Month: July 2020

Authored by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com,

Deep-Seated Racism and Happy-Smiley Hypocrites

In Delhi, people of the northeastern part of India, who have mongoloid features, are derogatorily called “chinky.”

It is not unusual for men in Delhi to stop their cars to proposition a random girl from the northeast for a sexual encounter, assuming her to be “loose.”

Indians’ ignorance about the geography of their own country, their irrationality, superstitions and bigotry have been fertile ground in these days of Covid-19. People from the northeast have faced massive problems based on the assumption that they are carriers of the virus. They have been refused services at shops and have been thrown out by landlords.

Indians from the northeast being denied entry into a shop

The girl from the northeast was spat at and called “corona,” instead of “chinky.”

Girls from the northeast threatened with eviction for “being carriers of corona-virus” being saved by the police

To visit monuments in India, an Indian pays a much lower charge than a non-Indian. Most Indians buy their entrance tickets, but not those from the northeast. They must prove that they are Indian by showing their IDs. Even then, the ignorant-ticket seller might still insist on the price foreigners pay.

Indians like to believe that they have a great family system and that they are generous and welcoming. Quite in contrast, surveys show Indians to be among the most race, color, caste, and religion conscious people in the world. My friend in Delhi had one of the happiest families I have seen. When I probed, she told me that hers was a “happy-smiley” family.

I didn’t know what that meant. She told me it was about a family in which everyone hated each other, but which made a great public display of their cohesion. While I had forgotten about this hypocrisy, I recalled how completely blown away I was when I met real, functional families in the UK during my first visit abroad.

India, one of the most racist countries

Complicated Relations 

Since 1962 China has been regarded with derision in India. Contrary to the indoctrination Indians get, it was an extremely embarrassing defeat for India, which offered no resistance in most places. In those days, India’s GDP was higher than that of China.

Today, China is five times richer than India and invests a higher proportion of its budget in its armed forces. By that measure, any renewed armed conflict between India and China will likely give China an even more comfortable win over India.

India had a larger GDP than China in 1962; Now China’s is five times larger

Most Indians, who are vicariously proud while sitting in front of their TV, think that it is China that is afraid of India. It is so easy to feel courageous when the person who dies is not you or your son.

India has complicated relations with all its neighbors, perhaps with the  slight exception of Bhutan, which is stuck in such a way that it cannot complain, even if it wanted to. Still, muffled noises do even come out of Bhutan once in a while.

India’s relationship with its closest ally Nepal, the only other Hindu country in the world, has taken a tumble

India is one of the most closed countries in the world. Countries around the world today have an open road system and a visa-free regime with their neighbors, irrespective of any border issues they may have.

India has virtually no road connection with its neighbors, a product of an extremely paranoid and close-minded Indian ruling class. They are scared that someone might do better, and cross-border friendships and business relations might develop. These bureaucrats are not just corrupt but brimming with jealousy and sadism.

Indians think that getting a visa is an achievement, forgetting that an Indian passport has no value. It gives Indians visa-free travel only to Nepal, Bhutan, and a handful of small countries, making it one of the worst passports in the world.

So disconnected are Indians from the on-the-ground realities of China that they think all of China is a bubble and a backwater communist tyranny. The fact that Indians are among the most bigoted people, and their ruling class neurotic, paranoid, and close-minded must be taken into account when evaluating India’s border problems with China.

In 1962 China voluntarily ceded many areas it had taken over from India, despite officially maintaining claims over them. Contrary to popular perception, China is not necessarily an expansionary power. It took over Hong Kong and Macau after protracted negotiations, rather than through coercive measures.

And Tibet, which has historically been an area of Chinese influence, is not necessarily as clear-cut an issue as Richard Gere has made it out to be.

At Odds with Reality

In his speech about the recent Chinese incursion into India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there had been no such incursion. Very quickly India’s media and society proceeded to ignore the  horrendous and glaring contradiction between Modi’s words and the scores of dead Indian soldiers.

The dead get word from the prime minister… [PT]

Modi didn’t care to explain what the border problem was all about then. Also, he gives no — none, zip, nada — appearances before journalists in public. If he ever does an interview, everything is scripted to minute details.

The most important job of the Indian government is to protect its borders, but for all intents and purposes, Modi does not think that Indians need to know what is happening. It is clear that despite all the chest-thumping, India cannot afford a war with China.

China is scared of all religions. Its most significant worry is Xingjian, a Muslim province. There is a highway that runs from Tibet to Xingjian. This highway is in a desert, Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India and close to the area of the current conflict. New infrastructure building by India in that area has also put at risk the Karakoram highway, which connects Xingjian to Pakistan and then to the sea.

Indeed, most of the contested territories are deserts or glaciers, of no value to anyone by themselves — although, Indians and Pakistanis are obsessed with land, even deserts, which cost them a considerable amount of blood and treasure to defend.

Expensive contested desert [PT]

Misapprehending China

Is the current Chinese incursion nothing but China’s attempt to protect its highways? Did India fail to offer security guarantees? Given the self-centered, paranoid nature of India’s ruling class, I wouldn’t be surprised. China certainly hasn’t moved in for any internal, nationalistic reason.

There is minimal coverage of the border problem inside of China. In contrast, Indians have gone into a trance regurgitating how Indian troops killed twice as many Chinese — as if that was a yardstick — without providing any evidence. Indians generally don’t understand China, and it is doubtful whether many Indian bureaucrats understand China or speak Mandarin.

According to international law, China was likely at fault by dint of its incursion, and Xi Jinping is considered heavy-handed both internationally and domestically. Still, India has no choice but to live next to China, in an evolving world in which the US is less and less interested in the affairs of other countries.

Moreover, India doesn’t have comparable economic power, which is why other countries may show sympathy, but will do nothing more.  When it comes to the crunch, it is China that matters to the West, not India. This realpolitik-informed situation is incomprehensible to heavily propagandized Indians.

There is a much deeper question. India, rather than Pakistan, should have been a close ally of China. At least India is constitutionally secular, whereas Pakistan is sharia-compliant. China needed a road system to get to the Indian ocean. India did not grant it the right of way; had India done so, it would have given  China a reason to be friendly toward India.

Moreover, the Chinese economy both on a gross and a per capita basis is five times that of India. India is to China what Mexico is to the US. This is a reality Indians adamantly ignore, for they have come to see themselves at the cutting edge of growth and technology – all vicariously, for half of India’s citizens still poop in the open.

The US Department of Energy issued an unusual statement on Friday calling for private sector help in its years-long project to develop technology that would sustain future civilizations on the moon as well as Mars.

At least back to 2018, NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have been working on a portable nuclear reactor to power deep-space exploration, such as human missions to Mars in the next decade and beyond.

“Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government,” the Energy Department wrote Friday.

BREAKING: @ENERGY is seeking feedback from industry partners to help @NASA develop a nuclear reactor that can be used on the moon. 🌑

📰 : https://t.co/KPbIwpdKzO pic.twitter.com/KI3YpZtbZV

— Office of Nuclear Energy (@GovNuclear) July 24, 2020

The Dept. of Energy call for partners reads as follows: 

Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), the managing and operating contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL), is seeking information from leaders in the nuclear and space industries to develop innovative technologies for a fission surface power (FSP) system that can be operated on the moon. The request for information can be viewed here. Responses are sought by Sept. 8. After receiving responses, INL will issue a request for proposal.

