Category: zerohedge

Shares of Alibaba trading on the NYSE during Monday’s premarket session slumped 120bps to $251 following President Trump’s comments on Saturday about exerting more pressure on Chinese-owned companies.

During the Saturday press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, the president said he would increase pressure on Chinese-owned companies, such as Alibaba, along with a move to ban TikTok.

“Well, we’re looking at other things, yes,” President Trump said without providing additional details.

Reuters explained how Trump has been heaping more pressure on Chinese-owned tech companies as ByteDance supplants Huawei as President Trump’s Chinese corporate villain No. 1.

“Trump has been piling pressure on Chinese-owned companies, such as by vowing to ban short-video app TikTok from the United States. The United States ordered its Chinese owner ByteDance on Friday to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok within 90 days, the latest effort to ramp up pressure over concerns about the safety of the personal data it handles,” Reuters said.

U.S.-China tensions are mounting ahead of the U.S. presidential elections this fall. President Trump has made his tough stance on China a central theme of his presidency. 

“The price of just about every financial asset is heading up… and they are heading up in unison,” is the ominous warning that The FT’s Robert Armstrong begins the brief clip below as he

From stocks to bonds to commodities – everything is levitating on a bed of ultra-low (if not negative) rates and as more excess liquidity than the world has ever seen.

This “sychronized exuberance” is being driven by a collapse of real yields into negative territory for the first time…

Or, as Armstrong notes “money is free… and under those conditions, no asset price can be too high!” and this low or negative real rate environment is expected (by the market) to be around for a really, really long time.

But Armstrong’s ultimate warning comes as he point out that “what is especially worrisome now is that in a downturn, it used to be that investors’ best defense was diversification… which means that when the next downturn comes, there will be no place to hide!“

So the question is “Is it 2007 all over again?”

n/t Global Macro Monitor

Authored by Gilbert Berdine via The Mises Institute,

Figure 1 illustrates the daily mortality attributed to covid-19 in Sweden, New York, Illinois, and Texas. The figure plots the daily number of deaths per million population. This figure illustrates the rise and fall of deaths from covid-19 in four different policy environments. The data were obtained from Worldometer.

Sweden: The Control Group

Sweden (blue dots) has served as a control group to compare policies intended to decrease deaths from covid-19. Sweden has been unfairly criticized for its policy despite having an outcome more favorable than places with authoritarian lockdown policies. Sweden did not close its schools. Other than stopping gatherings of more than fifty people, the Swedish government left decisions of closing businesses, using masks, and social distancing to the Swedish people. The government encouraged the use of masks and social distancing, but there were no requirements and there were no penalties for those who declined to follow the advice. Mortality attributed to covid-19 hit a peak value of 11.38 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020. This mortality was matched on April 15, and mortality has decreased since then. Daily mortality has been less than one death per day per million population for the previous eighteen days. Cases are very low. For all practical purposes, the covid-19 epidemic is over in Sweden. Almost certainly herd immunity has been achieved in Sweden irrespective of any antibody test results. Testing is usually only for IgG antibody and the herd can become immune via IgA antibody or cellular mechanisms that are not detected by the usual testing. Whether covid-19 will reappear this next fall or winter remains to be seen.

New York: Locking the Barn Door Shut after the Horse Has Already Left

New York (brown dots) has been a catastrophe. On March 20, 2020, a full lockdown was implemented. Nonessential businesses were ordered to close. Workers in nonessential businesses were ordered to work only from home. Pharmacies, grocery stores, liquor stores, and wine stores were deemed to be essential and allowed to remain open. Restaurants and bars could only deliver to homes. In addition to the lockdown, nursing homes were ordered on March 25, 2020, to accept patients positive for the covid-19 virus in transfer from hospitals. On May 10, this order was changed such that patients had to test negative for the virus before being transferred to nursing homes, but the damage had already been done. By April 7, 2020, within three weeks of the nursing home order, a daily mortality of over fifty deaths per day per million population had been reached. This daily mortality rate was almost five times the peak rate observed in Sweden, where no lockdown was implemented.

The New York policy assumed that all human interactions carry the same risk of death by covid-19. The New York data clearly shows that interactions among young and healthy people have a much different risk than interactions between the young and elderly and interactions among the elderly. By facilitating the transmission of the virus from hospitals to nursing homes, the rate of spread within the elderly population was maximized, and any possible benefit from lockdown of the young and healthy population was rendered moot. The general population was kept locked down after the virus had been broadly disseminated among the elderly population. The decline of deaths from the peak levels in New York, with its harsh lockdown, has followed roughly the same time course as what has been observed in Sweden without any lockdown. It is unclear whether the lockdown interfered with herd immunity or not. This will not be known until after the economy and schools are completely reopened for at least a month.

