Month: September 2021

Via SchiffGold.com,

While most American investors have faith that the Federal Reserve can and will successfully tighten monetary policy to fight inflation — or have simply bought into the “transitory” inflation narrative — Germans are loading up on gold as a hedge against growing inflationary pressures.

Through the first half of the year, gold coin and gold bar demand in Germany hit the highest level since 2009 – the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. First-half demand for bar and coins in Germany increased by 35% from the previous six months, compared with a 20% increase in the rest of the world, according to World Gold Council data.

Raphael Scherer serves as the managing director at Philoro Edelmetalle GmbH. He told Bloomberg that gold sales for the company are up 25% on what was already a strong 2020.

We have a long history of inflation fear in our DNA. Now the inflation risk is picking up. The outlook for precious metals is very positive.”

Given Germany’s experience with hyperinflation under the Weimar Republic, it comes as no surprise that Germans are wary of inflation.

Gold investment took off in the country in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and has been strong ever since. The global recession after the ’08 meltdown led to extremely loose monetary policy in Germany. The country has been in a negative interest rate environment for several years, and the Bundesbank has done billions in quantitative easing. Two and five-year government bonds have traded at negative yields since 2015.

The World Gold Council summarized why Germans tend to turn to gold when inflation looms.

German investors have an acute awareness of the wealth-eroding effects of financial instability. Hyper-inflation in the 1920s lingers on in the collective memory but, perhaps more importantly, German investors have seen fiat currencies come and go: in the past 100 years, Germany has had eight different currencies. It should come as no surprise that, when faced with such an unsettling economic backdrop, German investors turned to gold – which during our field research one investor described as an enduring currency – to protect their wealth.”

Gold investment picked up even more during the pandemic. Last year, Germans bought more coins and bars than any previous year.

In July, the German inflation rate jumped to the highest level in more than a decade. An article published by Bild was headlined  “Inflation is Eating Up Our Savings.” It included a graphic that showed how gasoline prices have surged, as well as steep price gains for other consumer goods.

The World Gold Council said that even if German inflation turns out to be transitory, “it seems unarguable that it is preying on investors’ minds.”

And that tends to go hand in hand with maintaining gold’s appeal. While 2020 set a very high bar that may prove challenging to repeat, German investment is likely to stay elevated for at least the remainder of this year.”

Aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchanges reached fresh decade highs on Wednesday after the Chinese government pledged more support to keep the economy from slumping, according to Bloomberg. 

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is expected to expand credit to small- and medium-sized businesses and allocate credit to other parts of the economy to prevent a downturn. The latest news of credit expansion to cushion the economy was released in a statement by the State Council. 

PBoC’s credit expansion scheme comes as no surprise that the country’s all-important credit impulse turned negative earlier this year. On a laggard basis, we suggested China was set to unleash a deflationary wave across the world…

According to the country’s economic surprise index, economic data in China has been missing to the downside all year and eventually went negative in April. 

This week, China’s official Services (non-manufacturing) PMI Index collapsed, an ominous sign the economy is slowing. 

Many are perplexed why Beijing is taking so long to address the sharp slowdown in its economy. But while the latest China credit – and now PMI – data is flashing a bright red alarm light that the global reflationary wave may be over or about to reverse. However, Beijing has come to the rescue with new pledges to aid their ailing economy. 

Of course, this means that stimulus-fueled demand will boost commodity prices and will be a boon for industrial metals – however temporary and misallocated that may eventually become.

Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets, told clients the latest “credit support would boost near term financial market sentiment towards commodity exposure in China. But we expect the impact on underlying physical demand to be more of an H1 2022 story.” 

Aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange rose at 1.7% to $2,734.50 per ton, the highest level in more than a decade. Besides government support for the floundering economy, investors have been piling into the metal because of supply woes that may develop as China reduces power to smelters to cut carbon emissions. 

The Bloomberg Industrial Metals Index has also reached decade highs. 

China unleashing more credit, stoking what could be another round of commodity inflation, may further dent the Federal Reserve’s narrative that inflation is “transitory.” 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Germany’s interior minister has warned that putting a number on the amount of Afghan refugees Europe should accept will incentivize more waves of migrants to attempt to reach the continent.

Following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, untold numbers of economic migrants are trying to blend in with genuine refugees in an effort to reach the welfare havens of Europe.

The UK even announced that it wouldn’t be checking identity documents of Afghans entering the country despite the glaring security risk that such a policy entails.

While British authorities have pledged to settle at least 20,000 “refugees,” despite record numbers of migrants already arriving illegally on boats, EU countries have been more careful in avoiding putting a figure on how many they will take in.

Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, warns that signaling borders are open once again will act as an incentive for large numbers of migrants to flood into Europe.

