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Tonight’s TIC data held few surprises and nothing of significant note, but it got us thinking…

For the 9th month of the last 11, China’s Treasury holdings declined in February (the latest TIC data), dropping by $22.7BN. Additionally, it has now been 24 of the last 28 months that China’s Treasury holdings have declined, now back at practically its lowest level since June 2009…

Source: Bloomberg

While we are acutely aware of the fact that ‘correlation is not causation’, one would find it hard to argue that the practically perfect concomitance of China’s Treasury holdings and the yield of the US 10Y Treasury note over the past three years makes us wonder (in our out-loud voices), if – away from The QT, The FedSpeak, the macro-economy, the geopolitical crises, the AI-hype, the growth scares – if it’s not just all a well-managed (slow and steady) liquidation of China’s (still massive) US Treasury holdings…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s hard to argue they don’t have an incentive to a) de-dollarize, and b) not liquidate it all at once, shooting themselves in the face.

While the de-dollarizing has been steady in Treasury-land (enabled by a vast sea of liquid other players), things have been a little more ‘obvious’ in the alternative currency space – i.e gold.

The 2015 jump in the chart below was when China suddenly admitted to its gold holdings (well some of them we assume) after no disclosure since 2009. Since then both China and Russia (the gold line below), have been hoarding the precious metal while dumping Treasuries…

Source: Bloomberg

And in case you wondered, it’s not just China and Russia, world reserve Treasury holdings are ‘relatively’ flat (based on Fed’s custody data) while according to The IMF, the world’s sovereign nations have been buying gold with both hands and feet…

Source: Bloomberg

…happy to take whatever retail-ETF-sellers are offering into their physical vaults…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, as we note in the chart, this all started to ‘escalate quickly’ when Washington really started to weaponize the dollar.

Assuming that all the US gold is still in Fort Knox (and assuming that China and Russia are honest about their holdings), the world’s ‘other superpowers’ are rapidly catching up to the US’ holdings…

Source: Bloomberg

Who could have seen that coming?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

That real harm will result from the use of AI tools is a given.

AI is like the powerful character in an action movie who looks invincible until they turn around, revealing a fatal spear embedded in their back. The spear in AI’s back is the American legal system, which has been issuing free passes to tech companies and platforms for decades on the idea that limiting innovation will hurt economic growth, so we’d best let tech companies run with few restrictions.

The issuance of free passes to Tech monopolies / cartels and platforms may be ending. Letting Big Tech run with few restrictions has led to the smothering of innovation as tech monopolies do what every monopoly excels at, which is buy up potential competitors, suppress competition, pursue regulatory capture via lobbying and spend freely on deceptive PR.

Now anti-trust regulators are finally looking at the uncompetitive wastelands created by Big Tech and recognizing the union-busting tactics of quasi-monopolies like Starbucks and Amazon. The bloom might be off the Big Tech / Monopoly rose.

Enter AI, which offers the thrilling prospect of trillions of dollars in additional profits for purveyors of AI and all those companies which use their AI tools.

The American legal system deals with new technologies much as a reptile digests a meal–slowly. I get email from readers about defending the Constitution, something we all support. I am not an attorney, but my impression of Constitutional law is that it is a tediously complex thicket of case law that must be carefully picked through before we can even begin to understand exactly what we’re defending: every issue anyone might be concerned about has already accumulated an immense load of rulings and arguments.

This is American jurisprudence: advocacy goes to trial and ruling are issued, some as rulings that will pertain to all future cases and some that will not. The law advances in new fields such as AI as positions are argued before judges / juries and then reviewed by higher courts as losers appeal judgments / rulings.

A great many things we might think are novel have long been settled. Isn’t the Selective Service Act a form of involuntary servitude? Nope, that’s been settled long ago. The government’s right to draft you to fight in a war of choice is unquestionably the law of the land.

AI has certain novel features which have yet to be decided by the processes of advocacy, rulings and appeals. In general, corporations selling / giving away AI tools are claiming these tools incur no liability to the issuers of the tools because they’re akin to software that, for example, adds HTML coding to plain text: a tool that performs a process.