Illinois: A Flattened Curve Led to More Deaths

Illinois (gray dots) has more subtle differences from Sweden than does New York. Illinois also implemented a harsh lockdown on March 20, 2020. There was no nursing home order as in New York. The daily mortality rate increased more slowly than it did in New York and Sweden, reaching a peak of over fifteen deaths per day per million population on May 17, 2020. The daily mortality has declined more slowly than it did in New York and Sweden, and it remains significantly higher than the rates in those places. The most likely explanation for the Illinois data is that the lockdown did indeed slow the rate of transmission among the young and healthy but also allowed a longer time for transmission from young people to elderly people. The lockdown appears to have made more deaths from covid-19 in Illinois than would have occurred without it. Almost certainly herd immunity has not been achieved and will not be achieved until the schools and economy are reopened.

Texas: The Ox Is Slow, but the Earth Is Patient

Texas (gold dots) had very few deaths following a less harsh lockdown than was implemented in New York and Illinois. Nonessential businesses were closed on March 31. Outdoor activities were permitted. Social distancing was advised but not required. Governor Abbott was criticized for not squeezing hard enough, but predictions that Texas health care would be overwhelmed by late April failed to materialize. Texas appeared to be a success story, with a much lower mortality, and the state began a phased reopening of the economy on May 1, 2020. By late June, however, cases of covid-19 were increasing and the daily mortality rate was creeping up. The general reopening was paused, and some relaxations of measures were rescinded on June 26, 2020. The Texas daily mortality rate hit a peak of over ten deaths per day per million population on July 31, 2020. The Texas mortality peak is almost bad as the peak rate seen in Sweden, but Texas still has a largely closed economy. Texans are debating whether schools should be reopened or not. Sweden does not have to worry about its schools, because it never closed its schools. Texas will eventually have to reopen its schools and economy. It would appear that covid-19 deaths were deferred rather than prevented by the lockdown. Although the overall covid-19 mortality is lower in Texas (293 deaths per million population) than in Sweden (570), the current daily mortality in Texas is much higher than in Sweden, so covid-19 mortality in Texas may catch up to Sweden over the next 30–60 days. Furthermore, the situation in Texas will likely get worse when the schools and economy are reopened, as they eventually must be. Like the ox and the Earth, the lockdown slowed the transmission of the virus among the young and healthy, but the virus appears to be very patient and will spread when it is able to.

Conclusions

The data suggest that lockdowns have not prevented any deaths from covid-19. At best, lockdowns have deferred death for a short time, but they cannot possibly be continued for the long term. It seems likely that one will not have to even compare economic deprivation with loss of life, as the final death toll following authoritarian lockdowns will most likely exceed the deaths from letting people choose how to manage their own risk. After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation. Covid-19 is not going to be defeated; we will have to learn how to coexist with it. The only way we can learn how best to cope with covid-19 is to let individuals manage their own risk, observe the outcomes, and learn from mistakes. The world owes a great debt to Sweden for setting an example that the rest of us can follow.

The Bank of England (BoE) published a new study Friday (Aug. 14) to examine whether a cap on banker bonuses rolled out a decade ago post-financial crisis can thwart excessive risk-taking. 

The working paper titled “Does bonus cap curb risk-taking? An experimental study of relative performance pay and bonus regulation” found that higher risk-taking was associated when bonuses were linked to how well an individual, or team, preformed.

“Despite the modest stakes offered to the participants, our study demonstrates that bonus schemes may affect risk choices, and certain restrictions on bonus payments might reduce risktaking,” said BoE staff. 

The survey of 253 participants found “in the absence of relative performance pay, bonus cap, and malus reduced risk-taking. With relative performance pay, the risk-mitigating effects of bonus cap and malus were significantly weakened; but participants took less risk when the bonus was made conditional on their team avoiding a loss.” 

“This finding supports the view that some appropriately designed restrictions on bonus payments could mitigate excessive risk-taking. However, our findings suggest that commonly used bonus practices – such as relative performance benchmarking – might undermine the risk-mitigating effects of regulatory bonus restrictions,” said BoE staff.

The publication of the study comes as bankers in London are hoping the European Union’s cap on banker bonuses can be discarded now the country has exited the EU, noted Reuters. 

And while UK bankers push for higher bonuses this year, Wall Street is about to get “shafted” come bonus season despite the Fed pumping an endless flood of liquidity into markets. 