“I don’t think it’s wise if we talk about numbers here, because numbers obviously trigger a pull effect and we don’t want that,” he said.

The previous refugee crisis, which saw over a million migrants from North Africa and the Middle East flood into Europe, led directly to huge spikes in violent crime, sexual assaults and numerous mass casualty terror attacks carried out by jihadists who exploited the refugee wave to enter European countries.

Given the debacle that happened in 2015, the prospect of Germany accepting a significant number of refugees is unlikely to be welcomed by conservative voters ahead of a national election on September 26.

Angela Merkel has said that Germany will help resettle between 10,000 and 40,000 Afghans who have family ties to Germany or worked with German military or aid organizations.

When humanitarian development worker Sybille Schnehage asked Afghan migrants why they didn’t go to nearer Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, most of them responded by saying, “No – Germany is better.”

As we previously highlighted, a top diplomat in Kabul warned that “not even tanks” can stop a potentially large wave of Afghan refugees heading to the continent.

A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies also cautioned that the 2021 Afghan refugee crisis could make the 2015 refugee crisis look like a “geopolitical walk in the park” in comparison.

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Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

One of the fundamental problems of central planning of any kind is what we systemic thinkers call the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences.’ It’s not really a law but it should be.

You know you’re dealing with an ‘unintended consequence’ of a policy when the politicians, bankers, regulators and their apologists in the media say something like, “well, you know, no one could have foreseen {fill in the blank}.”

Some of those blanks are:

• The Housing Bubble of 2005-07 which caused the financial crisis of 2008.

• The election of Donald Trump after decades of offering false choices to the American Electorate.

• Most recently the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban and the U.S.’s ignominious retreat.

These are all events, and there are dozens more in your everyday life if you just begin looking for them, which nobody in charge would ever admit to having considered possible when they embarked on a particular policy but in hindsight were inevitable.

Policies of collective action under the rubric of the State, defined as that entity with the power to point guns at people to enforce their edicts, always result in these unintended consequences. But it’s not because those outcomes weren’t predictable but rather because they weren’t important to the people who implemented them in the first place.

They weighed the benefits as absolute and ignored the costs as trivial things they could, like a bad movie producer, fix in post-production.

So, with that in mind and looking at the saturation of fear porn and relentless march towards a locked-down, totally-controlled and regimented society as a result of COVID-9/11, I give you this note the other day from TASS, the Russian State’s news service.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Public’s attitude to globalization underwent shift during pandemic

People’s attitude to free trade and globalization has changed a lot since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Support for barrier-free trade has considerably declined. Russia is one of the global leaders in terms of people’s negative view of globalization, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes, citing a poll conducted by the Ipsos company and the World Economic Forum. Only 48% of those surveyed in 25 countries agree that globalization is good for their countries. In Russia, one in three people stated that they reject the notion that globalization facilitates an effective economic policy.

Experts are not surprised by the declining interest in globalization. “People in large economic powers can see their daily expenses increase. Consumer prices used to be more stable before globalization began and free-trade zones were created,” economist Andrei Loboda said, pointing out that the change of sentiment had been sparked by rising inflation affecting economies worldwide.

Globalization has reached its limits and stopped boosting economic growth, BCS Chief Investment Strategist Maxim Shein pointed out. “The population’s income is falling, hence the decline in support [for globalization idea],” he said.
“A high level of consumption, easy access to any goods at relatively low prices, good wages, high pensions and access for businesses to foreign markets – all this used to be associated with globalization. However, in the late 20th and early 21st century, the global economy started to face crises, rising unemployment, a decline in the middle class and increasing income inequality. All these issues are also directly related to globalization,” Associate Professor with Department of Enterprise and Logistics at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics Igor Stroganov emphasized. Besides, large transnational companies and retail chains enter foreign markets, destroying small and medium-sized businesses and local agriculture. “In addition, labor migration increases competition on the labor market. People in many countries feel that way,” the economist stressed.

While we are bombarded daily by new polls suggesting that a majority of Americans love their mask or believe their neighbors should be held down and forcibly injected with an experimental gene therapy, the Russians have looked upon the face of the New Normal and rejected it.

This is the unintended consequence of pushing for Globalism, people see it for what it is and reject it.

The big question is why and to answer that I want to discuss what’s not discussed in the TASS note.

The Toxic Spread Trade

What’s not covered here is the role that central banking and the Cantillion Effect have on prices. The Cantillion Effect is where price rises from monetary inflation have a delayed effect as the new money spreads out through the society. Those that receive the money first get to spend that money at today’s prices which, over time, raises everyone else’s bid for the good or service that money then procures.

In reality, government is only in control of that first spend — from its coffers to the supplier. After that they money flow is chaotic based on the marginal utility needs of the person who receives it. But, what you can be assured of is no matter what, those closest to the source of the money have a massive advantage over those at the economic fringes.

