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A commenter on my blog was questioning my antisemitism and in support of Israel sent me a link to an article from the Gatestone Institute wherein they claimed Qatar was funding US Universities.  Therefore, the barbarian Muslims were Bad and Israel Good. The point was to prove to me that Muslims are interfering in our colleges which should be a violation.  The President of Gatestone, Nina Rosenwald, is Jewish and a self-described, ‘ardent Zionist’.  She was on the Board of Directors for AIPAC and the Jewish Institute for National Security in America (JINSA).

And there my research did backflips.

JINSA was founded in 1976, 3 years after the Yom Kippur War in Israel.  Its original stated purpose was to make sure that America could produce adequate military supplies for Israel.   In the 1980’s JINSA widened its focus to “general U.S. defense and foreign policy, with missions and meetings with national leaders and officials in:    Ethiopia, Belgium, South Korea, India, Bulgaria, Italy, China, Hungary, UK, Germany, Costa Rica, Spain, Eritrea, Jordan, and Ukbekistan. 

Known for its very Hawkish military views, JINSA works directly with US military officers and the Department of State – aka Blinken.   Facilitating the media propaganda, JINSA writes the op-eds and ads to promote Zion ideologies.  In 2002, JINSA created LEEP, wherein US police and Sheriffs are taken to Israel to teach them ‘techniques for countering domestic terrorism in the US’.  As in the IDF style tactics, training, and strategies are then utilized by US police and security in tactical defense, interrogation and abuse.

Each fall, a member of congress is given the LEEP Award which has a fair number of neoconservatives, including;   Cheney, McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Robert Gates – Secretary of Defense 2007 – among others.

In other words, JINSA is running the US military and Congress.   JINSA works alongside the NGO, Foundation For Defense of Democracies (FDD).  FDD is an Israeli lobby group working in the US to direct the US government’s Affairs.  Funding sources have included;  Bernard Marcus, Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, The United Arab Emirates, Roland Arnall, and William Rosenwald Family Fund (Gatestone Institute Nina’s Daddy) – among others.

In 2023, FDD, along with other US-based think tanks, was alleged of running a defamation campaign against the regional rivals of the UAE and creating false terrorists, including Iran, Qatar and Turkey.  The organization has been criticized for spreading Islamophobia rhetoric.  They tell Netanyahu what to do.   They initiate Middle East wars and use US weapons to do their bidding in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and now Russia.

FDD convinced Mike Johnson to pass the Ukraine funding bill ~according to their website.   I withdraw my apology.

In the latest transcript issued by FDD on April 22 – Ukraine and Russia were the topic.  Rear Admiral Retired, Mark Montgomery:  “I’d also like to point out that in the Ukraine provision there is a nice little nugget, in addition to the $3 billion-plus in Foreign Military Financing for Ukraine, there’s $1.6 billion for Eastern European countries, and this acknowledges that Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania particularly have jacked up their spending well above 2%, each of them closing in or exceeding 3%, recognizing the Russian threat right there.”

Translation:  American Taxpayers funded Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania’s military budgets for NATO via the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan Funding Supplement.

While discussing the Israel War, Saudi Arabia is considered a potential ally to the West to counter Iran and Palestine.  Having watched the US, UK, France, Israel and Jordan’s combined efforts to take out Iran’s 300 missiles/drones, the thought is that Bin Salman was so impressed he would like to gain access to that weaponry, an alliance, and gain the iron dome system which can repel incoming attacks ~ per FDD.

While Qatar was once an ally of the US and Israeli governments, most recently the FDD has proposed clipping ‘Qatar’s media wing’, al Jazeera, because they are peddling propaganda and interfering with the Israeli/US agenda.  As such, the FDD anticipates wholly censoring the outlet.   As in banned.  Like Tik Tok.   Like any media that doesn’t tow the line of Feed.  In an act of monumental hypocrisy, the Department of Justice is trying to force al Jazeera to register as a foreign agent – something the Zionist AIPAC or any other lobbying group, media organization or NGO run by Israel – has failed to do.

The US Arsenal For Democracy.  A phrase coined by FDR wherein military funding was bumped from $24 million to $700 million an increase of 2916% over night wherein peaceful manufacturing was suddenly converted into the Military Industrial Complex.  And has bludgeoned into a trillion+ – and incited nearly every war to justify the spending.