This strikes me as incomplete. It seems to me that AI, by its very name and nature, is making implicit claims of utility far beyond mere processing of data or text: AI is called AI because it is adding intellectual value to data or text.

All the disclaimers in the world cannot dissolve this implicit claim of utility that adds value. Since I’m not an attorney, I’m not able to put this in proper legal terms; I am using the terminology of philosophy. But the law is a system based on philosophic principles, and so the language of philosophy plays a key role in broadly applicable legal rulings.

Now let’s consider a real-world example. A patient receives a mid-diagnosis and suffers as a direct result of the mis-diagnosis. In our system of law, somebody or some entity is liable for the consequences of the error, and must pay restitution to those harmed by the error.

As fact-finding proceeds, it turns out an AI tool was used in the initial scanning of the patient’s data. The company that created the AI tool will naturally claim that the tool was intended only to be used under the supervision of a human professional, and there were no claims made as to the accuracy of the AI tool’s output.

This is a specious argument, as the clear intent of the AI tool is to replace human expertise as a means of lowering the costs of diagnosis by accelerating the process and increasing the accuracy of the diagnosis.

Clearly, the tool was designed for exactly this purpose, and therefore deficiencies in its performance that contributed to the mis-diagnosis–for example, the fact that the AI tool rated the diagnostic result with a high probability of accuracy–are the responsibility of the company that issued the AI tool.

Should the court find the AI company 1% liable for the misdiagnosis, the principle of joint and several liability means the monetary settlement falls on whichever parties can pay the settlement. Should the other parties found liable be unable to pay a $10 million settlement, then the AI company might end up paying $9 million of the $10 million settlement, despite their apparently limited liability.

Off the top of my head, I can foresee dozens of similar examples in which an AI tool can be found partially liable for misrepresentations, errors of omission, unauthorized use of confidential intellectual property, and so on, in what can easily become an endless profusion of liability claims.

If the bloom is off the rose of Big Tech, the likelihood of a court assigning liability to those issuing AI tools increases proportionately. If the ruling is upheld by an appeals court, it will generally enter case law and become the basis for similar lawsuits assigning liability to those entities issuing AI tools.

That real harm will result from the use of AI tools is a given. The idea that those issuing these tools should be given a free pass because “we really didn’t mean that you could use the tools to reduce human labor and increase accuracy” does not pass the sniff test, nor will it negate advocacy claiming that these tools implicitly make claims about utility that incur liability.

Use an AI tool, get sued. The Wild West of AI’s claims of zero liability will soon enter the meat grinder of jurisprudence, and implicit claims of utility will be more than enough to incur liability in a court of law–as they should.

The legal spear in AI’s back could prove fatal. A 1% error rate and 1% liability will add up fast.

*  *  *

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Dozens of Google employees just learned they can’t treat corporate offices like a college campus. On Wednesday, the Alphabet subsidiary rushed to fire 28 employees who were part of Tuesday sit-in protests against the company’s provision of artificial intelligence and cloud services to the State of Israel.  

The protests were organized by a group called No Tech for Apartheid, which had declared Tuesday a “day of action” at Google. At issue: Google’s Project Nimbus — a $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract with Israel — and the Israeli Defense Forces’ use of Google Photos in Gaza, “which has led to the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of thousands of Palestinians with little to no evidence,” the group said. “It’s clear that the Israeli military will use any technology available to them for genocidal means.” 

Instant karma: @Google employees held a sit-in protest of the Big Tech company’s business with Israel.

They were arrested and fired.

Life comes at you fast!pic.twitter.com/rJiysqtPsk

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 18, 2024

Last week, Israel’s +972 Magazine, citing Israeli intelligence officers, reported on the Israeli Defense Forces’ expansive use of AI in its war on Gaza in a system called Lavender. “Human personnel often served only as a ‘rubber stamp’ for the machine’s decisions,” one source said, typically spending only 20 seconds reviewing AI-selected targets “just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male.” The intel sources said that, particularly during the early days, the majority of the resulting dead were “women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting.” 