This is why I find all the hand-wringing modern Progressives do over government spending so thoroughly repulsive. They argue for the very thing to help ‘poor people’ which impoverished them in the first place.

Their argument is instead of giving the money to the banks or the corporations but directly to the people then that would equalize the previous theft, a kind of reparations for past monetary sins. Of course, this is patent nonsense. Giving people money rather than just stop stealing from them is not the way back to a moral and sustainable economy.

But it is their path to more permanent power. Ah Ha!

So, the effect of central banks around the world printing money is to create a constant Cantillion effect at the national level. In the case of the U.S., The Fed gives the U.S. government and its member banks preferred access to capital at the lowest costs to borrow, while you get access at the highest cost, i.e. higher interest rates.

This subsidizes overseas investment while overstating the strength of the U.S. dollar, because those dollars can be spent to more effectively procure overseas labor and property than buying those same things here.

This exports the monetary inflation overseas while keeping a lid on domestic prices at home. It’s why it’s also so disingenuous of economic commentators to use domestic CPI as a measure of inflation to invalidate the Quantity Theory of Money, which I’ve written about before. If the money goes overseas, something’s price is getting inflated, just not that thing we’re measuring.

Using the CPI to measure inflation is like trying to measure a board with a stopwatch. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

As the Fed pushes and pulls the money supply through ‘monetary policy’ over time it greatly exaggerates the natural boom and bust cycle of the economy.

Now let’s take this one step further and think on the arguments made by Jeff Snider at Alhambra Partners who argues that with the creation of the offshore Eurodollar shadow banking system, the Fed itself isn’t even in control of its own monetary policy, those markets are.

This is another example of unintended consequences of major policy changes, turning over the role of new money creation to a central bank, versus basing it on a hard reserve asset like gold. It spawns a rough beast the central bank can’t control anymore than the government can control how you spend the money it pays you.

So, when those titanic forces want to enter into new markets through cheap money they demand it from the Fed and eventually the Fed accommodates them lest it get blamed for causing a global depression… sound familiar?

I’m simplifying Jeff’s arguments here, but the fundamental point he makes is valid.

At the same time it’s also irrelevant to the current argument because it doesn’t matter if the Fed or the Eurodollar depositors control the rate of new money creation. The Cantillion Effect of how that new money spreads globalism is the same, only the points of origin are different.

The Imperial Marsh

Large scale producers take advantage of the situation by investing overseas during the busts and repatriating their capital during the booms. In effect, they are reloading and waiting for the next Fed-induced cycle to commence. As those closest to the Fed, if not telling the Fed what to do, then they will also be best prepared when the policy shifts to take advantage of it.

This dynamic has played out at an accelerating pace during the 21st century as these boom/bust cycles become more and more erratic and the ‘monetary policy’ employed to support them more and more reckless.

In the end, it is the countries that begin rejecting this scheme by de-dollarizing that are the ones who insulate themselves from the effects of this capital in-and-out flow.  That’s why I’ve been bullish on Russia since 2013, ignoring people calling it a ‘value trap’ early on because of low equity market multiples.

Putin rejected globalism as an economic weapon and, in effect, turned globalism on itself by doing this. At the same time, he maneuvered Russia to control the marginal barrel of oil produced in the world.  This gave Russia the unique position of inserting the ruble into global trade while improving its regional relevance as the rebirth of central Asia can now commence with the collapse of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and the final nail in the coffin of the remnants of the British Empire.

From here the ruble’s fortunes look bright as long as the Bank of Russia doesn’t revert to its old ways.

Rejecting globalism is a real problem now for the Great Reset as individual countries can now move to regain control over transnationals who were told they would be allowed to run the world. Martin Armstrong has banged his shoe on the table about Big Tech getting the roles of the money-center banks for nearly two years.

Today I see the signs of the titanic struggle between the central banks and the shadow banking system complicating the plans of The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset everywhere as Big Tech makes good on its promises assist in the COVID-9/11 operation to destroy and remake the world.

In recent months, the clear policy from Premier Xi Jinping is for China to move rapidly to lockdown its domestic economy, cut down its tallest poppies, and send foreign capital packing. It never gave the Western banks the access they wanted. It was always globalism on China’s terms, not the West’s.

Now that Xi is making his moves, Davos is making theirs, attempting to blame them for COVID-9/11 and turn Americans into raving anti-China hawks willing to salve a bruised national ego by blowing shit up in China’s backyard.

Let’s hope this is the one aspect of the Great Reset that fails to materialize completely.

Rejecting western Globalists was Russia’s sin as well. Putin’s biggest challenge in his 20+ years in power has been to gain control over his central bank and the Russian financial system such that their inherent corruption worked for Russia and not for Davos. Russia, out of necessity, is much farther along in its quest to reverse/arrest globalism than China is.  