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The ECB balance sheet has risen to 53.9% of GDP in July 2020. This compares to a 32% of the Federal Reserve and 33% of the Bank of England. This means a 1.78 trillion euro increase year-to-date. Furthermore, excess liquidity has soared to 2.9 trillion euro, a 1.2 trillion increase since January. Added to this unprecedented monetary stimulus, the Eurozone has included a record-high 10% of GDP in various fiscal stimulus programmes. None of it has prevented the economy from showing signs of slowing down in August.

After a strong bounce in May and June, coming from the re-opening of most economies and the base effect, high frequency data compiled by Bloomberg Economics shows an evident slowdown in July and August. All economists that follow the eurozone economy are warning about the worrying weakening of leading indicators. The OECD has also published its July 2020 Leading Indicator Index which shows that economies like Spain are not just showing signs of weaker growth, but contraction. Italy continues to improve but at a slow pace, while France and Germany post declining growth levels.

The reason is evident. All the Eurozone monster stimulus is focused on perpetuating bloated government budgets and incentivising non-economic return or subsidized spending. The entire European Recovery Fund is clearly aimed at promoting white elephants disguised as green projects, but what is more concerning is that the Eurozone green deal includes more taxes and measures to prevent demand growth than productivity-enhancing plans.

This lesson should have been learnt in 2009. The European Union launched its massive Growth and Jobs Plan, which rose to more than 1.5% of the EU GDP, and the economy did not improve, while more than 4.5 million jobs were lost.

The problem of these massive stimulus is that they benefit the wrong parts of the economy. Current government spending in entitlements and subsidies, massive deficits and the corporations that take advantage of the massive private bond purchases and liquidity injections are the large multinationals and national champions that did not have any problem accessing markets in the past.

While the eurozone is raising “environmental” taxes to citizens and promoting subsidized spending in “the new green deal”, the biggest beneficiaries of the ECB corporate bond purchase programme are large automotive companies, oil and gas multinationals and big multi-utilities. The ECB has bought bonds from Shell, Eni, Repsol, OMV, Total, Siemens, Daimler AG, BMW, Volkswagen, Renault etc. None of these companies had any difficulty accessing capital markets or issuing debt at low rates, and their bonds could not be categorized in any way as cheap considering the yields and spreads. Most of these companies have established and mature businesses in sectors where overcapacity and margin challenges existed way before the previous and current crisis, so they will not increase hiring or capital spending due to the monetary stimulus.

Meanwhile, thousands of start-ups and small businesses with no access to credit because they have no hard assets are collapsing every month. The monster credit support coming from the transmission mechanism of monetary policy is hoarded by governments and multinationals. It is a massive incentive to overspend and malinvest. Governments feel happy adding more current spending and entitlements with no real economic return and traditional multinationals that were in slowdown phase years ago are zombified by low rates.

The ECB and Eurozone stimulus plans end up as massive subsidies to low productivity with collateral damages to high productivity sectors in the shape of higher taxes.

The reader may think that the same can be said about the United States and what the Federal Reserve does. Yes, to a certain extent. The main -and vital- difference is that the United States monetary policy transmission mechanism does not depend on the commercial bank channel. Less than 15% of the United States’ real economy is financed by the banking sector thanks to a diversified and flexible private credit system. In the Eurozone it is more than 80%, similar to Japan.

This path to long-term stagnation should serve as a reminder for the United States, again, of why it is not advisable to follow the eurozone policies. The results are invariably disastrous.

In a blow for many UK holidaymakers, France was added to the list of ‘high risk’ countries from 4am on Saturday 15 August. The announcement, made late last week, means that all but essential travel is now advised against and returning travellers will have to quarantine for 14 days.

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, France had previously been on the UK’s list of ‘travel corridors’, allowing unrestricted travel, but is now joined by the Netherlands, Malta, Monaco, the Turks & Caicos islands, and Aruba as one of the latest places to have this exemption removed.

You will find more infographics at Statista

After Spain, France is the second-most popular international destination for UK residents, over ten million of which visited the country in 2019.

With quarantine awaiting from the early hours of Saturday, there are reports of a scramble to return home before the new rules come into place.

In response on Friday, France’s secretary of state for European affairs tweeted:

“A British decision which we regret and which will lead to reciprocal measures, hoping for a return to normality as soon as possible.”