Tuesday’s protests were staged in Google’s Sunnyvale, California, Seattle and New York City offices. They including livestreamed sit-ins lasting about 10 hours. The protesters weren’t just hanging around in hallways or lobbies: In Sunnyvale, they took over the personal office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, and wrote a list of demands on his whiteboard. Police were eventually called, and nine employees were arrested for trespassing. 

In a statement, Google laid out its rationale for bringing the hammer down:  

“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.

We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”

No Tech for Apartheid condemned the terminations. “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers—the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders,” the group said in a statement. 

Last month, Google axed this engineer who interrupted a speech being delivered by an Israeli-based Google executive at a tech conference in New York City: 

“I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.”

A Pro-Palestine Google Cloud engineer disrupted Barak Regev, Google Israel managing director During a tech conference held in New York City.

The worker protested Project Nimbus, a contract to sell technology that could be… pic.twitter.com/pjWF3koatp

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 5, 2024

While labor laws generally give a green light to employee strikes and other disruptive actions aimed at things like wages and work conditions, protesting an employer’s choice of customer is something else altogether. However, talking to Bloomberg, San Francisco University labor professor John Logan attempted a tortured argument on the Google protesters’ behalf. 

“Tech workers are not like other kinds of workers,” he said. “You can make an argument in this case that having some sort of say or control or ability to protest about how their work product is being used is actually a sort of key issue.”

Google begs to differ, and on Wednesday offered a warning to its remaining employees: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again.”

Via Consortium News

The United States Embassy on Tuesday filed two assurances with the British Foreign Office saying it would not seek the death penalty against imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and would allow Assange “the ability to raise and seek to reply upon at trial … the rights and protections given under the First Amendment,” according to the U.S. diplomatic note.  

Assange’s wife Stella Assange said the note “makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead,” she said, “the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”   

The note contains a hollow statement, namely, that Assange can try to raise the First Amendment at trial (and at sentencing), but the U.S. Department of Justice can’t guarantee he would get those rights, which is precisely what it must do under British extradition law based on the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is legally restricted to assure a free speech guarantee to Assange equivalent to Article 10 of the European Convention, which the British court is bound to follow. But without that assurance, Assange should be freed according to a British Crown Prosecution Service comment on extraditions.

In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S. don’t possess constitutional rights. Both former C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo and Gordon Kromberg, Assange’s U.S. prosecutor, have said Assange does not have First Amendment protection.

Because of the separation of powers in the United States, the executive branch’s Justice Department can’t guarantee to the British courts what the U.S. judicial branch decides about the rights of a non-U.S. citizen in court, said Marjorie Cohn, law professor and former president of the National Lawyers’ Guild. 

“Let’s assume that … the Biden administration, does give assurances that he would be able to raise the First Amendment and that the [High] Court found that those were significant assurances,” Cohn told Consortium News’ webcast CN Live! last month.

“That really doesn’t mean anything, because one of the things that the British courts don’t understand is the U.S. doctrine of separation of powers,” she said.  “The prosecutors can give all the assurances they want, but the judiciary, another [one] .. of these three branches of government in the U.S., doesn’t have to abide by the executive branch claim or assurance,” Cohn said. 

In other words, whether Assange can rely on the First Amendment in his defense in a U.S. court is up to that court not Kromberg or the Department of Justice, which issued the assurance on Tuesday. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment,” said Stella Assange.

Assange Can Challenge Assurances

Assange’s legal team now has the right to challenge the credibility and validity of the U.S. assurances filed on Tuesday. The U.S. would then have a right to reply to Assange’s legal submissions to the court, which will hold a hearing on May 20 to determine whether or not to accept the U.S. assurances.

If the court does, Assange can be put on a plane to the U.S. theoretically that day. If not Assange would be granted a full appeal against the Home Office’s 2022 order to extradite him.  Assange is wanted in the U.S. on 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and one on conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon.

“The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism,” Stella Assange said. 