You can clearly see the hand of Davos at the legislative level trying to keep forcing this to work. The EU still enters trade negotiations demanding a country give it veto power over its “partner’s” local governments in bilateral trade…. and notice how many of these deals they’ve signed in the past couple of years.

Zero.

Globo-Homo-Economicus

COVID-9/11 is globalism’s last stand. It’s goal is explicitly to burn the world down to ‘build back better.’ I’m sure Davos asked both Xi and Putin many times to join the big club for the big win and they both said, “No.” This is where culture and history asserts itself.

Seriously, do these people have no memory of how Europe and the U.K. have treated China and Russia?

So, the WEF is now accelerating its scorched earth strategy. It’s clearly using what leverage it has in U.S. institutions to expend the last of the U.S.’s political capital with diplomatic and geopolitical ‘gaffes’ that even an amateur wouldn’t make. When you see government policy an order of magnitude more incompetent than can be explained by internal squabbling and petty corruption, you are dealing with something willful.

This is always what I’ve envisioned the ‘failure’ of the Great Reset to look like whenever I’ve invoked that idea.  They’ve taken their shot at it.  Where they have the most control and favorable laws/infrastructure — i.e. the English Commonwealth, France, Italy, Germany, Spain — they are ramping up the tyranny.

In the U.S. they are moving rapidly to liquidate as much of the U.S. as possible after having already reversed most of the good things done under Trump.  Pelosi first moved back the deadline on the Budget/Infrastructure/Debt Ceiling until October. Now she’s really twisting arms behind the scenes while Afghanistan takes all the attention trying to shoehorn them all through in the confusion.

If she can’t get that done then the House and Senate could get quickly bogged down in Afghanistan hearings, if not impeachment/25th Amendment talks. This is part of the reason why I think Powell was surprisingly dovish the other day at Jackson Hole. He’s got to stay on D.C.’s good side to get re-confirmed. He can afford, right now, to let the pressure off the global financial system until another funding crisis emerges in the domestic money markets.

So, the USDX falls a little, the euro backs away from oblivion and we look ahead at the German elections and the next FOMC meeting.

None of this is good news for globalists and globalism since they need that nearly $5 trillion to complete their takeover of the U.S. financial and political system.  You don’t have to be a dog to smell the rising fear.  It’s palpable now.

Pelosi needs these bills passed or her leadership of the Dems will collapse. The Squad is barking about getting rid of Powell while Pelosi begins to realize the whole administration is collapsing faster than Biden’s cognitive function.

The globalists need perpetual war in ‘shitholes’ around the world to keep laundering the easy Fed Funny Bucks to keep the entire Ponzi Scheme alive. With Afghanistan now off the table, where are we sending the military next to export inflation democracy?

But Powell, like the rest of them, know that globalism is failing and pushing any further for it will only accelerate the creation of what Vaclav Havel called “parallel systems.” Systems that exist outside of their control. So, I think he’s treading carefully here with monetary policy on purpose.

It’s Davos that is getting desperate. The more they grasp for total control the easier it becomes to see the Law of Unintended Consequences rearing its head as new solutions to age-old problems proliferate.

Don’t believe me?

The best and brightest in the U.S. stopped being engineers and scientists two generations ago when we stopped ‘building things.’ They became financiers and lawyers. This was an unintended consequence of the money flowing from D.C. and The Fed to those jobs to feed the growing regulatory state. Their kids learned to code because that’s where the growth was as the cheap money was funneled to subsidize the creation of today’s Big Data and AI systems they believe they will use to control the flow of everything the world over.

Today, however, those best and brightest have left Google and Facebook and are working in crypto to solve the very problem which started all this pernicious globalism in the first place. I’m not the only one seeing it. It’s clear where the innovation is and what these people’s motivations are — to reverse the Cantillion effect of privilege granted to those close to the King and let capital flow to where the people need it not where the tyrants do.

The Russians may be leading the way, if the polls are correct. Reject empire and ‘greatness,’ they are telling us. Our leadership is trying to shame us over Afghanistan. Don’t let them. Be contrite but internalize the lesson of humility and get back to work rebuilding what’s been lost. Opportunities for new systems abound.

Because the final consequence of Cantillion’s observations about prices is that eventually you run out of ways to squeeze people through fear and inflation. When that happens they squeeze back. 

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As Beijing pressures domestic companies to launch their IPOs on domestic exchanges instead of New York or Hong Kong, Beijing announced Thursday that it’s preparing to open a new stock exchange in Beijing that will host shares of “innovation-focused” small and medium-sized industries.

The new exchange will join China’s other exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzen. Reuters first reported that a new exchange was being discussed as a strategy to strengthen China’s capital markets, as financial authorities are being forced to rein in debt levels and shift their focus to equity financing instead.