By SouthFront,

The Middle East is on the brink of the new tectonic shift in the regional balance of power. The previous years were marked by the growth of the Iranian and Hezbollah influence and the decrease of the US grip on the region. The January 2020 started with the new Iranian-US confrontation that had all chances to turn into an open war. August 202 appeared to mark the first peace agreement between an Arab state and Israel in more than 25 years.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates have reached a historical peace agreement. US President Donald Trump announced the breakthrough agreement on August 13, calling Israel and the UAE “great friends” of his country. In a joint statement, Israel, the UAE and the U.S. said the agreement will advance peace in the Middle East. The statement praised the “bold diplomacy” and “vision” of the three country’s leaders.

Delegations from Israel and the UAE are expected to meet within a few weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit.

In the framework of the peace agreement, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in Netanyahu’s “Vision for Peace” in the Western Bank. Also, Tel Aviv will reportedly focus its efforts on “expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world.” The agreement will also provide Muslims with greater access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It still remains in question how Israel will comply with its part of the deal as the annexation of Palestinian territories is the cornerstone of its regional policy.

In the near future, the United States will likely work to motivate other Gulf states to follow the UAE’s footsteps. In particular, another US regional ally, Saudi Arabia, is already widely known for keeping close ties with Israel in the field of security and military cooperation. Both states are allies of Washington and are engaged in a regional standoff against the Iranian-led coalition of Shiite forces.

The support of the UAE-Israeli agreement is also a logical step for the Trump administration’s regional policy, which is based on the two main cornerstones: the unconditional support of Israel and the confrontation with Iran. Through such moves, Washington may hope to create a broader Israeli-Arab coalition through which it will try to consolidate the shirking influence and contain the ongoing Iranian expansion in the region. At the same time, the overtures with Israel, which has undertaken wide and successful efforts to destabilize neighboring Arab states, could cause a public backlash among the Arab population and contribute to its further dissatisfaction with the course of its leadership. All these developments, together with the consisted Iranian policy aimed at the defense of Palestinians, will increase the popularity of Iran as not only defender of Shiites across the Middle East, but all Muslims in general. Tehran has been seeking to achieve this goal for years and achieved a particular progress in the field. The US-Israeli aggressive policy in the region also played an important role in fact promoting the popularity of the so-called Axis of Resistance. Now, the Iranian soft power in Arab states will become even more noticeable and create additional threats to Gulf states involved in a direct confrontation with it.

The Saudi Kingdom, as the main candidate for the next peace deal, will find itself in an especially shaky position. It is already involved in the long, bloody, and unsuccessful intervention in Yemen, with Yemen’s Houthis regularly conducting cross-border raids into Saudi Arabia and even striking its capital, Riyadh. Also, the Saudi leadership has a long-standing problem with the oppressed Shia minority, protests of which are regularly and violently suppressed by Saudi forces. Other factors are the apparent economic and social problems, not least due to Riyadh’s own adventures on the oil market and the coronavirus crisis. Therefore, at some moment the Saudi regime may easily find itself on the brink of collapse under the weight of its own social, political and economic mistakes, and controversial policies on the international arena. And it’s highly unlikely that the friends in Tel Aviv or Washington will decide to undertake any extraordinary steps to rescue the current political regime in the Saudi kingdom.

Authored by ‘ICE-9’ via The Burning Platform blog,

Read Part 1 of 3 “Physical Money & The Limits Of War” here…

Read Part 2 of 3 “The Victory Of Fiat Money, Endless Wars, & The Coming Age of Subjugation” here…

Where Is This All Going?

Like any confidence game or Ponzi scheme, endless “growth” using any form of money cannot be sustained indefinitely, and the creditor / political class knows this and are preparing to unleash the inevitable crash that plunges the globe into an economic dark ages from which they shall rule absolutely and where what amenities remain shall be monopolized to themselves.  We see our expectations for the future being managed downwards, promises of opportunity replaced with visions of “safety”, individualism and self-sufficiency publically scorned as “we are all in this together”, and the inchoate beginnings of the ecological peasant religion of “Climate Change”.  Some review of the philosophical history that got us to this point will suffice.

One reason the 19th and early 20th century German state was such an implacable foe to the creditor class and their privately owned central banks was its embrace of the End of History as formulated by Georg Hegel and adopted by the Prussian state and later the German Emperors.  Hegel saw history as a progression of wars with history being the documentation of political struggles between people of different states, and people within states.  Wars and rebellions arose because people existed in states operating without what Hegel termed “objectivity, truth, and ethical life”.  Once the free and noble state emerged and, through its rightful conquest of neighboring states and assimilation of their peoples into this “objectivity, truth, and ethical life”, happiness and human fulfilment would abound, the need for conflict cease, war would no longer be waged, and the documentation of wars and struggles that Hegel defined as history would end, and so the End of History would descend as universal peace and freedom.  Thus Hegel’s version of the End of History placed all societal institutions – including central banks – subsumed to the state, and that precluded a privately owned central bank in a German Empire as this would only serve its owners.  And all Germanic peoples were targeted for eventual assimilation into “objectivity, truth, and ethical life” – Germanic peoples where privately owned central banks already existed.

