The US economy and its financial structures have never recovered from the great financial meltdown of 2008 despite the passage of ten years. Little discussion has been given to the fact that the Republican Congress last year abandoned the process of mandatory budget cuts or automatic sequestration that had been voted in a feeble attempt to rein in the dramatic rise in US government debt.
The annual speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1 to the Russian Federal Assembly, televised to the nation, contained a section on Russian military cutting edge technologies that NATO-friendly media chose to either downplay as a propaganda ploy or an election campaign stunt.
The Russian government has recently announced it will issue nearly $1 billion equivalent in state bonds, but denominated not in US dollars as is mostly the case. Rather it will be the first sale of Russian bonds in China’s yuan. While $1 billion may not sound like much when compared with the Peoples’ Bank of China total holdings of US Government debt of more than $1 trillion or to the US Federal debt today of over $20 trillion, it’s significance lies beyond the nominal amount.
Major western media headlines in recent days have hailed the capture of major natural gas fields around Syria’s Deir Ez Zor province as though it were a victory for Syria. Typical headlines read, “SDF Recaptures Syria Gas Field From ISIS.” Note the word “recaptures,” implying that the original owners of the gas fields, the Syrian state, had managed to recapture its valuable economic resources from ISIS terrorists. In reality, the opposite is the case.
An operation that began as a seemingly obscure academic discussion three years ago is now becoming a full-blown propaganda campaign by some of the most powerful institutions in the industrialized world. This is what rightly should be termed the War on Cash. Like the War on Terror, the War on Cancer or the War on Drugs, its true agenda is sinister and opaque. If we are foolish enough to swallow the propaganda for complete elimination of cash in favor of pure digital bank money, we can pretty much kiss our remaining autonomy and privacy goodbye.
Britain is ditching the EU as a failed option, and seems to be intent on building a new English-speaking Union together with the United States and with the nations of the Commonwealth–the former colonies of the British Empire prior to 1914.
The Euro is murdering the nations and economies of the EU quite literally. Since the fixed currency regime came into effect, replacing national currencies in transactions in 2002, the fixed exchange rate regime has devastated industry in the periphery states of the 19 Euro members while giving disproportionate benefit to Germany. The consequence has been a little-noted industrial contraction and lack of possibility to deal with resulting banking crises. The Euro is a monetarist disaster and the EU dissolution is now pre-programmed as just one consequence.
It appears clearly that Washington’s enraged neoconservatives around Victoria Nuland in the State Department and Defense Secretary Ash Carter have made the best contribution to bringing China and Russia together in an unprecedented manner. They managed this impressive feat by imposing financial and economic sanctions on Russia and threatening China’s sea lanes, fostering terrorism in Xinjiang and advancing the military “Asia Pivot” as well as the TPP that deliberately excludes China.
The ominous element in this more than ominous situation revolving around the center of world petroleum and natural gas reserves, the Middle East, is the fact that in the recent weeks oil prices, which had temporarily stabilized at an already low $40 range in December, now have plunged another 25% to around $29, outlook grim. Citigroup has forecast $20 oil is possible. Goldman Sachs recently came out saying that it may take lows of $20 a barrel to restabilize world oil markets and get rid of the glut of supply.
There is a very positive news coming out of Paris, a city with more than her share of bad news lately. It’s a major legal victory for the voices of science and reason against the GMO Monsanto-led cabal. Its implications will be felt worldwide.
The Obama Administration has been training terrorists of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, allegedly to fight ISIS, much like the disgraced General David Petraeus did in Iraq and Afghanistan along with Obama’s special ISIS coordinator, the just-resigned General John Allen. The US-trained “moderate” terrorists were being readied, it’s now clear to all the world, in reality, to battle Assad and open the way for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Syria and a real plunge into darkness for the world if that were to succeed.
Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