President Xi announced the new exchange during a video address at the China International Fair for Trade in Services on Thursday. In other comments he pledged that China would “create more possibilities for cooperation by scaling up support for the growth of the services sector in Belt and Road countries.”

He plans to accomplish this “by deepening the reform of the New Third Board and setting up the Beijing stock exchange as the primary platform serving innovation-oriented SMEs.'”

Following Xi’s statement, China’s securities regulator issued a statement affirming that a stock exchange in Beijing would help deepen financial supply-side structural reforms and improve capital market systems. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said its leadership was “excited” at the prospect, would study the president’s proposal in depth and resolutely implement it. “Small and medium-sized enterprises can do great things,” the CSRC said.

The announcement comes at a time when the future of Chinese firms listing in the US is in doubt. The SEC has paused all applications from Chinese firms until they agree to meet heightened American auditing standards which Beijing has adamantly opposed, per the FT.

The launch of the new exchange comes as President Xi’s government has rolled out a series of regulatory and policy reforms in recent weeks. A crackdown that initially targeted fintech lending and antitrust and personal data abuses has expanded to embroil companies across the economy, from education and gaming to ride-hailing and food deliveries. During his speech, Xi also focused on his plans to benefit the “common prosperity”, which benefited from a $15 billion pledge from Alibaba. This is the refocus on the “redistribution of wealth” that President Xi is rolling out (supposedly) to boost the numbers of China’s middle class.

They are Communists, after all.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

There is a fundamental question that needs to be asked when examining the vaccine passport issue, and what I find is that almost no one in the mainstream is tackling it directly. The question is this:

Is it legally and morally acceptable to constrict the rights and economic access of people in order to force them to submit to an experimental “vaccine”, or any other medical procedure for that matter?

Furthermore, who gets to decide what medical procedures are acceptable to enforce? Who gets to be the all powerful and benevolent overseer of every human being’s health path. I ask this because I don’t think many people realize the future repercussions of allowing governments or corporations (the same thing these days) to dictate covid vaccinations. It doesn’t stop there; in fact, we have no idea where this stops once the Pandora’s box is opened.

For example, the primary argument of the covid cult and the establishment in favor of vaccine passports is the “social contract” fantasy. They claim that because we “live in a society”, everything we do affects everyone else in some way, and because we are all interconnected in our “collective” we are thus beholden to the collective. In other words, the collective has the “right” to micro-manage the life of the individual because if the individual is allowed to make his/her own decisions they might potentially cause harm to the whole group.

In case you are not familiar with this philosophy it is an extension of socialism and cultural Marxism, and it stands at the very core of vaccine passport propaganda. I have actually had public debates with pro-socialist people in the past who have tried to defend the merits of socialism and every single time the argument comes down to one singular disconnect – I say that if a group of people want to go off and start their own little socialist community they have every right to…as long as it is VOLUNTARY. Then if it fails and collapses it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t affect me or anyone else who did not want to participate.

The problem is that these Socialists/communists/Marxists/collectivists simply do not grasp the notion of voluntarism. They believe that people need to be forced into doing the right thing or helping others, and they are the people that get to decide what the right thing is and who gets the help. They are the people that get to decide what freedoms are acceptable and what freedoms are inconvenient to their agenda. When they say “We live in a society…”, what they really mean is “You live in OUR society, and WE will determine what is best for you.”

When I argue that a socialist community should be voluntary, they inevitably argue that people will not commit to such a system voluntarily so they must be forced to do what is best for the “greater good”.

In terms of vaccine passports, the collectivist social contract is a key element. They claim that being unvaxxed is not a personal freedom because the unvaxxed are a risk to the lives of everyone else. The social contract is therefore violated because by making a personal life choice you are endangering the rights of others.

It’s interesting though how the covid cult is made up of people that do not apply the same logic to other health issues like abortion. I mean, there is zero substantiated evidence to support the claim that unvaccinated people are any more of a threat to the lives of others than vaccinated people are, and we will get into that in just a moment. But, when we talk about an abortion, we are talking about a personal medical decision that leads to the direct and observable death of another innocent human being with his/her own rights. Abortions end the lives of over 800,000 unborn people per year in the US, far more than covid supposedly does.

“My body my choice” apparently only applies to killing babies, but not to people who do not want to become guinea pigs for a mRNA cocktail with no long term testing to prove its safety.

Imagine though if we reversed the scenario and applied the broad social contract argument to something like children and population? A collectivist/leftist member of the global warming cult could also argue that abortion should be legally mandated, because having a child or “too many children” increases carbon emissions and this puts society “at risk” even further (again, with no proof to support the claim). By allowing the social contract narrative to go unchecked, we open the door to horrific new oppressive measures and a complete erasure of our autonomy.