According to Time Magazine commentary, the plan includes two phases, described as first, “Developing a reactor design” and second: “building a test reactor, a second reactor be sent to the moon, and developing a flight system and lander that can transport the reactor to the moon.”

“The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026,” the report says.

That date seems extremely ambitious, also given that to be rocketed up into space by either NASA or SpaceX, the portable rectors would have to be under 7,700 pounds, would be capable of generating uninterrupted electricity of at least 10 kilowatts, and must be able to run autonomously for a minimum of ten years. 

Numerous companies have for the past few years been developing portable nuclear power for earthly applications, including TerraPower, a Seattle-area venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

* * *

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

It’s time to be our own heroes, because those in charge sure won’t be…

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, things weren’t all that great for the bottom 90% of households.

The median household was barely scraping by with ultra-low financial reserves, meager retirement savings and high levels of debt. All while being relentlessly crushed by cost of living inflation running far higher than the blatantly fraudulent government statistics offered up by the BLS.

Even more infuriating, the economic pie was preferentially handed to the top 10% — well, more specifically, to the top 1%. And even more dramatically to the top 0.1%.  Don’t even get me started on the 0.001%…

(Source)

While often presented in the media as a puzzling thing without any root cause, both the income and wealth gaps are the direct result of Federal Reserve policies and actions Helped, of course, by lobbyists for the elites influencing Congressional tax legislation.

So it’s no accident that over time, tax rates on the rich have been substantially cut:

This chart says that the very highest income earners have a lower effective tax rate than anybody else in the nation.  Billionaire Warren Buffett famously pays a lower rate than his secretary. Goldman Sachs bankers are taxed more favorably than their Uber drivers. Again, this isn’t happening by accident.

And it reveals that, despite the fiction of fairness and freedom, America’s true values and priorities are aimed at funneling more and more of its wealth to in the pockets of an elite few.

Said another way: The final looting operation has begun.

The reason Peak Prosperity exists is to fight this outcome tooth and nail.  The path that the US government and Federal Reserve have charted ends in the destruction of prosperity for all of us. Yet the current crop of national managers (not leaders) are just too self-isolated in their echo chambers to grasp that.  They’re insulated from the impacts of their policies and so they can’t quite see ahead to the endgame.  Or they simply don’t care.

Which is why I am in a certain way thankful for SARS-Cov-2. It has woken up a center mass of people and alerted them to the true reality of their situation.  It has revealed just how corrupt, self-serving, and disinterested the elites are in the plight of the middle and lower classes.  It has exposed the extent to which institutions and corporations are failing at their most basic of duties.

It has finally laid bare the truth: We are on our own. 

There’s no rescue coming.  No next elected official who can repair all that’s gone wrong.  The very DNA of the organs of the State has mutated beyond repair.

Which in a twisted sense is positive news. We need the status quo to fail so it can be replaced with something better.

Necessary Change

Constructive change is long overdue.  The dismal charts above show that the wealth disparity in the US didn’t suddenly appear in 2020; it’s been festering for decades.

The grotesque inability of our health care to acknowledge let alone utilize the profoundly effective Covid-19 treatments that exist (e.g. MATH+, HCQ+ early on, etc.) in favor of overhyped/unproven new drugs like Remdesivir which barely works at all, is nothing new.  It speaks to a corruption of science and the power of monetary greed at the expense of basic goodness and human decency that also did not suddenly arise in 2020.  It too has been been with us a very long time.

When farmers can only survive by going deeper into debt while receiving only 7 cents of the final dollar spent by the consumer who buys their food at the store, it speaks to a profoundly misguided system that seems to have forgotten that without the producers you have nothing at all.  Yet it merrily squeezes the farmers year after year taking as much as it can for itself.

When such disconnects become so entrenched that they are no longer even questioned, you cannot vote them back into working order.  You cannot tweak some policies and fix them.  They need to be swept aside and rebuilt.

The time before us is about remembering what’s important and veering back towards integrity and away from myopic self-interest.  Away from “me” and back towards “us.”  No, I am not saying socialism, communism, or any other ‘ism.’  I am saying that we’re all in this together and that it’s time to swing back towards acting as if we care about more than ourselves,as if we understand how the larger system works best when we can set petty ego and greed aside.

Time To Vote!

No, I don’t mean vote in elections.  (Though sure, go ahead and vote if that makes you feel any better. But personally I’ve lost all attachment to the idea that there’s a lick of worthwhile difference between the major parties.)

I mean vote with your money. Vote with your actions. Vote with your heart. And vote with your mind.

There’s nothing you can do about the fact that the world’s central banks have printed up $5 trillion of new currency in approximately 6 months. That’s roughly equal to their combined output during 4 entire years of the Great Financial Crisis:

None of us can vote the central banker rascals out (they are appointed), but we can we vote with our currency — exchanging it for gold, silver, land, and any other hard assets we can manage to store well.

It’s worth noting that gold, which we’ve been strongly recommend folks accumulate for this very reason,  just hit a brand-new weekly closing high this week :

And silver’s at multi-year highs.

Both are telegraphing a loss of confidence in the US dollar and the global financial system itself.

We can’t do anything about our politicians’ weak, ineffective efforts at getting people to wear masks or take Covid-19 seriously. But we can vote with our feet and move to more sustainable, less densely populated areas, as is already happening in droves.

We can’t control the anger of the populace or the sudden proliferations of riots and unrest. But we can arm (and train!) ourselves to protect our loved ones if need be, which explains surging gun sales.

We can’t predict the quality the price or even the availability of vegetables & meat. But we can plant gardens and begin raising chickens.

Join The Movement

SARS-CoV-2 has exposed a lot rot in the system.  And that’s a good thing because it needed to be.

No problem has ever been fixed without first being identified.

Now we can focus on fixing what can be salvaged and tossing the rest.

Perhaps you’re a fast adjuster and you’re one of the few folks already busy operating in the solution space. If you are, I’ll bet that you know lots of people who aren’t there yet. Who are still clinging to some level of denial or bargaining that the failing status quo can somehow continue indefinitely.

Don’t worry, they’ll catch up. Eventually. Because they’ll have to. Change will be forced upon them.

The data all point to a rapidly intensifying set of trends that will completely reshape both our future prosperity and opportunities we have to pursue it.  Great fortunes will be made and lost.

As with any fast-changing moment in history, the trick is skating to where the puck is going to be.

My co-founder Adam Taggart and I have spent the past ten years laying out the case for why this moment in time would inevitably arrive, and how people can prepare themselves.  Not to merely survive, but to thrive.

We’ve cajoled, nudged, urged and cautioned people to read between the lines and heed the warning signs.  We’ve strongly advocated for converting paper wealth into precious metals and other hard assets, developing multiple income streams (in case a bread-winner’s job was lost), developing stronger relationships and a healthier body.

Every one of our recommendations has served our readers very well leading up to — but especially in — today’s trying times.

Did we know Covid-19 was coming along?  No, of course not.  But all that the pandemic has done is accelerate the public’s recognition of the many predicaments and plights we’ve been warning of.

So, with systemic instability increasing and the serious changes coming fast and furious now, how should you be prioritizing your focus?

Even if you’re a first time reader of our material and haven’t taken any steps yet, there’s still much every one of us can and should be doing.