BREAKING:

“The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he… pic.twitter.com/lu7bkw0M5u

— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) April 16, 2024

In its 66-page ruling on March 26, the two High Court judges wrote Kromberg wouldn’t have said Assange would be without First Amendment rights at trial “unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with a real prospect of success.”

“If such an argument were to succeed it would (at least arguably) cause the applicant [Assange] prejudice on the grounds of his non-US citizenship (and hence, on the grounds of his nationality),” the judges said. They added:

“The applicant wishes to argue, at any trial in the United States, that his actions were protected by the First Amendment. He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence to the extradition charge.”

This is the statement Stella Assange put out on X Tuesday at 11:36 am EDT…

“The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited. The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism. The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.”

Gold is considered a unique asset due to its enduring value, historical significance, and application in various technologies like computers, spacecraft, and communications equipment.

Commonly regarded as a “safe haven asset”, gold is something investors typically buy to protect themselves during periods of global uncertainty and economic decline.

It is for this reason that gold has performed rather strongly in recent years, and especially in 2024. Persistent inflation combined with multiple wars has driven up demand for gold, helping it set a new all-time high of over $2,400 per ounce.

To put this into perspective, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the performance of gold alongside the S&P 500.

See the table below for performance figures as of April 12, 2024.

Over the five-year period, gold has climbed an impressive 81.65%, outpacing even the S&P 500.

Get Your Gold at Costco

Perhaps a sign of how high the demand for gold is becoming, wholesale giant Costco is reportedly selling up to $200 million worth of gold bars every month in the United States. The year prior, sales only amounted to $100 million per quarter.

Consumers aren’t the only ones buying gold, either. Central banks around the world have been accumulating gold in very large quantities, likely as a hedge against inflation.

According to the World Gold Council, these institutions bought 1,136 metric tons in 2022, marking the highest level since 1950. Figures for 2023 came in at 1,037 metric tons.

If you’re fascinated by gold, be sure to check out more Visual Capitalist content including 200 Years of Global Gold Production, by Country or Ranked: The Largest Gold Reserves by Country.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Unnamed Reuters sources said on Wednesday that the European Commission is preparing to sue Germany over its fees for purchasing gas from German storage in contravention of the European Union’s single market rules. 

In a matter of days, the European Commission is expected to file its infringement procedure lawsuit against the German tariff, Reuters reports, citing two unnamed sources, though a spokesman for the Commission told Reuters that talks were ongoing. 

The tariff, according to an EU energy regulator who spoke with Reuters, is creating higher gas prices in some EU countries. 

Germany’s tariff on purchases of stored gas is a relatively new development that arose out of the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when the EU banned imports of piped Russian gas, and in the wake of the shut-down of the Nord Stream pipeline, connecting Russia and Germany. 

Germany is accused of using its neighbors to fill in a fiscal gap created by the need for Germany to fill its storage with more expensive, non-Russian gas.

That fee has tripled–at a minimum–since its implementation in October 2022, according to Reuters. 

According to some members of the EU, the bloc’s single market rules do not allow for trade tariffs among its members. 

“We remain in touch with the German authorities on this matter, including at political level…we do not speculate on the possible opening of infringement procedures,” a spokesperson for the Commission told Reuters, while an Economy Ministry spokesperson claimed the tariff was in the spirit of “European security” by enabling Germany to fill its storage. 

On Tuesday, the Austrian Vice President of the European Parliament, Othmar Karas, and Austrian Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler challenged Germany’s gas transit tariffs before the European Commission, alleging that the higher fees made it more difficult for some of the bloc’s eastern members to give up Russian gas. 

The end result, according to Austrian authorities, is that Austrians and other members of the bloc–mostly Eastern European–are footing the bill for the billions of cubic meters of gas Germany purchased when prices were high.

That gas must now be sold at a lower price, Euractiv reports.

