. “Worked out pretty damn well” for whom? Surely not for Latin America, subjected to constant intervention by Washington in its own interests. Same with the Middle East for all those decades when it served primarily as America’s gas station. Or even for the European Union, much of which has gone from being a collection of independent-minded allies to mostly a monolithic vassal for US interests at the expense of its own. The same could even be said of my native Canada, whose economic interests were hindered by Biden himself when he unilaterally cancelled a critical $9 billion pipeline project (Keystone XL) upon election. That should have been the very last time that Canada banked its economic interests on American good faith. It won’t be, though.
US will build ‘new world order’ – Biden
Read more [ck site link, above, top]

US will build ‘new world order’ – Biden

The EU had its own critical pipeline of Russian gas (Nord Stream) blown up just a few months after Biden said, right in front of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that he’d find a way to “end” it if the Ukraine conflict popped off. Then, after Biden’s promises to help his European partners wean themselves off Russian cooperation in exchange for backing Washington’s strategy in Ukraine, reality is setting in for EU leaders that their own blind trust is going to cost them. Not only do they now suffer from an overdependence on American fuel that’s helping to drive inflation, but they’re also stuck with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that even further disadvantages European industrial exports, already suffering from high energy costs, to the benefit of US manufacturers. And not even a pleading visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the White House and Congress has managed to move the dial.
As for the UK, which likes to brag about a “special relationship” with Washington, where’s that post-Brexit US trade deal that was supposed to help offset the impact of splitting from the EU?
Yet, Biden wonders why there seems to be a loss of interest in playing ball with the US on its own terms under the old world order that it dominated. Indeed, what a huge mystery! If this is how Washington has been treating its closest allies, then is it any wonder that the rest of the world isn’t exactly enthusiastic about anything else that the US might want to arrange for everyone?
“I think we have a real opportunity to unite the world in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. And enhance the prospect of peace,” Biden said. Get real, man. Any new world order proposed by establishment fixture Biden would exist for one purpose, as it always has: to serve US economic interests. As would any unity.
‘New world order’ vs ‘empire of lies’: Key takeaways from Lavrov’s UN speech
Read more
‘New world order’ vs ‘empire of lies’: Key takeaways from Lavrov’s UN speech

Biden explained, as an example, that he was able to get both Japan and South Korea to unite despite “not talking” to one another. “I went to see them both,” Biden said. “They agreed. And guess what they’re doing?” Don’t keep us in suspense, man! Are they signing a flurry of bilateral trade deals despite their historical grievances? Having pajama parties? Nope. They both signed on this past summer to help do Washington’s bidding against China and get aboard with US-led military drills in Beijing’s backyard. “They’re both supporting the fight in Ukraine against Russian oppression” as well, Biden said. “Because they understand if they remain silent, they may be next.” By “remaining silent,” he apparently means ignoring Washington at their own peril. By “being next,” he presumably means an attack by China and not Russia – although you never know. It seems that the talking point these days being used to drum up military-industrial business for Washington is that Russia is going to invade anyone and everyone.
If it’s a choice between just sitting out all the drama and joining up with Washington’s attempts to antagonize China in its own backyard, apparently these Asian countries have decided that turning down US demands just isn’t worth it. Kind of like the obnoxious pal who you know will make your life miserable if you forego his offer to hang out in favor of a quiet night at home – so you just pick the least bad option, sucking it up and indulging him.
This new world order that Biden is peddling sounds like the kind of party whose host would constantly be clanging on his wine glass to make speeches about himself and “muh democracy” while everyone just wants to mingle, and then demand that everyone participate in annoying party games that no one else finds enjoyable or beneficial. But it looks like Biden is already concerned that this time around, a lot of invitations could remain without response – even if at the risk of having one’s house firebombed as a result of the rejection.
 