To combat the German Empire’s vision of “objectivity, truth, and ethical life” a competing version of Hegel’s End of History was formulated by Karl Marx and spread as communism among the German working class and western European intelligentsia.  This co-opted version replaced politics with economics, and cast history as the documentation not of political struggles, but of economic struggles between owners of the means of production, the states that protected their privileges, and the alienated proletariat.  All societal institutions were again to be subsumed to the communist state but this time happiness and human fulfilment would abound and the need for conflict cease et cetera when private ownership of property was abolished and economic equality of outcome was established.

By the end of WWII the privately owned central banks, with their powers to issue or withhold credit and set interest rates, had become the de facto controllers of state, and with the threat of “objectivity, truth, and ethical life” finally eliminated, and communism accepted as a necessary menace to promote the spread of “democracy” and US Dollar financing, the creditor class began to rework both Hegel and Marx.  Thus in the late 1930s, at the University of Chicago and funded by “philanthropic” money from John D. Rockefeller, began the theoretical amalgamation of both Hegel and Marx into a revised “End of History” where most of the world’s inhabitants would fight to the death to establish the suzerainty of the “Philosopher Kings” – i.e., the highest echelon of the creditor class – as the global nobility and the “End of History” would descend when both economic poverty and political subjugation were established equally among men.  So in this new version of the “End of History”, happiness and human fulfilment would abound when there is a complete absence of wealth and total political disenfranchisement among the vast hordes of humanity that somehow managed to survive the catastrophic wars needed to achieve their universal destitution. 

This is what is publicly known and overtly referred to today in Neoconservative circles as the “New World Order” – it is the creditor / political class blueprint for their end game – the “End of History” and total world domination with Plato’s versions of a completely static society and “Justice” thrown in.

Key to these machinations of the creditor / political class for their implementation of this revised “End of History” is the elimination of sovereign nations through war, their insolvency resulting from prosecution of endless-endless war, and citizen disenfranchisement via “democracy”.  The endless-endless wars will eventually bankrupt all nations and as they are beholden to their privately owned central banks for their operating funds, these banks can either withhold the issuance of credit or raise interest rates to unsustainable levels that trigger hyper-deflation, social instability, and total economic and national security collapse.  A nation that can no longer fund itself can no longer exist among other nations and will devolve into a failed state and this is how the “New World Order” will progress, one bankrupt nation and IMF / World Bank bailout loan at a time.  The endless-endless wars also have the added benefit of killing a large portion of the young, fighting fit men in a society and thereby eliminate the major threat of opposition and rebellion on the home front.  And the imposition of “democracy”, where maximum participation in “voting” is promoted by enfranchising the likes of illegal aliens, teenagers, the mentally retarded, dementia sufferers, antisocial felons, and all manner of peoples that have no business deciding anything, will eventually result not in increased participation, but in large segments of the population giving up on the political process entirely as their influence is diluted to the point of an exercise in futility.  Thus out of the economic and social chaos of protracted war and national bankruptcy these new voices added to “democracy” will eventually be presented with the “choice” of giving up national sovereignty to the extra-governmental political and financial organizations in exchange for the “stability”, “safety”, and a guaranteed “living wage” provided by these same global extra-governmental organizations that the creditor / political class has been so meticulous to cultivate over these last 60 years.  With sovereignty “suspended” over an apathetic, reactionary, and uneducated public, there will effectively be no more “citizenship” and thus no challenge to the new rule of the “Philosopher Kings”.  Thus we get not only the “End of History”, but the death of citizenship and a return to the subjugation of the medieval period – the “Neo-feudalism” so often mention in current writings.