Authored by Peter Sourek, Cecile Jilkova, and Michael Shellenberg via Public Substack,

The success of right-wing German political party AfD led European politicians to abuse their powers, perhaps illegally…

European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová (left) Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala (center); President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (right)

European politicians claimed late last month that Russia bribed European politicians to spread disinformation and interfere in the upcoming June elections. “Russian influence scandal rocks EU,” screamed a March 30 Politico headline.

Russia “is using dodgy outlets pretending to be media [and] using money to buy covert influence,” claimed European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová.

The BBC agreed: “Russian network that ‘paid European politicians’ busted, authorities claim.”

Heads of state hyped the alleged scandal.

“We uncovered a pro-Russian network,” claimed Petr Fiala, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, “that was developing an operation to spread Russian influence and undermine security across Europe.”

Poland’s intelligence agency said it had conducted searches in the Warsaw and Tychy regions and seized €48,500 (£41,500) and $36,000 (£28,500).

However, following an investigation by Public, the head of the Czech Intelligence Agency (BIS), Michal Koudelka on Monday admitted that his agency has no information about any bribery scheme.

“I cannot confirm anything,” he said.

It’s true that Russia’s media influence in Europe intensified considerably during the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time, a number of marginalized voices found space on the German broadcasts of the Kremlin’s propaganda television, Russia Today, which the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, promptly shut down in 2022.  

But von der Leyen has conceded that there is no proof of a Russian bribery network. 

“They have carried [Putin’s] propaganda into our societies,” she said. “Whether they have taken bribes for it or not.”

Public asked von der Leyen what evidence she has for her allegations. What was the misconduct or illegal activity if there were no bribes?

…

After two weeks of hysteria, the German media are now backing away from the claim that right-wing nationalist politicians with the Alternative for Democracy (AfD) party in Germany took money from the Russians.

The mainstream German media are now claiming, like von der Leyen, that it doesn’t matter if the politicians took any Russian money since they do what the Russians want.

…

All of this raises questions about the motivations behind Europe’s latest Russiagate disinformation campaign.

Why are European leaders so desperate to smear their political enemies as Russian puppets that they were willing to potentially break the law by weaponizing intelligence agencies and interfering in elections?

…

The European Russiagate hoax is but a two-week window of cheap spy tales per country. Desperate incumbents try to make the most of this one-in-campaign opportunity.

The Belgian Prime Minister is right (tongue in cheek): We must be vigilant! It is important that truly independent media do not let politicians abuse their power and run this bleak hoax any higher.

Public subscribers can read the full details of this shocking story here…

Friday will witness another Gaza-related showdown in a very divided United Nations Security Council, as council member Algeria has prepared a draft resolution for the body recognize a Palestinian state.

It would require nine votes and no vetoes on the part of the US, Britain, France, Russia or China in order to pass – which means it won’t happen, given the US as a close ally of Israel is expected to surely block it. The plan ultimately seeks to bestow on Palestine full UN membership status.

Looking ahead to the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday: “We do not see that doing a resolution in the Security Council will necessarily get us to a place where we can find … a two-state solution moving forward.”

The US position has long been that a Palestinian state must be born out direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, and not accomplished superficially within an external forum like the UN.

Israel has clearly rejected that it will allow for a Palestinian state so long as Hamas still exists, and PM Netanyahu has even linked the more secular-leaning Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to ‘terrorism’. He has also rejected a prior US call to allow the PA to take over and administer the Gaza Strip. The reality is that the current Gaza war makes the prospect of achieving a Palestinian state more distant than ever.

According to some background via Reuters:

The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the 193-member UN General Assembly in 2012. But an application to become a full UN member needs to be approved by the Security Council and then at least two-thirds of the General Assembly.

The UN Security Council has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognized borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in 1967.

The UK too has long said it will not recognize Palestine outside of a broader deal for a two-state solution that involves Israeli assent.

Spain was the most recent country to unilaterally recognize Palestine as a state, which was announced earlier this month. Those EU states to have previously done so include Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Ireland and Malta have also recently said they are on board and plan to do so.