The economic and health consequences of Covid-19 are extremely severe.  Expectedly so.  And they are still creating havoc in ways we don’t fully appreciate yet.

So every day counts now, and all your actions matter.  It’s time to build resilience.  At the household level first, and then within your community.  Deepen your pantry, deepen your friendships, and deepen your soil.

The more you can rely on yourself and those around you, the better off you’ll be.

Which is why in Part 2: Welcome To The Movement, I detail out the tremendous advantage of learning from and participating in the Peak Prosperity “tribe” as we all plan for the approaching turbulent times. There are literally tens of thousands of like-minded people of goodwill and staggering expertise all around the world connecting through this online community, eager to help and support one another.

Our individual chances of making it through with safety and optimism are much higher together vs going it alone. Consider joining the movement.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

Explaining The Credit Cycle

This article summarises why the credit cycle leads to alternate booms and slumps. It is only with this in mind that they can be properly understood as current economic conditions evolve.

The reader is taken through three monetary models: a fixed money economy, one governed by changes in bank credit, and finally the consequences of central bank intervention.

Classical economics provided the basis for an understanding of the effects of bank credit expansion. The theory, embodied in the division of labour, eluded Keynes, who was determined to justify an interventionist role in the economy for the state.

Neo-Keynesian policies have been responsible for growing monetary intervention. This article serves as a reminder of the distortions introduced by the credit cycle and why central bank monetary policies are fundamentally destructive of the settled economic order that exists without monetary expansion.

Defining the problem

The credit cycle drives the business, or trade cycle. It should be obvious that changes in the quantity of money, mostly in the form of bank credit, has an effect on business conditions. Indeed, that is why central banks implement a monetary policy. By increasing the quantity of money in circulation and by encouraging the banks to lend, a central bank aims to achieve full employment. Other than quantitative easing, the principal policy tool is management of interest rates on the assumption that they represent the “price” of money.

But there is also a cyclical effect of boom and bust, linked to changes in the availability of bank credit, and so modern central banks have tried to foster the boom and avoid the slump.

This is the Holy Grail for interest rate policy. Assuming interest is the price of money, there should therefore be a correlation between changes in interest rates and changes in the general price level. In other words, managing interest rates should allow a central bank to manage the general level of prices, and therefore, so it is said, influence the level of consumer demand. But empirical evidence denies this. The little-known Gibson’s paradox proves that there has been no such correlation, and instead, it is the price level and nominal interest rates that correlate, as shown in Figure 1 below, which is of Britain’s experience, covering a period of 225 years of relatively free markets.

The bond yield is of Consols undated stock, which with little variation acts as an effective proxy for wholesale borrowing costs, since it lacks the pull of a gross redemption yield.

Contrast the correlation in Figure 1 with the lack of correlation in Figure 2, which shows no correlation between wholesale borrowing costs and the rate of price inflation.

Keynes, no less, named the phenomenon as a paradox in 1930, confirming the observations of Thomas Tooke in 1844 and then the eponymous Alfred Gibson, who wrote about it in an article for Banker’s Magazine in 1923. But because no one, including luminaries such as Keynes himself, Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman, and even Knut Wicksell, the Swedish economist who is remembered for his pioneering work on interest rates, managed to crack the paradox.

The solution of Gibson’s paradox turns out to be very simple, and I wrote a paper on it for Goldmoney in 2015. A businessman, allocating capital for the manufacture of a product, in his calculations had an important point of reference that could not be ignored: the price for which he might expect to sell his product. If the price was trending higher, he could afford to pay a higher rate of interest, the converse also being true. This tendency would be particularly marked if the expected profit for his product was experienced by other manufacturers, in other words the general level of prices was rising. Then we would find that the increased demand for monetary capital would be bid up to alter the ratio between savings and consumption until a new balance was found.

It also informs us of something else, and that is business is prepared to bid up for savings, instead of savings being merely a matter of savers deciding to defer a portion of their consumption. Consequently, central banks using interest rates to manipulate the savings rate is bound to fail, because it overrides rather than supplements the vital link between demand for capital, which emanates from business, and its supply from savers who would at the margin prefer to spend rather than save.

If it is great enough, the suppression of interest rates at some point will encourage businesses to invest more capital in production, but the motivation is no longer driven by expectations of future demand but by the opportunity for access to artificially cheapened borrowing. The propensity to save is materially reduced, fundamentally disrupting the market mechanism.

The reason for pointing all this out is that the empirical evidence also shows interest rates are ineffective as a tool of monetary policy for the purpose of controlling the general level of prices. But since the explanation eluded Keynes et. al. it was designated a paradox and simply ignored. Why did all the leading economists since Tooke who addressed the phenomenon miss the solution? In their ivory towers they had little or no experience or understanding of what it takes to be a successful businessman.

Nor, for that matter, have central bankers. Clearly, central bank policy with respect to interest rates is fatally flawed for this reason. That interest rates are not just the price of money but reflect the difference between possession of a good (not money!) and its future possession ties in the theory of exchange to Gibson’s paradox, not central bank assumptions that money is a separate good and interest is its price. It strikes at the heart of Keynesian economics and demolishes his understanding of how the boom and bust cycle should be managed.

In Chapter 22 of his General Theory, Keynes put forward his own explanation of the business cycle which briefly was as follows. He believed that fluctuations in the propensity to consume played a part. In other words, changes in the relationship between consumption and savings he described elsewhere as being governed by “animal spirits” and “the paradox of thrift”. But that’s a cop-out and not an explanation. Secondly, he believed that changes in liquidity preference were a factor, an argument that echoes his savings paradox but at a business level. Again, that is not an explanation, because it assumes money withheld from investment lies idle: it does not, unless it is held in cash notes, Instead, it is always being redeployed elsewhere through the banking system.

And thirdly, he cites the marginal efficiency of capital, an invention of his, which appears to describe the point at which the discounted value of an investment produces a return in excess of the rate of interest. This is also incorrect, the correct comparison being between alternative applications for the investment of capital. Furthermore, a businessman knows that in calculating the marginal efficiency of capital by discounting his investment over the life of a project is purely guesswork wrapped up in a mathematical model. He is better evaluating future markets for his product, where his knowledge and entrepreneurial instinct gives him an advantage, and then calculating the costs involved before deciding whether it is profitable for him.

None of this explains the cyclical nature of the business cycle. Here, Keynes gets into a muddle, claiming the bust is the result of organised investment markets under the influence of purchasers largely ignorant of what they are buying, and speculators chasing a quick buck instead of making a reasonable estimate of the future yield of capital assets. It is the condition, Keynes claimed, which leads to over-optimistic and over-bought markets that fall with sudden and catastrophic force.

Keynes clearly reckoned that as an economist he knew better than commercial businessmen their businesses clearing through markets, a view that persists with the neo-Keynesians planning monetary policy today, now developed even further into total control over markets.

Without adequate explanation Keynes then assumes “the dismay and uncertainty of the future” accompanies a collapse in the marginal efficiency of capital, followed by an increase in liquidity preference and hence a rise in interest rates. One would have thought the rise in interest rates was the prelude to the collapse in the marginal efficiency of capital and increasing liquidity preferences, rather than the way round Keynes assumes.