I think it’s safe to say that the “social contract” ideology is highly selective and hypocritical. The covid cult does not care about saving lives, they only care about their ideological narrative and the power to make people submit to it. But let’s dig even further into the reasoning behind the social contract claim. Who is actually dying because of unvaccinated individuals, which according to state vax statistics make up around 50% of the US population?

The average Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid is a mere 0.26% according to dozens of studies and the government’s own numbers. Meaning, unvaxxed people are not even a remote threat to 99.7% of the population. Around 40% of all covid deaths are made up of people in nursing homes with preexisting conditions, which means that we do not know if they actually died of covid or due to the health problems they were already suffering from. The pool of people who might be affected by the unvaxxed grows smaller and smaller…

And what about the ridiculous contradiction that arises when we talk about the mandate narrative verses the passport narrative? If masks and vaccines actually work, then how is an unvaxxed or unmasked person a threat to a vaxxed person? If the vaccines and masks don’t work, then why use them at all, and why demand forced vaccinations through passport measures?

Mainstream propaganda asserts that the unvaxxed will somehow become petri dishes for new mutations that will harm vaccinated people. There is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, there is more evidence that suggests it is vaccinated people that will trigger mutations and variants. The media says that this is not cause for any concern, but if it’s not then neither should we be concerned about mutations that gestate in the unvaxxed population, if there are any.

The fact of the matter is that more and more scientific evidence is proving that the experimental vaccines are NOT effective and that the unvaxxed are actually safer from covid regardless of the variant or mutation.

The true infection numbers within the US are impossible to know because up to 59% of people that catch covid and spread it are asymptomatic according to the CDC. They never know that they have it so they are unlikely to test for it. That said, it is clear that many millions of Americans have dealt with the virus and now have a natural immunity to it (I happen to be one of them). Establishment elitists like Anthony Fauci refuse to acknowledge natural immunity as a factor, and they say that ONLY people who are vaccinated are qualified to receive a passport. Why?

Multiple studies are being released from countries with high vaccination rates like Israel that completely contradict Fauci’s narrative on natural immunity. Israel has a vax rate of around 63% according to government stats, but scientific evidence they have released shows that vaccinated people are 13-27 times more likely to contract covid and 8 times more likely to be hospitalized when compared with people who have natural immunity. It almost appears as if the mRNA vaccines make people MORE susceptible to the virus rather than less susceptible.

Recent data released from the state of Massachusetts supports this concern. In the month of July, MA reported at least 5100 covid infections, all people who were fully vaccinated. Over 80 of them died, which is a much higher death rate than among the unvaccinated. In my county of 20,000 people, which has a low vaccination rate and no mask mandates, there were only 17 total covid deaths in the first year year of the pandemic.

This begs the question: Why take the mRNA cocktail at all? What is there to gain? Well, there is nothing to gain in terms of health safety. Even if you happen to be part of the 0.26% of people at risk from covid, you are better off in the long run taking your chances with natural immunity than getting the jab.

The answer to the question is not about health, but about denial of access. Government’s and their corporate partners are trying to make it so you MUST take the vaccine in order to participate in normal social activities, or even to keep a job. Not only that, but the process goes on forever because every year there will be new variants and new booster shots. The only reason to take the vaccine is to keep at least a handful of your freedoms and to avoid poverty and starvation.

Here is where we must go back to the original query presented at the beginning of this article:

Is it legally and morally acceptable to constrict the rights and economic access of people in order to force them to submit to an experimental “vaccine”?

The covid cult will say that private business rights trump individual rights so companies should be allowed to discriminate against employees based on their vaccination status. But then again, what we are facing in most cases are NOT private businesses but conglomerates that are funded by government bailouts and that are colluding directing with governments to enforce the passport agenda. So I would have to say no, these businesses do not have a legal right to feed on public tax dollars and then claim they are private entities that have the freedom to invade the medical privacy of employees and customers.

And since when do collectivists actually care about private business rights, anyway? More hypocrisy…

If we are talking about small and medium business with no government stimulus then the issue gets more tricky. In many states and other countries the businesses are only enforcing passports because if they don’t they will be punished by the government. In this case the private business rights argument goes out the window. The covid cult respects business independence only when it suits them.

Frankly, it is small businesses that are being hurt the most by the covid mandates and the extra costs involved just in enforcing the passports in their own establishments is going to bury them. Any small business owner that voluntarily supports the passport rules must have a financial death wish.

In terms of government, the covid cult will claim that there are Supreme Court precedents for legal enforcement of vaccinations. Honestly, I don’t care, and neither do millions of other Americans. A bunch of high priests in black robes do not get to dictate my independent health decisions; I make those decisions and there’s nothing that they can do about it. This is where we have to come to terms with the morals and principles involved – The lives of others are in no way affected by my decision to refuse to comply with vaccine passports. And just because a group of people have irrational fears about the threat of covid does not mean people with more discernment about the facts should be required to make them “feel better” or feel safer.