Apollonian

Guest Columnist

Annual Interest On The US National Debt Exceeds 1 Trillion Dollars​

November 8, 2023 6:09 am by CWR

Link: https://citizenwatchreport.com/annual-interest-on-the-us-national-debt-exceeds-1-trillion-dollars/

This amounts to a doubling of interest costs over the past 19 months, according to Bloomberg. It is the equivalent of 15.9 percent of the Federal budget for fiscal year 2022.

www.breitbart.com/economy/2023/11/07/bloomberg-u-s-debt-interest-bill-soars-past-1-trillion-a-year/
This is based on the current book debt of $33+ trillion. It doesn’t reflect the $211+ trillion in unfunded liabilities.
See also 30% of all mortgages have an interest rate under 3%
(lower right)

www.usdebtclock.org/#
Make no mistake, this is the final stage of the FED going bankrupt.

Just about 2 months ago, the unfunded liabilities was $180+ trillion. Now it’s over $211+ trillion.
See also JPMorgan Chase Has Lost a Quarter Trillion Dollars in Deposits in Last 7 Quarters — Fortress Balance Sheet or Leaky Sieve?
That’s a $30+ trillion increase in a couple months.
Prepare, the fed collapse is near. 6-12 months.

broward.ghost.io/2023/08/10/1-6-trillion/
How i estimated it.
There’s also $1 trillion in new borrowing, separate
from interest payments so we should see a $3 trillion
deficit in 2025.
 

Apollonian

Guest Columnist

Pictorial: Global Reserve Currency Empires​

VBL's Photo

BY VBL
SATURDAY, NOV 18, 2023 - 16:20

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-11-18/pictorial-global-reserve-currency-empires/

[vid at site link, above]

Pictorial: Global Reserve Currency Empires​

A Comment on Wealth Management

Authored by GoldFix ZH Edit:
Below is each Global Reserve currency and summary circumstances surrounding the downfall of their status as such.
Since 1450 there have been six major world reserve currency periods.
  1. Portugal (1450–1530)
  2. Spain (1530–1640)
  3. Netherlands (1640–1720)
  4. France (1720–1815)
  5. Great Britain (1815–1920),
  6. United States (1921-???)

Portugal (1450–1530)​



Courtesy PersonalFinanceClub.com


Portugal at its Height
  • Demise: Thrived as first explorers, pre-competition; suffered when the Dutch, English, and French got in the colonial and trading game. No clear War event

Spain (1530–1640)​





Spain at its Height
  • Demise: Franco-Spanish War starts in 1635, marks beginning of Spain's decline in Western Europe. By 1650-1660 Spain's global empire burdened its economic, resources too much and it shrunk.

Netherlands (1640–1720)​





Netherlands at their height
  • Demise: Goes bankrupt Fighting Britain in Asia while Dutch East Indian Company collapses. France expands, takes advantage

France (1720–1815)​





French Empire at its Height
  • Demise: Napoleanic Wars Between France and GB/Allies ends after 18 years in 1815 with Treaty of Paris basically bankrupting France

Great Britain (1815–1920)​




Great Britain at its Height
  • World War 1 ends. GB "wins"

United States (1921-2025?)​



https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d6788f2-d8ea-4b9a-a1b0-cb871b428abf_616x439.png
https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5b3669c-ffcd-4350-9db4-d71b2015c205_471x332.png

  • The return to multipolarity gains acceptance along with Gold and Silver as monetary metals.
  • All powers involved want some degree of change without global war it seems based on actions and reactions.
  • Similarities between the US and Spanish situation are notable but not 100% the same.
    • Spain ran large, persistent trade deficits
    • Spain didn’t accommodate foreign imbalances so much as create them, to the benefit especially of England and the Netherlands.
  • “However it happens, a world in which trade isn’t structured around the dollar will require a massive transformation of the structure of global trade — and for surplus countries like Brazil, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and China, this is likely to be a very disruptive transformation.”

In studying the above info two things jump out when attempting to determine the circumstances under which reserve currencies change. Economic Strife and War

Economic Strife and War​

The first is Economic Strife. This seems pretty obvious since we are talking about money. If your economy is struggling, your currency’s reliability and its existence are put in doubt somewhat.
Continues here ...

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