Much of the problem with Keynes’s economics are with his slippery definitions, many of which have now entered the economic lexicon. But this cursory examination of Chapter 22 on the business cycle in his General Theory reveals the principal errors that guide central bank policy makers to this day. Nowhere is there mentioned the role of bank credit expansion.

For a better understanding of the business cycle we turn to some basic pre-Keynesian theory.

What happens when there is no change in the money quantity

Before we can move on to what drives a boom and bust business cycle, we first must understand the condition of an economy with no change in the quantity of money. It matters not what the money is, only that it is accepted by everyone as money. That is to say, a commodity with the sole function of acting as an intermediary between the exchange of labour for goods and services and to facilitate the choice between different goods and different services. The root of exchange is not the money, but that it facilitates comparisons of value between goods.

It is therefore the basis behind the division of labour, famously described by French economist, Jean-Baptiste Say in 1803 in the following terms:

It is worthwhile to remark that a product is no sooner created than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. When the producer has put the finishing hand to his product he is most anxious to sell it immediately, lest its value should diminish in his hands nor is he less anxious to dispose of the money he may get for it; for the value of money is also perishable but the only way of getting rid of money is in the purchase of some product or other. Thus, the mere circumstance of creation of one product immediately opens a vent for other products.

And

Money performs but a momentary function in this double exchange and when the transaction is finally closed it will always be found that one kind of commodity has been exchanged for another. (A Treatise on Political Economy – 1803)

Bear in mind that this was written in uncertain times for France, following the collapse of assignats and mandats territoriaux, two forms of state-issued currency during the previous decade —hence the rejoinder about disposing of money immediately. Otherwise, it is a fair description of how producers and consumers, always different but the same people, use money and of its true purpose.

The import behind these two statements was subsequently given the title of Say’s law. They were so obviously true that Keynes had a problem getting around it so that an economic role could be created for the state, which was the hidden purpose behind his General Theory. His solution was to minimise any mention of Say’s law and to restrict it to one reference early on (page 26). And that reference was another of his slippery definitions:

“Thus Say’s law, that the aggregate demand price output as a whole is equal to its aggregate supply price for all volumes of output is equivalent to the proposition that there is no obstacle to full employment.”

This is not Say’s law. What is aggregate demand price output? It is pure nonsense as is aggregate supply price for all volumes of output. These high-sounding phrases deflect attention from the truisms in Say’s law, that we divide our labour to maximise our vendible output so that we can acquire the goods and services we need and desire. No mention is made of full employment. There will always be unemployment among those unable to work, the workshy, the sick and the elderly. But they need either their own savings to draw upon or benefactors to support them. Family, charities and the state perform this function, but in all these cases support must come from those that produce. Say’s law is not and never was equivalent to the proposition that there is no obstacle to full employment.

As to the unemployment question in the wider sense, neo-Keynesian manipulation of money and support for businesses that do not serve the consumer to his satisfaction have coincided with the rise of unemployment.

It will become obvious that the quantity of money in the economy is irrelevant for its efficient functioning, so to have a fixed amount of circulating currency will not impair the workings of the economy in any way. Goods and services are produced solely for the satisfaction of consumers and other businesses, all of which in turn also produce goods and services for others. The economy continually evolves, and through free markets scarce capital is deployed by entrepreneurs to be used as efficiently as possible for profits. The supply of capital comes from consumers’ savings together with money put aside for the purpose by producers themselves.

Consumers are encouraged by producers to defer some of their consumption by compensating them with an amount that exceeds the value they place on possession of current goods over possession at a future date. The mechanism, interest rates, are bid up to achieve the level of deferred consumption required to fund the necessary investment to produce the products demanded in the future. They will reflect three components: the originary rate, which can be equated to a general time preference reflecting the different values of possession and future possession; the risk of loss of capital; and an entrepreneurial value because bond holders and business owners share a common objective even though contractually their interests are separated.

The monetary capital made available to the entrepreneurial class is put together with other factors of production, such as labour, commodities, machinery, part-manufactures and an establishment to produce goods and services.

Thus, an economy has all that is needed to supply the evolving demands of consumers: a fixed quantity of money, part of which is retained in savings for investment in production, production and finally consumption itself. Businesses fail and others emerge. The division of labour ensures everyone is employed, with the exception of those unable to work, who are carried by others who are or supported by their savings.

Individual prices of goods and services rise and fall, according to changes in demand and the anticipation of producers to meet those changes. It is this environment where Schumpeter’s description of creative destruction applies. Production of goods and services that fail to produce expected returns are quickly abandoned and capital in all its forms redeployed to more productive and profitable uses. The arbiter in this process is always the consuming customer. Any business that fails to satisfy the customer fails itself.

In our example of a fixed money economy, government involvement merely redistributes existing money. Because a government is always bureaucratic and interventionist it detracts from the economic progress otherwise enjoyed, which is why a high spending government suppresses economic progress, while a low spending government permits a greater degree of economic progress. Non-monetary government intervention only changes the level of economic progress and does not lead to cyclical behaviour.

The effect of changes in the quantity of money

Now let us amend our model to accept fluctuations in the quantity of circulating money. We can now see that there is an additional factor to the conditions of Say’s law; there is money whose economic origin is not that of a selling producer or spending consumer. But being wholly fungible with existing money it does not have a different identity.

Without the state’s intervention, the source of extra money is bank credit. Banks create loan facilities, which in turn create deposits when loans are drawn down through payments made in the course of business. During a period of bank credit expansion, all banks will see increasing levels of deposits, and when these lead to imbalances for individual banks they are reconciled through wholesale money markets.

The expansion of bank credit favours the banks themselves and the bank’s lending customers, who get to benefit and spend it first before prices can reflect the additional currency in circulation. As the extra money is spent into increasingly wider distribution, it drives prices up behind it in what is known as the Cantillon effect. Eventually, it is fully absorbed into economic activities. But since production resources are relatively inelastic, the purchasing power of currency units declines as the greater quantity of money chases the same goods. This is reflected in an increase in the general level of prices.

But during the process of new money being absorbed into the economy, a cycle of economic activity develops. Initially, the extra money in circulation creates demand for goods and services that did not previously exist. A temporary boom in business activity takes place but only for those goods and services in the locations where the new money is spent. But unrecorded is the transfer of wealth that benefits early receivers of the new money, from those who only receive it later. The losers are obviously the savers whose capital buys less and the workers whose salaries are devalued.

The spread of rising prices affects businesses as well. As the extra money percolates through the economy they find that the cost of raw materials and commodities rises, driven by excess demand for them created by the additional money. Shortages of skilled labour develops, and the cost of labour rises. Waiting times for manufacturing equipment lengthens, and their prices rise as well. Other prices rise, such as establishment costs and the cost of energy. Meanwhile, the availability of monetary capital continues to expand as banks compete for business in the boom times.

At some point, the expansion of the banks’ balance sheets informs the prudent banker that even though times are good, some caution must prevail. The fall in the currency’s purchasing power has led to money being diverted from savings to consumption, because the time preference between possession and non-possession has increased. Even though higher levels of spending ensure money continues to circulate through the banks, they need to raise interest rates to maintain the balance between the extension of bank credit and the security of customer deposits. This is because there is an inherent risk for banks in funding term credit through checking accounts which can be drawn down without notice instead of term deposits.