The bottom line is this: Our freedoms are more important than your paranoid fears, and we will not comply. We do not subscribe to your false social contract, and you are in no position to dictate the terms of our “society”. Don’t like it? You are more than welcome to leave the country and start a vaccinated Utopia somewhere else. We’ll see how that works out for you in the long run.

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As America’s hospital beds have again filled with sick COVID  patients, nurses and other healthcare workers have been quitting at the fastest rate since the early days of the pandemic, when nurses in some NYC hospitals were using garbage bags instead of PPE. Across the Internet, on subreddits and in Facebook groups, nurses have gathered to commiserate.

But it’s not just remote areas of Arkansas and Mississippi that are having problems. Local media in California have reported that across the Golden State, low staffing levels have reached a “crisis point”.

According to a story published by a newspaper in Bakersfield, in the past month, no fewer than four emergency room nurses have quit at one Eureka hospital.

And aside from the burnout and the pressure and the stress, nurses have also cited California’s mandatory vaccination rule as one reason they’re thinking about leaving the state. Traveling nurses have been turning down assignments in the Golden State at record rates  because they don’t want to get vaccinated – and the mandate hasn’t even taken effect yet.

Cole of Scripps Health said the state’s testing requirement, imposed last week, already has discouraged some out-of-state, traveling nurses from taking temporary jobs at California hospitals.

“If they don’t want to get vaccinated, they are turning down California assignments,” he said.

Here’s more according to Bakersfield.com:

Hospitals are struggling to comply with the state’s nurse staffing requirements as pandemic-induced burnout has exacerbated an already chronic nursing shortage nationwide.

But burnout isn’t the only thing compounding California’s nursing shortage: The state’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is already causing headaches for understaffed hospitals before it is even implemented. Some traveling nurses – who are in high demand nationwide – are turning down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated.

 With more people coming in for routine care that can’t be delayed any longer, hospitals are nearing a “crisis point” as the staffing shortages leave them in danger of not meeting the state’s legal minimum staffing requirements.

Hospitals say they are reaching a crisis point, straining under the dual forces of more people seeking routine care and surging COVID-19 hospitalizations driven by the Delta variant.

“Oftentimes at hospitals there are long waits and long delays,” said Dr. Tom Sugarman, an emergency physician in the East Bay and senior director of government affairs at Vituity, a physicians’ group. “There’s not enough staff to keep beds open, and patients can languish waiting.”

Nursing shortages were common in California even before the pandemic. But now resources are nearing “the breaking point”. Every time case numbers seem like they’re finally about to subside, a new wave of cases rises up.

Emotional and physical exhaustion is the primary reason nurses are fleeing the bedside, experts say. It has been a long and brutal 18 months.

“We thought the pandemic would be over soon and could take time later to deal with our emotions,” said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, president of National Nurses United, the largest nursing union in the country, which has more than 100,000 members in its California association. “Then the second surge hit, and the third and now it’s the fourth.”

Mary Lynn Briggs, an ICU nurse in Bakersfield, said of the dozens of COVID-19 patients she has treated since the pandemic began, only three have survived.

“Some days coming home from the hospital I yell at God, I yell at myself, I yell at COVID and cry. And that’s all before I pull into my driveway,” Briggs said.

A surprising number of nurses are wary of the vaccines, so Gov. Newsom’s requirement that nurses and hospital staff must get vaccinated could end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Hospital administrators worry that the state’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, which goes into effect Sept. 30, could drive some of their workers out. Already, some report resistance among employees.

“One hospital told us they had 474 unvaccinated employees. They did a big education and incentive push. Only 12 people signed up,” said Richardson, the hospital association’s attorney.

Administrators are particularly concerned about low vaccination rates among support staff like janitors and food service workers. However, some nurses also are wary of the COVID-19 vaccine. Some nurses with large social media followings have participated in protests in Southern California, arguing that the mandates violate their personal freedom.

With staffing levels low across the US, traveling nurses working in temporary roles have been critical to help shore up hospital staff. But they’re also allowing nurses who don’t want to comply with vaccine mandates to simply pick up and leave. One expert said traveling nurses in Texas and Florida might be coming from California.

Nationwide more than 52,000 temporary health care jobs are posted, and Aya is only able to fill about 3,000 per week, she said.
“In the 16 years I’ve been in this space, I have never seen this high a need,” Morris said.

That need is creating intense competition for a limited pool of nurses nationwide.

“Nurses are getting paid premiums to work in Texas and Florida where it’s surging right now,” Sugarman said. “Those nurses have to come from somewhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some are coming from California.”