Plato plays a central role in the imposition of the “End of History”.  Where Hegel and Marx were the “why”, Plato is the “how”.  The core tenant in Platonic thought is his concept of “Justice”, being no more than the natural way of things – e.g., the strong rule over the weak, and the ultimate strength in the Platonic system is logic.  Thus a small group of “Philosopher Kings” represent the highest order of society and rule devoid of empathy and make all decisions based on logic alone, empower decision delivery to the next class level consisting of “enforcers” trained in the martial arts and music that ensure absolute compliance to the decisions of the “Philosopher Kings” by the mass of everyone else that decides nothing.  As this societal structure represents perfect “Justice”, it is immutable and thus the “End of History” ushers in a completely static social; hierarchy from which no one can escape.  The creditor / political class in its role as “Philosopher Kings” is thereby ensured its eternal position of rule over the entirety of humanity and is what is represented as the All Seeing Eye, which has nothing to do with omniscience or vigilance, hovering above the base of the pyramid that represents the mass of everyone else under the tyrannical rule of empathy-free logic, universal poverty, and absolute political disenfranchisement.

We are presently nearing the end of a 450 year phase in the motives behind what has become the greatest power in the world – the power to conjure armies out of thin air using credit, the ability to elevate or destroy nations and peoples by the setting of interest rates in one direction or the other, and the ability to vanquish armies by the provision or withholding of credit.  In a fiat system all political decisions not related to the creation and cost of credit are secondary.  But as pure fiat money is now wholly divorced from labor inputs, it is wholly worthless and so profits derived from pure fiat money are illusory as they have no base unit value determinant.  The future of continual fiat debasement is secured not through budget deficits but through the advancement of “efficiency” and increasing prevalence of automation and declining labor inputs into the production of goods and services.  We see “efficiency” now reduce labor inputs to that of building and maintaining robots for manufacture and transport of goods, and when robots build other robots and artificial intelligence makes decisions, labor inputs are removed entirely and the jig is up for money.  What we presently hear about “de-industrialization” is all just fancy talk to describe ever increasing industrial efficiency through automation.  Thus the end of growth and the end of money approaches nearer with each incremental “efficiency” gain, and growth cannot be sustain by profitable endeavors not backed by labor inputs.  Instead, we have the increasing illusion of profit created by continually removing labor inputs until zero labor input is reached and all produced things become truly valueless.

At the point where money represents zero labor input and has no intrinsic value, it is transformed into a purely political tool, backed now by “enforcers” to ensure it is the only medium of exchange and thus, the coercion of human behavior becomes the new form of “value” in the “New World Order”.  At the “End of History” when technology triumphs and human inputs are no longer required to produce goods and services, the ability to control human action by the distribution or withholding of money becomes the unit measure of “value”.  Thus we see the groundwork being laid for digital “money”, “social credit scores”, the “surveillance state”, and “universal basic income” as the nascent means of coercing mass human behavior as “technology” will be the only thing remaining that possesses some human input and therefore, intrinsic “value”, whether behavior is focused or unfocused.  Here it becomes possible to create a trillion dollar business based solely upon the persuasion and harvesting of human inputs in the form of mouse clicks.

So at the “End of History”, labor is unnecessary, and as universal “peace” has descended after the conclusion of endless-endless war and total bankruptcy of the fiat system, the “citizen soldier” and “citizen laborer” too become unnecessary.  Thus the “End of History” will bring about both the “End of Citizenship” and the “End of Work”, transform the bulk of humanity into obsolescence, and leave the logical and devoid of empathy “Philosopher Kings” no choice but initiate mass depopulation programs as not doing so would risk the “peace” and potentially start the revival of history.

So when money has no value, generates only illusory profits, and is disbursed by edict to those who are increasingly unnecessary, money has then transformed from the “means to power” to “power in of its self”.  Society then devolves into one where many are not only alienated from the means of production, but now are alienated from not only the means to experiencing a fulfilling existence, but from the means of existence itself.  Endeavors related to the pursuit of profit are removed from the power equation, and with profit motive gone much of human endeavor formerly occupied by tradecraft and commerce becomes meaningless.  At this point there is no more need for the “Philosopher Kings” to stand on pretense, as “power in of itself” becomes their human motivation backed by the perfectly “just” and entirely static societal structure.  When “peace” descends over the “End of History”, the veneer of past civil society that kept some form of balance in check is permanently effaced. 

Thus the “End of History” and rise of the “Philosopher Kings” shall usher in an age of unparalleled violence, barbarism, and human meaninglessness that the ever declining numbers of people under empathy-free logical rule will yearn for a return to the days of history and an end to the “End of History”.

So What Is to Be Done?

Do I think the creditor / political class will achieve their “End of History”?  No. 

Do I think the creditor / political class will destroy everyone and everything in their attempt to achieve their “End of History”?  Yes, most definitely. 

It all begins to make sense once one accepts that the sole purpose now for the existence of the United States is the never ending global accumulation of US Dollar fiat debt across every sector of every society of every nation so to initiate the simultaneous financial, cultural, and spiritual destruction of all people’s collective will to exist separately as nations.