The rise in interest rates disrupts producers’ business models and they begin to consider reallocating capital to other applications. As we have seen, in the case where there is a stable quantity of money, this is not a problem, essentially because changing business strategies in a fixed-money economy is a random process. Furthermore, the extension of production time that tends to accompany artificially supressed interest rates, illustrated by Hayek’s triangle, is never an issue in a fixed-money economy. But the effect of an expansion of money has been to ensure all businesses tend to act in the same way at the same time. A significant bias develops, so that the majority of businesses end up at a crossroads at the same time, reassessing businesses that have become unprofitable.

Commercial banks are sensitive to these changed conditions and are only too aware of the risks of extended lending to unprofitable businesses. At the same time therefore, bankers in the majority of banks arrive at the same conclusion, again all together: they should reduce lending risks for fear of being caught out in a slump.

The expansion of bank credit commences and gathers pace over an extended period of time, and then comes to a sudden halt. It is clear that the origin of the business cycle is found in an increase in the quantity of circulating money in the form of bank credit. Without changes in the quantity of bank credit, a cycle of business activity cannot develop.

The disruptive role of central banks

For some time, central banks have been extending their interventionist roles in an attempt to smooth the business cycle. Keynes and others wrote the textbooks for them, justifying the management of the banking sector through monetary policy, always ensuring the banks have enough liquidity on hand. They have extended their role from acting as lender of last resort to now flooding the economy with money even before it slumps, planning to “normalise” interest rates once confidence has returned.

We have seen that Gibson’s paradox negates this cornerstone of monetary policy. Figure 2 above illustrates the lack of correlation between the rate of inflation, which oscillates wildly while interest rates in free markets remained relatively stable.

Until price inflation took off in the 1970s, there was no correlation between wholesale borrowing rates and price inflation, not even in wartime. Yet, even though it has been shown that extreme interest rate suppression in the form of negative rates fails to affect price inflation — at least as measured by the consumer price index — central banks persist in supressing interest rates.

Instead of managing the cycle of bank credit, more recently central banks that had yet to do so have now resorted to outright monetary inflation, as nations attempt to defray the economic consequences of the Covid-19 panic. The Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank had even resorted to negative interest rates long before Covid-19, expanding their money quantities through quantitative easing continually to finance government spending. From June 2008, before the Lehman failure, the sum of the assets of the five major central banks (excluding China) totalled $4.4 trillion; they climbed to $21.8 trillion by the end of June. 10-year government bond yields range from 0.6% for the US to minus 0.47% for Germany and minus 0.51% for Switzerland. While it is not the place of any economist to second guess originary interest rates, these bond yields are clearly the result of their suppression through monetary inflation.

Then there is the seen and the unseen. We see the money handed out by the government to selected businesses and individuals funded by monetary inflation and deem it to be a good thing. What we do not see is the transfer of wealth that accompanies it from all citizens through monetary debasement. And as that debasement accelerates even further, it will only cease when there is no more wealth for the government and its central bank to acquire from the population by inflationary means.

Monetary expansion has now become unstoppable, because if it was to be stopped the accumulated economic distortions from as long ago as the Second World War — certainly in the case of nationalisations — would unwind. Unemployment would rise, demand collapse, and so prices would fall — a definite no-no for the Keynesians. Governments would lose their inflationary funding and would have to attract genuine savings, which in America and the UK in particular hardly exist today as a result of Keynesian policies. Interest rates would have to rise to normalise savings rates, but at the same time government demand for funding would deprive the productive economy of the monetary capital necessary for it to restructure itself.

There is now no policy alternative for democratically elected governments and their central banks to pursuing inflationary policies to their bitter end. They have failed to extend the boom so that the slump can be avoided. They do not understand that the boom bust cycle is a phenomenon of bank credit expansion, instead making the error of believing in Keynes’s animal spirits — reiterated by Alan Greenspan twenty years ago as irrational exuberance.

No one has a mandate to rein it in. Ultimately, the ever-increasing pace of monetary expansion required to postpone the bust will destroy the currencies of all nations following neo-Keynesian monetary policies. And with the currencies will go all the personal wealth through the mechanism of inflationary transfer.

Covid-19 is only bringing forward a certain end to the abject failure and the hubris behind neo-Keynesian nonsense.

Oh the irony, lost on all those whose foreign policy memory is limited to merely days or weeks ago: the United States has accused Russia of arming Libyan rebels. 

So suddenly Washington thinks this is a “bad” thing? 

“The Russian Federation continues to violate UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 1970 by actively providing military equipment and fighters to the front lines of the conflict in Libya,” AFRICOM said in a statement Friday.

The new accusations are based on satellite imagery released by the Pentagon which it says shows continuing kinetic operations by Putin-linked security firm Wagner in support of Gen. Khalifa Hafter’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

Despite a UN arms embargo officially being in place on Libya, multiple external state actors are involved in arming up either side of the conflict, especially Turkey in supporting of the Tripoli GNA, and UAE and Egypt in support of pro-Haftar forces, which are based in the east of the war-torn country.

The AFRICOM statement includes:

“Russia continues to play an unhelpful role in Libya by delivering supplies and equipment to the Wagner group,” said Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Bradford Gering, Africom director of operations. “Imagery continues to unmask their consistent denials.”

Wagner mercenaries have also been long reported to have a presence in Syria, where Moscow and the US have nearly entered full on the ground conflict at times over the past years. As we detailed last year, Wagner is headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, commonly known as “Putin’s chef” due to his Kremlin catering contracts and longtime friendship with the Russian president. 

Russia has withstood US regime change efforts in both Libya and Syria, with the former country now enduring the chaos unleashed by Muammar Gaddafi’s 2011 overthrow by US-NATO intervention. The US and Europe used jihadist “rebels” to oust and execute Gaddafi, after which jihadists were weaponized in Syria against Assad. 

Haftar is seen by many, including the Trump administration, as a “stabilizer” of chaotic Libya – a kind of Gaddafi 2.0 figure, ironically enough. 

Though Russian mercenaries have long been documented as on the ground in eastern Libya, the new Pentagon satellite images reveal their operations may be much larger than previously thought:

As Africom has documented in a series of media releases, the U.S. assesses that Russia supplied Wagner forces operating in Libya with fighter aircraft, military armored vehicles, air defense systems and supplies, further complicating the situation and increasing the risk for miscalculation, leading to continued and needless violence in Libya.

“Imagery reflects the broad scope of Russian involvement,” said Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Hadfield, Africom deputy director of intelligence. “They continue to look to attempt to gain a foothold in Libya.”

The latest imagery details the extent of equipment being supplied to Wagner. Russian military cargo aircraft, including IL-76s, continue to supply Wagner fighters. Russian air defense equipment, including SA-22s, are present in Libya and operated by Russia, the Wagner Group or their proxies. Photos also show Wagner utility trucks and Russian mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicles are also present in Libya.

“Russian involvement is evident — which the Kremlin lies about every time they deny it,” the statement said further.

Of course, the Kremlin has accused Washington of the same thing, and on a much larger scale, in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As we’ve said many times, Libya is re-emerging as the next major Mediterranean proxy war. 

Already, Egypt and Turkey are close to direct conflict as each side threatens open military intervention in the North African Mediterranean country. 

Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

In The Communist Manifesto (1848) Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) predicted that capitalism would lead to the impoverishment of the laboring class. Why? Well, to raise profit on capital invested, Marx and Engels argued, entrepreneurs (the capitalists) would exploit the workers. They would reduce wages and worsen working conditions by, say, increasing working hours. From that viewpoint, Marx and Engels put forward an immiseration theory of capitalism.

Worker “Exploitation”

Marxists would not argue that workers’ wages would decline in absolute terms, but certainly in relative terms: the wage incomes of the many would rise less than the incomes of the capitalists, thereby making the former poorer compared to the latter over time. Especially in times of crisis, which are inevitable and recurrent in a capitalist economy, workers would be hit particularly hard, causing their economic and financial conditions to fall further behind of those of the capitalists.

Capitalist “Imperialism”

To make things worse, Marxists argue that capitalism would bring about violent colonialism and imperialism. As capitalists pay less for labor than what is appropriate, the workers cannot buy all available products. Profit-seeking capital is, therefore, seeking to open up new markets in other parts of the world. Conflicts over who controls what arise among nations, paving the way toward war. This is, in fact, the message Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) hammered home to his readers in his 1917 book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

If capitalism is bad – if it brings exploitation, misery, and even war to a great many people, and all this comes to the benefit of the capitalists – isn’t it rightful and consequential to do everything to overcome capitalism and replace it with socialism-communism, the alternatives said to bring peace, equality and happier life for the people in this world? Sound economics reveals that the Marxist critique of capitalism, as well as the high-flying enthusiasm for socialism-communism, is tantamount to outright intellectual confusion.

What Capitalism Really Is: Peaceful Cooperation

Many people do not know what capitalism really means. Capitalism is the social and economic order in which the means of production are privately owned. In its “pure” form, capitalism means unconditional respect of people’s private property, free markets, and, most importantly, a form of state that is confined to protecting people and their property against aggression from inside and outside the country’s borders. “Pure” capitalism is no doubt conducive to peaceful and productive cooperation nationally as well as internationally.

It is capitalism that makes mass production possible – the production of goods and services for the consumption of the greatest number of people. The productivity gains that it creates result in a tendency toward a continuous increase in people’s average living standard. Producers are subject to the profit and loss principle: they are economically rewarded only if and when their products meet consumers’ preferences. If they don’t, entrepreneurs will suffer losses, forcing them to improve their output to the benefit of their customers.

Pure capitalism not has only a built-in mechanism to improve the masses’ material well-being. What is particularly wonderful is that under pure capitalism, people’s wages do not depend on individual workers’ productivity, but the marginal productivity of labor in general. Assume a firm makes a productive innovation. To hire new labor, it has to pay higher wages compared to those paid by other employers. The latter, to retain their staff, will also have to offer a higher wage—to the benefit of less productive workers.

It should also be noted here that pure capitalism encourages the division of labor among people, nationally and internationally. This, in turn, entices people to seek peaceful cooperation rather than conflict: everyone realizes that it pays off to cooperate, that this is mutually beneficial to all parties involved. In other words: pure capitalism is a recipe for peace. In a world of pure capitalism, there would simply be no reason for large-scale violent conflicts, let alone state wars.

Interventionism vs. Capitalism

Why do so many people harbor resentment or even hate against the concept of capitalism? One answer is that they presumably look around and see the many evils in this world, such as the recurrence of financial and economic crises; mass unemployment; bailout programs that make big corporations richer, disregarding the fate of small and medium-sized firms; chronically rising costs of living; growing income and wealth inequality; and growing geopolitical tensions and conflicts.

Unfortunately, all these evils are attributed to capitalism. A fatal conclusion, though, because there is no pure capitalism, neither in the US nor in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa. What we find are interventionist-collectivist and sometimes even socialist economic and societal systems. Especially in the Western world, basically all states, and the special interest groups that exert great influence over them, have succeeded in increasingly replacing what little is left of the capitalist system in recent decades.

States have interfered in all areas of people’s lives. Be it education (kindergarten, schools, universities), health, pensions, transport, law and order, money and credit, or the environment, the states and their governments have become major players in markets for goods and services, turning free markets into hampered markets, raising taxes ever higher, and increasingly undermining and even destroying the institution of private property.

Intervention Cripples the Wealth Creation Offered by Capitalism

Sound economics tells us that interventionist-collectivist, let alone socialist, systems do not work to the greatest benefit of all. All these systems are much less efficient than pure capitalism in terms of material wealth creation—and even prove to be outright failures in the case of socialism. The particular problem with interventionist-collectivist systems is that to the uninformed observer they may well appear to be capitalism, resulting in all the evils of interventionism-collectivism being ascribed to capitalism.

The truth, however, couldn’t be more different. Interventionism-collectivism works toward the elimination of capitalist remnants. The crises that these systems inevitably cause, the dissatisfaction they create among a great many people, are interpreted as a result of capitalism, and so, as a consequence, people call for ending capitalism, for replacing it with a better, more just and reliable economic and societal order. However, it would be naïve to assume that the problem is confined to a lack of insight into sound economics.

Blaming Capitalism for the Evils Caused by States

By no means less important are the ideologues on the political left. Knowing that the chances for establishing outright socialism-communism in the Western world through a violent upheaval have been fairly small in recent years, those in the Marxist tradition have adapted their strategy: they seek a gradual transformation of what is left of the free economic and societal system by discrediting capitalism, blaming all evil, all societal problems on capitalism, fictionalizing it as the nemesis of mankind.

This, however, is an intentional misinterpretation of what is really going on. It is to give a wrong tint to reality—with tragic consequences. People heed the message—being propagandized over and over—that capitalism will seal their fate: that it makes the rich richer at the expense of the poor; causes ever greater financial and economic turbulence; doesn’t create enough and secure jobs; destroys the environment; and so forth. All this amounts to nothing more than giving a new face to Marx’s immiseration theory.

Neo-Marxists: Not Waiting for the Revolution

This plays into the hands of the Neo-Marxists who seek control over economic and societal affairs, striving to establish a “new world order.” The spread of interventionism is certainly a milestone in this direction. Because interventionism, if it is not halted and reversed, leads to socialism. And the logical culmination of socialism is a struggle for world dominance, as socialism cannot exist within limited areas of the earth’s surface, especially not if there are still more or less capitalist systems around.

Marxists in the traditional sense may expect capitalism to make the world ripe for socialism. Neo-Marxists, in contrast, wouldn’t want to wait for things to turn their way; they seek action. Instilling fear among the people that capitalism cannot overcome the world’s pressing economic, social, and environmental problems, that capitalism is the root cause of all these plights, characterizes the strategy of the Neo-Marxists. That said, “climate change” and the coronavirus pandemic are lucky coincidences for them.

Climate Change

Under the promise of preventing climate change, governments are meant to run truly radical market interventions: imposing taxes and manipulating prices of goods and services, thereby politically determining the size and structure of consumer and investment demand. In fact, under the well-sounding “climate change policy” label, far-left policies can push economies effectively into central planning: the ruling elite determines who produces what and when and at what costs, and who is to consume when and what.

The Virus Panic

The coronavirus epidemic offers to all the enemies of pure capitalism an even bigger opportunity to strike down what little is left of the free market system. With the help of coercive lockdowns—allegedly a measure to “fight the virus”—governments can directly destroy corporate capital, boycott global trade, and cause mass unemployment, thereby leaving a great many people despondent and receptive to even more interventionist-collectivist or even outright socialist policies.