Leaked Cables Show White House Opposes Palestinian Statehood https://t.co/tzVB9Y20f2 by @kenklippenstein, @DRBoguslaw https://t.co/tzVB9Y20f2

— The Intercept (@theintercept) April 17, 2024

The current war in Gaza and soaring civilian death toll among Palestinians as Israel continues its operation seeking to eradicate Hamas and free the hostages has given extra impetus to those officials in Europe who have wanted to see Palestinian recognition. 

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The Oakland Institute published a detailed report in February 2023 titled “War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land”, which exposed how foreign firms have clandestinely taken control of a significant share of Ukrainian farmland by exploiting a liberal law in collusion with local oligarchs. Their findings made waves around the world at the time but eventually receded from the public’s attention over half a year later once Western outlets like the USA Today misleadingly “fact-checked” it.

They took advantage of social media users conflating indirect ownership through stakes with direct control to discredit the institution’s report, after which it largely faded from the general discourse. Few could have expected that it would be none other than Polish President Andrzej Duda who just breathed new life into it during his interview with Lithuanian National Radio and Television. He was explaining Poland’s problem with Ukrainian agricultural imports when he dropped the following bombshell:

“I would like to draw particular attention to industrial agriculture, which is not really run by Ukrainians, it is run by big companies from Western Europe, from the USA. If we look today at the owners of most of the land, they are not Ukrainian companies. This is a paradoxical situation, and no wonder that farmers are defending themselves, because they have invested in their farms in Poland […] and cheap agricultural produce coming from Ukraine is dramatically destructive to them.”

Duda represents what’s widely considered to be one of the most pro-American and anti-Russian governments at any time in history so he can’t credibly be accused of “pushing Kremlin propaganda”.

He therefore wouldn’t have confirmed the dramatic claim of majority-foreign ownership of Ukraine’s industrial agriculture, albeit indirectly through stakes in national companies that exploit a liberal law in collusion with local oligarchs, if he didn’t have the facts provided to him by Polish experts to back it up.

This development should prompt a resurgence of interest in prior reports on this subject such as USAID’s about how “Private Sector on the Frontlines of Land Reform to Unlock Ukraine’s Investment Potential”. Thomas Fazi’s detailed report for UnHeard back in July 2023 about how “The capitalists are circling over Ukraine: The war is creating massive profit opportunities” is also insightful. Most relevant, however, is what Zelensky told the World Economic Forum in Davos in May 2022. In his words:

“We offer a special – historically significant – model of reconstruction. When each of the partner countries or partner cities or partner companies will have the opportunity – historical one – to take patronage over a particular region of Ukraine, city, community or industry. Britain, Denmark, the European Union and other leading international actors have already chosen a specific direction for patronage in reconstruction.”

One year later, he hosted BlackRock’s management in Kiev, during which time they discussed the creation of an investment and reconstruction fund. According to Zelensky, “Today is a historic moment because, since the very first days of independence, we have not had such huge investment cases in Ukraine. We are proud that we can initiate such a process…We will be able to offer interesting projects to invest in energy, security, agriculture, logistics, infrastructure, medicine, IT, and many other areas.”

Putting the pieces together, the Ukrainian leader made good on his May 2022 Davos proposal by offering companies “patronage” over Ukraine’s industrial agriculture, which was already in the process of unfolding prior to then but was greatly accelerated by last May’s meeting with BlackRock’s management. This took the tangible form of these indirectly foreign-controlled farms outcompeting Poland’s by far, thus leading to the Polish farmers’ protests across the country and the latest troubles in bilateral ties.

The sequence of events detailed thus far places into context mid-February’s report about the G7’s alleged plans to appoint an envoy to Ukraine, who’d obviously be tasked with implementing the Davos agenda if this comes to pass, particularly entrenching foreign control over Ukrainian farmland. It also suggests that Ukraine’s informal focus on ramping up agricultural exports to the EU isn’t just opportunistic, but partially driven by these foreign firms’ preference for speedy and reliable profits.