We have had the synthesis wrong for far too long because we view synthesis from our own biased perspective towards self.  Once we realize that there really is a small and incredibly powerful and psychopathic group out there that wants to entirely destroy and enslave us, the “End of History” can become synthesis – but it’s their synthesis – and only then can the seeming disconnect between thesis (the world is violent and chaotic) and antithesis (the world is peace and predictable) arising from our bias of self-perspective be joined through their synthesis.  Thus then can what initially appear as stochastic insanity be finally recognized as perfectly logical and purposeful objective.  The siren song of “Globalism” is the creditor / political classes’ first call for initiates willing to embrace their servitude in the “End of History” and help gather up the easily persuaded and put them to work during the next call, which will not be persuasive and will not be aimed at those so willing.  The final call will be for all those who remain uncommitted to get in the boxcars.

The transition from physical money representing a true store of value to that of paper money divorced from labor inputs that represents nothing and is used as a political tool has not made mankind more refined or evolved.  It has instead enabled the ruling creditor / political class to now endlessly wage endless wars of no advantage to its combatants and at zero financial and personal risk to the instigators. 

There is no coincidence that “World Wars” began one year after the creation of the Federal Reserve System, and “World Wars” will continue in the form of endless-endless wars so long as the Federal Reserve System or any other global fiat money system exists to conjure armies out of thin air.  Fiat money has enabled endless research into the methods and efficiency of waging war which is at its base level the science of how to kill more and more people using fewer and fewer resources, and this science, when combined with finance, psychology, and biology is more and more successful with every passing year. 

Fiat money has reduced citizenship to the levels of unpaid mercenary and tax slave in the pursuit of maximizing global accumulation of US Dollar debt financing.  And, as fiat money is now a political tool, it has corrupted every facet of society leading to the moral collapse of nearly every state and societal institution and, most significantly and by design, declines in the collective will of peoples to exist as separate nations.  Thus it is fiat money that is the barbarous invention, and the gold and silver coinage of old the noble relic.  And most importantly, the creditor / political class that controls the issuance and price of fiat money is the greatest single menace to the people of the world today.

Thus with this realization it becomes clear what needs to be done.  And what needs to be done will not be accomplished peacefully – there is just no other way, for the creditor / political class is like a weed that will not go away until it is pulled out by its roots, burned into ashes, and the soil from whence it grew salted for eternity…

The Air Force has added throwable reconnaissance microrobots to their arsenal for base security missions, read a military press release.

Airman of the 96th Security Forces Squadron (96th SFS), at Eglin Air Force Base, located in western Florida, were supplied with Throwbots, a football-sized robot that remotely transmits video and audio to the operator, to help them clear buildings, locate and identify suspects, and confirm the layout of a room during hostage situations. The robot will also be used for vehicle inspections at base checkpoints and random anti-terrorism missions. 

“It took five minutes for me to learn how to use it,” said Leon Gray, from the 96th SFS, after examining the device at a defense trade show. 

Gray said, “it quickly became apparent how our security personnel could utilize this tool in our operations.”

Task & Purpose noted Throwbot has already been spotted in the popular video game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. 

“If this gadget sounds familiar, it should. In the first-person shooter Rainbow Six Siege, players use wheeled drones to scout outbuildings, scan for enemy players, and even serve as stationary cameras,” Task & Purpose said. 

The Throwbot is rugged, can survive a 30 feet fall and travel on uneven terrain. Airman can even tow up to 4 pounds of gear with the robot. A camera on the front allows the operator to remotely control the device with a handheld joystick. 

Add Throwbot to the long list of robots the military is quickly adopting in the last couple of years as trillions of dollars have been spent to modernize forces. 

Authored by Patricia McCarthy via AmericanThinker.com,

For decades, the Democratic party has wanted to abrogate the Second Amendment, to ban the sale of guns of any and all calibers, sizes, shapes and potential uses.  They have long sought to limit the amount of ammo per gun and were just foiled again on that score.  

The left has yet to realize the obvious, that criminals do not obey laws of any kind, least of all gun laws.  So deluded are the gun-banning Democrats, they do not believe that Americans have the right to defend themselves against said criminals.  These Democrats who want to run our lives all have armed security themselves, but we peons are, in their warped view, are to be forever denied the rights they bestow upon themselves.  

Like the imbecilic Beto O’Rourke before her, Kamala Harris advocates gun confiscation; she wants the tyrannical government she and Joe are promoting to go into our homes and seize our legally-obtained weapons of self-defense.  