Fear is known to be the foundation of any government’s power. Neo-Marxists, and those in favor of establishing central global control, have increasingly incorporated this unfortunate truth into their political agitation to destroy what is left of the free market and free societal order, and all the more as their immiseration theory—the impoverishment of the masses under capitalism—has lamentably failed. Whether the Neo-Marxist onslaught can be successful or defeated is of paramount importance for the vast majority of people.

Only Capitalism Can Deliver Needed Goods and Services

Pure capitalism is the only viable economic and societal form of organization. In his Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis from 1951 (first published in 1922 as Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus), Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) noted: “Capitalism is that form of social economy in which all the deficiencies of the socialist system…are made good. Capitalism is the only conceivable form of social economy which is appropriate to the fulfilment of the demands which society makes of any economic organisation” (p. 220).

Disregarding the sound economics’ teachings about capitalism and socialism and giving in to the ideas propagated by Neo-Marxism would ultimately lead to the destruction of the very foundations upon which the material well-being of billions of people on this globe rests. It would result in great misery, even starvation and violent conflicts. It is therefore high time to boldly expose the errors and confusions of interventionist-collectivist and socialist-Marxist ideology and courageously call for reestablishing pure capitalism.

It was just a couple of days ago that we published our report showing three charts that showed “The Shift From Prospering Online Brokerages To Retail Daytrader Mayhem”. 

In that article, we pointed out what is becoming seismic shift in the trading world, where thanks to the seductive cocktail of both the Robinhood app being overtly easy to use and Dave Portnoy livestreaming himself daytrading on a daily basis, every Tom, Dick and Harry with a couple hundred bucks is jumping into the market and having a go at trying to make themselves rich – regardless of whether or not they have any clue what they are doing.

Following up on that piece, last week the WSJ wrote an article sharing the same sentiment. “Everyone’s a Day Trader Now,” they wrote. In their article they note that e-Trade investors opened 260,500 retail accounts just in March alone. Robinhood logged 3 million new accounts over the same timeframe. They compared the influx into the market to the dot com boom of the late 1990s.

As we said last week, Robinhood is making trading feel like a video game for people that have never done it before. 38 year old Sharmila Viswasam told the WSJ: “I feel like Sonic the Hedgehog, collecting my coins.”

She started trading after her unemployment checks from her real estate job weren’t enough to support her. To get started, she read “Trading for Dummies” and watched YouTube videos. She calls her trading style “risky” and justified it by telling the WSJ: “Scared money makes no money.”

She started with $25,000 and has parlayed it to $65,000 through July – all using her phone.

Granit Selimaj opened an account on Robinhood as soon as he turned 18 years old in December 2018. He says he was approved to trade options “moments” after filling out the application on the platform. He says he has avoided them so far, because he doesn’t really understand how they work. He sticks mostly to trading stocks. 

“I’m a Level 2, and I don’t know much about that,” he said.

26-year-old rental car-company employee Trae Williams said he started using Robinhood about 2 years ago, but really started paying attention to it during the pandemic. He told the WSJ: “There’s not much to spend money on, but also I can pay attention to it more. I have more time to do it.”

“…in the wintertime, when it gets to be 20 degrees Fahrenheit here or it’s snowing and raining, [daytrading] is going to be a perfect hobby for grandpa,” said another Robinhood user, 66 year old Matt Miller. He says he has abandoned his buy and hold strategy to trading more actively since the pandemic began. 

The number of individual investors in the market has more than doubled the usual level of activity this year, the article notes. This increased demand has had a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, sending shares of some companies soaring. But the addition of Robinhood traders to a stock isn’t exactly a bellwether of good things to come. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

“Barclays examined trades by Robinhood customers between March and early June and concluded that the more they bought a specific stock, the worse that stock performed,” the Journal wrote. 

One great example is the stock of Ideanomics, which was promoted on Twitter and in videos by retired police officer and new daytrader Stanley Barsch. He has over 70,000 Twitter followers and had been touting Ideanomics as the next big thing. He even interviewed the company’s CEO on a livestream for his followers.

Hours after the interview, well known short seller Hindenburg Research released allegations that the company was engaged in an “egregious and obvious fraud”, including photoshopping pictures of its operations in China that it was including in its press releases.

Shares plunged 21% that day and 40% the next day. Stan, who goes by the name “Stan the Trading Man” on Twitter, says he lost $27,000 on the trade.

“Some people took to social media, accusing Mr. Barsch of engaging in pump and dump,” the Journal wrote. Stan sees things differently. “I told my wife earlier this year that I’m going to be a millionaire,” he said. Sure you are, Stan.

Recall, this shift in the industry was captured beautifully in a series of Tweets from Bloomberg’s Morgan Barna, CFA a couple of weeks ago. She showed how trading volume had spiked significantly in Q1 and Q2 of 2020.

Next, she showed how Schwab has seen its revenue per trade collapse over the last 5 years, as the brokerage has tried to keep pace (or in some cases lead the charge) for lower commissions to help bring in new clients. 

For all intents and purposes, commissions no longer seem to exist for stock trades and have been almost totally priced out of the industry.

Finally, she showed that interest in creating accounts continues to rise. Among the surprises we’ve seen during the Covid lockdown has been the fact that Americans are actually saving money and paying off credit cards, instead of spending it, with the economy melting down and the government wiring them free checks.

They are also putting this money into brokerage accounts, as you can see below:

This lunacy in general is, of course, enabled by the Fed, behind the scenes, doing everything it can to make sure that the NASDAQ continues to hit new highs despite what has been an unprecedented economic collapse in the country.

When the average American logs on to Twitter and sees the President (or worse, Larry Kudlow) bragging about the market despite tens of millions of people unemployed, we don’t blame them from meandering toward the honeypot that our country’s public markets have become.

Unfortunately, what comes up must come down – and the new retail traders being lured into the market with promises of neverending all time highs and commission free trades – will likely be the first blood shed when the Fed’s ponzi scheme is inevitably exposed for what it truly is and comes crumbling down. 

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,

The mysterious “Primary Subsource” that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst — Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele, according to congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under counter-espionage surveillance.

The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according to criminal records.

Fiona Hill: She worked at the Brookings Institution with dossier “Primary Subsource” Igor “Iggy” Danchenko (top photo), and testified against President Trump last year during impeachment hearings. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI’s dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017.

Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings – the preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington – where he struck up a friendship with Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year’s impeachment hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a “creative” researcher.

Hill is also close to his boss Steele, who she’d known since 2006. She met with the former British intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign and later received a raw, unpublished copy of the now-debunked dossier.

It does not appear the FBI asked Danchenko about his criminal past or state of sobriety when agents interviewed him in January 2017 in a failed attempt to verify the accuracy of the dossier, which the bureau did only after agents used it to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The opposition research was farmed out by Steele, working for Clinton’s campaign, to Danchenko, who was paid for the information he provided.

A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.

The FBI memo is heavily redacted and blacks out the name of Steele’s Primary Subsource. But public records and congressional sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirm the identity of the source as Danchenko.

In the memo, the FBI notes that Danchenko said that he and one of his dossier sources “drink heavily together.” But there is no apparent indication the FBI followed up by asking Danchenko if he had an alcohol problem, which would cast further doubt on his reliability as a source for one of the most important and sensitive investigations in FBI history.