Ukraine had hitherto been an agricultural powerhouse in the Global South but ceded its market share to Russia on the false pretext that Moscow was blockading the Black Sea, which in turn prompted the EU to temporarily eliminate prior trade barriers for the official purpose of facilitating exports via its territory. In reality, Russia never blockaded the Black Sea, and almost all of the Ukrainian grain that entered the EU remained there instead of traveling through the bloc en route to Kiev’s traditional Global South markets.

It’s much quicker for Ukraine to sell its agricultural products in the neighboring EU than to wait however long it takes to export them to Africa, not to mention more reliable as well since it’s unimaginable that these developed economies would ever have the same possible payment problems as developing ones. These self-evident calculations work against Poland’s interests, ergo how much of a struggle it’ll be for that country to defend its domestic market from this influx considering the powerful forces at play.

It’s not just the Ukrainian agricultural lobby that wants tariff-free access for these products into the EU market, but also the lobbies of those foreign firms that indirectly control its industrial agriculture. The latter will likely fight tooth and nail to prevent any compromise being reached on Ukraine’s hoped-for EU membership whereby that former Soviet Republic’s agricultural sector would be excluded from any deal. Poland therefore has every reason to continue drawing global attention to these shadowy relationships.

It’s only by raising maximum awareness of the fact that “most of the land” within Ukraine’s industrial agriculture sector “is run by big companies from Western Europe, from the USA” that Poland stands any chance of the aforesaid compromise entering into force. That’ll make the country some very powerful enemies who could then meddle in Polish domestic affairs out of vengeance, but Duda’s latest interview suggests that he’s prepared to face their wrath in order to protect Poland’s objective national interests.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

One of the more difficult aspects of working in economic analysis is the problem of rampant disinformation that you have to dig through in order to get to the truth of any particular issue.  In this regard, economics is very similar to politics.  The propaganda is endless and debunking it sometimes feels like moving a mountain with a teaspoon.

Establishment media sources lie incessantly about our financial conditions, and when they are finally cornered and forced to admit how bad things are, they then lie about the causes.  That said, I find that these lies are usually designed to do one of two things:  Over-complicate the problem so that people give up thinking about it, or, distract from the problem so that people blame a scapegoat.

As for inflation, here is the bottom line:

Central Banks And The Fiat Flood

Rising prices are caused by two main drivers.  The first is money creation, or too many dollars chasing too few goods.  Central banks around the world have been FLOODING the system with fiat currency ever since the debt crisis of 2008 and the Federal Reserve within the US is the worst violator by far.  We are talking about tens of trillions (or more) in money creation, all supposedly as a means to stall or prevent a deflationary crash.

By the time the pandemic lockdowns were initiated and the Fed dropped $8 trillion+ onto the economy through stimulus measures like covid checks and PPP loans, the total US money supply was already at destructive levels.  The covid stimulus was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.  So, if you want to know who is directly to blame for your daily expenses rising 30% or more in the span of three years, the first set of criminals are the central bankers.

Governments and certain corporate partners are also to blame, but the central banks are the root mechanism for all inflationary movements.  It’s my belief (according to the evidence) that central banks have deliberately triggered a stagflationary crisis with the intent to forcefully replace cash based economies with a new digital and cashless global economy.  However, that’s a discussion for another article…

Shortages And Core Resources

The other primary cause of rising prices is shortages or disruptions in key resources including oil and energy.  Keep in mind that the war in Ukraine has led to the west being cut off from large portions of the resource rich Russian market.  And, the war in Gaza has led to groups in the Middle East like the Houthis denying a multitude of cargo ships and oil tankers from traversing the Red Sea.

By themselves, each one of these events seems like a small threat to the global supply chain, but when they pile up together the effects become detrimental.  For now, the biggest factor is rising energy prices because this is the key resource that allows all agriculture and manufacturing to function.  Every time oil prices rise you’re going to see prices in everything else rise.

This is the exact reason why the Biden Administration continued to dump the US Strategic Oil Reserves on the market for the past couple years.  This was their way of manipulating oil prices down in order to mitigate or hide the greater effects of inflation.  Now that they’re being pressured to refill those reserves and start buying (at a much higher price) global oil prices and US prices in particular are spiking again.