Like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, seizing the firearms of the citizenry is the first step toward despotism.  But the left misjudges the spirit of Americans who have escaped being indoctrinated by the anti-American, anti-constitutionalism that the left in academia and the media have been pushing for decades.  Most of us take the Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights very seriously.  Both have served this nation well for two-hundred and forty-four years.  No self-righteous, virtue-signaling political lefty elitist is going to convince Americans who support the Constitution that the government has the right to confiscate their guns.  

Well before Biden’s selection of Harris as his running mate, in the first half of 2020, gun sales have increased by 95%, (ten million guns), ammunition sales are up by 139%.  

The numbers eclipse all of 2019.  The highest increase is among black men and women, 58.2%.  

Can you blame them?  

The wanton violence that has plagued Democrat-run cities like Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago (homicides up 139%),  New York (13% increase in shooting incidents, 23% increase in homicides), Seattle, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, etc. over the past several months with the blessings of the Democrat governors and mayors that run them has taught law-abiding blacks that the police are being driven from these cities, betrayed by the elected leaders charged with enforcing the law.  Violent crime has spiked in all those places.  And to this day, no Democrat has spoken out against Antifa or Black Lives Matter, or the catastrophic damage they have wrought upon those communities, apparently in the mistaken belief that a majority of Americans are sympathetic to the specious causes of the vandals.  The massive increase in gun sales would seem to belie that tenet.  

While it has long been mostly republicans who support gun rights and the NRA, the enormous expansion of gun ownership most certainly includes former Democrats who will not likely vote for Biden/Harris, both of whom favor confiscation like the rest of the left.  For that reason and for her other past prosecutorial policies, not all blacks support Harris.  So it is safe to conclude that the colossal increase in gun sales is perhaps the most telling poll of all.  Guns and ammo are expensive and these numbers represent legal sales and do not account for the illegal acquisitions of guns.  Bottom line?  People no longer  feel safe in their own communities and they are seeing the police they respect and rely upon be demeaned, defunded and directed to stand down while rioters and looters destroy their small businesses and downtowns.  And through all this monstrous violence,  the democrats insist on calling the vandals “peaceful protesters.” They are anything but peaceful.  They are well-funded fascist groups who mean to destroy the United States as founded. The death of George Floyd was the spark that lit the fires, covid19 the gift that has kept on giving to those working hard to sabotage our great nation. 

The rise in gun ownership has spiked more than any previous time period and is the highest since the FBI began recording the statistics 22 years ago.  

The alleged lead by Biden in the polls most likely does not account for the huge number of Americans who may have voted Democrat in the past but are not going to vote Democrat again if it means being stripped of the guns they’ve only recently purchased and now feel they need for self-defense.  And all the while, the left has promoted and blessed the violence.  They have actually encouraged it, they’ve emboldened the rioters by refusing to call what they do by its name:  brutal insurrection.

From day one of the violence in Seattle and Portland, President Trump offered federal help but those cities’ mayors and each of the others whose cities were being ravaged declined his offer.  As a result, half of all black-owned businesses in the affected cities have been destroyed by the rioting or lost to the lockdown.  It is hard to take seriously the mantra that “black lives matter” when in fact they have become a mere political tool of the left.  Most of the media failed to report on the cold-blooded murder of a five-year-old boy by his adult neighbor.  Why?  The child was white, the murderer black which does not fit the left’s narrative of the day.  Mayors Bill de Blasio of New York and Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. are all hat, no cattle, when it comes to actually caring about the lives being devastated by the disorder they have willingly allowed.  As President Trump said last week, “this election will determine the future of private gun ownership in the United States.”   

Biden is clearly lost in a fog of confusion due to his mental decline and will say anything his handlers put on the teleprompter but Kamala Harris is as far left a candidate who has ever run for high office; she is Bernie Sanders in a dress.  She and her fellow “progressives”  mean what they say;  they mean to effect a defenseless society.  

Will a majority of Americans choose to be disarmed like the Germans under Hitler, the Russians under Stalin and the Chinese under Mao or will they vote to preserve their constitutional right to bear arms?  The astronomical surge in gun ownership these past months tells us that no, they will not vote to lose their Second Amendment right.  Self-defense is a human right.  

“The right of self-defense never ceases.  It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.“ –James Monroe  

The left, thoroughly deranged by Trump’s 2016 victory, will gladly see our once civil society destroyed if its destruction will see Trump defeated.  Their plan is doomed to failure.   If gun sales translate to votes, it will ensure his re-election.