The FBI declined comment. Attempts to reach Danchenko by both email and phone were unsuccessful.

The Justice Department’s watchdog recently debunked the dossier’s most outrageous accusations against Trump, and faulted the FBI for relying on it to obtain secret wiretaps. The bureau’s actions, which originated under the Obama administration, are now the subject of a sprawling criminal investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham.

Rod Rosenstein: In an odd twist, a 2013 drunkenness case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI’s dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)

One of the wiretap warrants was signed in 2017 by Rosenstein, who also that year appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller and signed a “scope” memo giving him wide latitude to investigate Trump and his surrogates. Mueller relied on the dossier too. As it happens, Rosenstein also signed motions filed in one of Danchenko’s public intoxication cases, according to the documents obtained by RCI.

In March 2013 — three years before Danchenko began working on the dossier — federal authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with several misdemeanors, including “drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety seat,” according to a court filing. The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name appears in the docket filings.

The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and “participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling,” as well as “mental health counseling,” the records show. His lawyer asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow “as a condition of his employment.” The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.

In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including “public swearing and intoxication,” criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a fine.

At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar on a project to uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s doctoral dissertation — something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the time.)

“Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher,” Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in 2011.

“He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support his research.”

Strobe Talbott of Brookings with  Hillary  Clinton:  He connected with Christopher Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary. 

Talbott’s brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, another old Clinton hand who disseminated his own dossier in 2016 that echoed many of the same lurid and unsubstantiated claims against Trump. Through a mutual friend at the State Department, Steele obtained a copy of Shearer’s dossier and reportedly submitted it to the FBI to help corroborate his own.

In August 2016, Talbott personally called Steele, based in London, to offer his own input on the dossier he was compiling from Danchenko’s feeds. Steele phoned Talbott just before the November election, during which Talbott asked for the latest dossier memos to distribute to top officials at the State Department. After Trump’s surprise win, the mood at Brookings turned funereal and Talbott and Steele strategized about how they “should handle” the dossier going forward.

During the Trump transition, Talbott encouraged Hill to leave Brookings and take a job in the White House so she could be “one of the adults in the room” when Russia and Putin came up. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.

She left the White House just before a National Security Council detailee who’d worked with her, Eric Ciaramella, secretly huddled with Democrats in Congress and alleged Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden and his son in exchange for military aid. Democrats soon held hearings to impeach Trump, calling Hill as one of their star witnesses.

Congressional investigators are taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Gryffindor/Wikimedia

Under questioning by Republican staff, Hill disclosed that Steele reached out to her for information about a mysterious individual, but she claimed she could not recall his name. She also said she couldn’t remember the month she and Steele met.

“He had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other individual, who actually I don’t even recall now, who he could approach about some business issues,” Hill told the House last year in an Oct. 14 deposition taken behind closed doors. 

Congressional investigators are reviewing her testimony, while taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal.

Registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Specifically, investigators want to know if Brookings played any role in the development of the dossier.

“Their 501(c)(3) status should be audited, because they are a major player in the dossier deal,” said a congressional staffer who has worked on the investigation into alleged Russian influence.

Hill, who returned to Brookings as a senior fellow in January, could not be reached for comment. Brookings did not respond to inquiries.

Ghost Employee

As a former member of Britain’s secret intelligence service, Steele hadn’t traveled to Russia in decades and apparently had no useful sources there. So he relied entirely on Danchenko and his supposed “network of subsources,” which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered was nothing more than a “social circle.”

It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI’s Washington field office – held just days after Trump was sworn into office – that any Russian insights he may have had were strictly academic.

Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was “clueless” when Steele hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign manager.

Christopher Steele, former British spy, leaving a London court this week in a libel case brought against him by a Russian businessman. Dossier source Danchenko’s drinking pals fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” for pay— which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.” (Victoria Jones/PA via AP)

Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists, drinking buddies (including one who’d been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI’s January 2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” — which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.”

Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.

One of Danchenko’s sources was nothing more than an anonymous voice on the other end of a phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.

Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier, Steele labeled this source “an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump,” and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page — including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were involved in “the DNC email hacking operation.”

Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July 2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.

“There was not any verbal communications with him,” he insisted. “I’m positive, 100%, nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said.”

Millian provided RCI part of the email, which was written mostly in Russian. Contact information at the bottom of the email reads:

Igor Danchenko
Business Analyst
Target Labs Inc.
8320 Old Courthouse Rd, Suite 200
Vienna, VA 22182
+1-202-679-5323

At the time, Danchenko listed Target Labs, an IT recruiter run by ethnic-Russians, as an employer on his resumé. But technically, he was not a paid employee there. Thanks to a highly unusual deal Steele arranged with the company, Danchenko was able to use Target Labs as an employment front.

It turns out that in 2014, when Danchenko first started freelancing regularly for Steele after losing his job at a Washington strategic advisory firm, he set out to get a security clearance to start his own company. But drawing income from a foreign entity like Steele’s London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, would hurt his chances. 

So Steele agreed to help him broker a special “arrangement” with Target Labs, where a Russian friend of Danchenko’s worked as an executive, in which the company would bring Danchenko on board as an employee but not put him officially on the payroll. Danchenko would continue working for Steele and getting paid by Orbis with payments funneled through Target Labs. In effect, Target Labs served as the “contract vehicle” through which Danchenko was paid a monthly salary for his work for Orbis, the FBI memo reveals.

Though Danchenko had a desk available to use at Target Labs, he did most of his work for Orbis from home and did not take direction from the firm. Steele continued to give him assignments and direct his travel. Danchenko essentially worked as a ghost employee at Target Labs.

Asked about it, a Target Labs spokesman would only say that Danchenko “does not work with us anymore.”

Brian Auten: He wrote the memo on the FBI’s interview with the Primary Subsource, which is silent about Danchenko’s criminal record. Patrick Henry College

Some veteran FBI officials worry Moscow’s foreign intelligence service may have planted disinformation with Danchenko and his network of sources in Russia. At least one of them, identified only as “Source 5” in the FBI memo, was described as having a Russian “kurator,” or handler.

“There are legions of ‘connected’ Russians purveying second- and third-hand — and often made-up — due diligence reports and private intelligence,” said former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker. “Putin’s intelligence minions use these people well to plant information.”

Danchenko has scrubbed his social media account. He told the FBI he deleted all his dossier-related electronic communications, including texts and emails, and threw out his handwritten notes from conversations with his subsources.

In the end, Steele walked away from the dossier debacle with at least $168,000, and Danchenko earned a large undisclosed sum.

The FBI interview memo, which is silent about Danchenko’s criminal record, was written by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, who was called out in the Justice inspector general report for ignoring inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and outright falsehoods in the dossier he was supposed to verify.

It was also Auten’s duty to vet Steele and his sources. Auten sat in on the meetings with Danchenko and also separate ones with Steele. He witnessed firsthand the countless red flags that popped up from their testimony. Yet Auten continued to tout their reliability as sources, and give his blessing to agents to use their dossier as probable cause to renew FISA surveillance warrants to spy on Page.

As RCI first reported, Auten teaches a national security course at a Washington-area college on the ethics of such spying.