In short: vaccine mandates for health-care workers (most of whom have already been infected with COVID) are probably doing more harm than good as far as creating a safe and stable health-care system in the Golden State. Maybe Gov. Newsom (or his successor) should give it a rethink?

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The government of South Australia is running a trial for a system that could eventually force citizens to take a photo of themselves via a government app to report their location on demand within 15 minutes of authorities requesting it, or face a police investigation.

Yes, really.

The revelation was highlighted in an Atlantic piece by Conor Friedersdorf which questions whether Australia can still call itself a liberal democracy in light of the crippling restrictions it has placed on its own population.

With no end in sight for the lifting of the country’s brutal lockdown, Aussies could face even more invasive state intrusion into their private lives under the justification of stopping the spread of the virus.

The South Australian government is preparing to roll out an app that “will contact people at random asking them to provide proof of their location within 15 minutes,” according to reports.

If people refuse to report their location or are unable to do so, police are then dispatched to hunt them down.

“We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” said Premier Steven Marshall.

This is barely much different from literally fitting people with electronic ankle bracelets that track their every movement like prisoners under home arrest, a policy that was actually considered by Australian authorities earlier this year.

No matter your views of COVID, what’s happening in Australia is alarming, extreme and dangerous. https://t.co/Ep7fOqiHUJ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 2, 2021

“No matter your views of COVID, what’s happening in Australia is alarming, extreme and dangerous,” remarked journalist Glenn Greenwald.

As we have exhaustively highlighted, Australia has enforced one of the most draconian lockdowns in the world in an effort to pursue a disastrous ‘zero COVID’ strategy.

Last month, the Premier of Victoria asserted that authorities “won’t hesitate” to go “door-to-door” to carry out mandatory COVID tests on Australians.

Aussies were also ordered not to talk to each other, even while wearing masks, while people who merely post anti-lockdown information online could also face fines of up to $11,000 dollars under an absurdly authoritarian new law.

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Imagine you are a central bank which has done QE for 30 years, kept rates negative for almost a decade, purchased more than 100% of the country’s GDP in bonds, and is actively propping up the stock market by buying billions in ETFs and REITs, and still your economy remains stagnant? Well, if you are Kuroda you stay the course and hope for a miracle, but if you are Goushi Kataoka, the BOJ governor who is rapidly emerging as Turbo-Kuroda and perhaps angling to be the next head of the Japanese central bank, the answer is simple: you do even moar.

Speaking in a briefing Kataoka, who joined the BOJ in 2017, said on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic may weigh on the economy – which had never managed to stabilize ever since Kuroda unleashed monetary hell in 2012 – longer than initially expected, warning of heightened risks to the central bank’s forecast of a moderate, export-driven recovery. Kataoka also stressed the BOJ’s readiness to ramp up stimulus if needed, reinforcing market expectations Japan would lag other countries in exiting crisis-mode policies.

“Given recent domestic and global economic developments, the need for bolder steps is heightening,” Kataoka said.

In a speech, Kataoka said Japan’s economic outlook was bound with uncertainty with consumption seen remaining in a “severe state” due to state of emergency curbs to combat the pandemic. “Risks to consumption are heightening,” with a spike in Delta variant cases forcing Japan to maintain curbs on economic activity, he said. “There’s a good chance the impact of the pandemic may last longer than expected.”

Underscoring the likelihood the Japan may soon see even more monetary easing, Fumio Kishida – who is challenging Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to become ruling party chief – said Japan must “not fall behind” other countries in supporting their economies with expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.

An advocate of aggressive monetary easing, Kataoka has been a consistent, sole dissenter to the BOJ’s decision to keep its interest rate targets unchanged, saying the bank needs to improve its credibility by showing a stronger commitment to achieving its 2% inflation target, i.e., even moar QE, ETF buying, even more negative rates, etc.

“It’s desirable to cut negative interest rates further and lower long-term rates through bond buying,” Kataoka told reporters Thursday, adding that the bank will be watching climate change issues, while making efforts to hit its price goal. As a reminder, “climate change” in addition to “covid” have become the two scapegoats by central bankers giving them a green light to do whatever they want to boost their asset buying in the name of higher inflation, even when inflation is already soaring.

“Personally, I believe the BOJ must strengthen monetary easing” as inflation will remain distant from the bank’s 2% target for years even if the economy were to recover, he said.

His calls for bolder monetary easing steps have not gained support from the rest of the board at the BOJ’s policy meetings.

Under a policy dubbed yield curve control, the BOJ guides short-term interest rates at -0.1% and 10-year bond yields around 0% through massive asset purchases.

While inflation remains well below its 2% target, the rising cost of prolonged easing has forced the BOJ to steadily slow bond buying and focus on measures to mitigate the hit to bank profits from years of ultra-low interest rates.