Media Disinformation And Crushing Food Costs

Food costs have risen by 30% or more depending on the product since the beginning of 2020, and even though CPI reports several months ago showed a “slowdown” in overall inflation, this does not mean prices are going to go down anytime soon.  In fact, they will only keep rising with each passing year.

CPI is a tool for measuring the AVERAGE price increases of over 80,000 products and services across a wide spectrum.  Many of these items are not necessities and so they dilute the actual inflation we are seeing in everyday expenditures.  If we were to look at an average of daily necessities like housing, energy, food, etc. then CPI would read far higher.

When the media touts a lower CPI print as a sign that the economy is improving, what they usually don’t mention is that the stat only represents how much higher prices are going to go.  A lower CPI does not mean costs on the shelf are going to go down.  Inflation is cumulative.

Meaning, that 30%+ increase in food that Americans have been dealing with – That’s not going away, it’s just not climbing as fast as it was.  And, as we’ve seen in the past couple months, inflation has the ability to return just as quickly to add even more gasoline to the fire.

Not long ago I was reading through an article from CBS that claimed they could explain why there’s been no respite in food prices lately.  In reality the entire piece was disinformation, blaming every possible scapegoat while ignoring the real causes.

Their main explanation is “Greedflation,” or the claim that companies are overcharging on food items.  In other words, blame businesses, don’t blame the Federal Reserve and don’t blame the government.  They’re “innocent” in all of this.

So far there’s no concrete evidence to support the Greedflation theory.  Every business has unique expenses, unique overhead, unique industrial costs, unique quality control and unique resource costs.  One cookie company’s bottom line will be different from another cookie company’s bottom line.  That said, there are universal costs that directly correlate to higher prices regardless of the company, and that includes energy, labor, and core commodities.

For those that track the markets it’s obvious that commodities are climbing.  The Industrial Commodity Index is far higher today than it was in 2020, along with oil and gas prices.  Every base resource that companies use to make products is increasing in value and thus it costs them more to manufacture.  Agriculture in particular is heavily affected by oil prices as well as prices in fertilizer and farming equipment, not to mention higher costs in labor.

From 2020 to 2023 the total costs paid by farmers to raise crops and care for livestock increased by more than $100 billion, or 28%, to an all-time high of $460 billion in 2023.  Funny how that number tracks very close to the 30% increase in overall food prices since 2020. 

The establishment media wants you to believe that high food prices are going to go away soon, and in order to trick you they need to convince you that the cause is something that can be “controlled” or “regulated”.

There is no indication that agricultural costs are going to stop increasing in the near future, so, that means each year food is going to cost you more than the year before. 

It might even cost you MUCH more than the year before.

In conclusion, this is why people need to start looking at food as an investment similar to the way they might look at their 401K or any retirement plan.  If you want to mitigate costs in the future in terms of food you will need to purchase foods with a long shelf life now.  If you think that inflation is a passing phase and that things will go back to the way they were before 2020 then you probably won’t take this concern seriously.  But, consider this:

Well before 2020 I was warning regularly about an impending stagflation crisis.  The food storage I bought in 2020 now costs at least 30%-50% more to buy in 2024.  Meanwhile, some of the top mainstream economists in the country were denying such a thing would ever happen.  When it did happen, they claimed it was “transitory.”  This was also proven false.  Now they claim food will drop after companies are forced through regulation to cut prices.

Whether government intervenes or the market continues to react to poor fiscal policies, it is quickly becoming a necessity to invest in food security as soon as possible.  Government enforced price controls have never actually proven effective in stopping inflation.  Once you remove all profit incentives many businesses will close up shop.  This causes the supply of goods to go down and prices then spike anyway due to shortages.

Do you want to bet your future on establishment economists being right for once, or, do you want to just store some food today in the knowledge that prices are only going exponentially higher?

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One survival food company, Prepper All-Naturals, has proactively dropped prices to allow Americans to stock up ahead of projected hikes in beef prices. Their 25-year shelf life steaks currently come at a 25% discount with promo code “invest25”.