The FDD transcript details that the current funding for Ukraine was definitely Mike Johnson – they have no intention of letting Ukraine lose and have already set up the ammunition and weaponry that will defeat Russia after Russia depletes its weaponry in 2024 via an offensive campaign.   Ukraine to play the Tortoise.  Anticipating a ‘long war’ discussions included using Mike Johnson in 2025 to push thru another package while encouraging more ‘stiff republicans’ to travel to Kyiv so as to experience Kyiv’s generosity and sway their vote to HAWK.  Trump is mentioned as an outlier who has little effect or control.  Defending Israel against its five neighbors and defending Taiwan against Xi Jinping are considered doable concurrently if necessary.  The hope is that Jinping will be pushed into a corner whereby Taiwan in exchange for not helping Russia is a critical stipulation/blackmail.

Blinken just returned from his China visit an embarrassment of attempted blackmail.  Either drop Russia or we will tell the world we have proof of election interference.  It appears Xi kicked out Blinken.

There is already an apportioned amount in the 2025 US Funding bill for Ukraine with the ability to add more via supplemental funding bills approved by – Mike Johnson.  In addition, there are other resources that are siphoned from different departments:

Mark Montgomery:  “So I think you could see some US AI money and even some of the State Department I&L money. That’s the International Narcotics Bureau over at State, which does the border patrol support to Ukraine.”  US border patrol is in Ukraine.

Full Circle.

The Israeli complex of Control over US Military, US Congress, US policy, US debt, US allies and enemies is in full spectrum hegemony.   Has been for decades – at least.  They drive what America does militarily, societally, within the media landscape of propaganda, censorship, and Congressional action and opinion – Governed by – the Israeli COMPLEX.  And this information is available should any person stumble upon its source – as did I.  Via a relatively innocent commenter referring me to the Gatestone Institute…

Reprinted with permission from Helena-The Nationalist Voice.

The post Israel Owns Our Military and Congress via NGO’s FDD & JINSA appeared first on LewRockwell.

So we know from previous sources that – – –

With National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), signed by president Harry S Truman on September 30, 1950, That Thing That Lives in Washington D.C. decided to continue using the manufacture of military materials to pump-up the economy. That’s called “military keynesiansm.“

– – – that ten years later, President and Five-star General Dwight Eisenhower caught a glimpse of the result and warned us like this – – -

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial-congressional complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

– – – and that as President Harry S. Truman, who created the CIA confessed – – –

“Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don’t just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there’s nobody to keep track of what they’re up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they’ll have something to report on.” –Pres. Harry S. Truman

So in its insatiable craving for conflict, somewhere in the deepest darkest recesses of its profit-hungry self-serving memetic existence, the Military-Industrial-CIA part of what’s now called the Deep State, realized a Dastardly Villain was essential to con the public into being taxed to pay for its murderous habits.

So the CIA branch got busy creating villains — and, as Mr. Truman pointed out, making their own wars too. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq — you get the idea. As General Wesley Clark revealed, they were even hatching plans to take down seven countries in five years – – –

And so, as a result, as PhD and CIA operative Chalmers Johnson managed to point out — in a foreign publication — as long ago as 2008, Military Keynesianism directly and indirectly, supported approximately 40% of the U.S. economy. Just for example, Boeing (bombers, military choppers etc.), Lockheed-Martin (fighters, choppers, missiles, etc.), Raytheon (Cruise missiles etc.) even GM (tanks, etc.) counted on their military sales to survive.

So much for President Eisenhower’s warning.

To heck with it. We need a goddam villain!

And so when push came to shove, those fellows fixated on the low hanging fruit. That would be Russia. They were figuring with all the 1960s free Hollywood hype and propaganda– James Bond for example — “we” would fail to make the distinction between the former communist Soviet Union and modern capitalist Russia. Were they right?

Those fellows also conveniently “forgot” Russia had learned the hard way that voluntary exchange in open markets beats heck out of communism. And further, that their leader Vladimir Putin regularly referred to us as “Our friends and partners in the West” — because he and the Russians were making money hand-over-fist by engaging in voluntary exchange with us and our European sidekicks.

Whistling past the graveyard, however, those fellows conveniently disregarded the fact that while maybe low-hanging, Russia is still a thoroughly nuked-up fruit. And for good reason, the Russians don’t trust NATO.

And central to that distrust is the potential five-minute ICBM missile flight-time from the mutual Russia/Ukraine border to Moscow. With Ukraine in NATO, that would put Moscow’s retalitory nukes in “launch on warn“ mode, leaving no time to straighten out any mistakes, technical glitches, misunderstandings, etc., risking WWIII and the end of the world.

Look, you don’t build multi-billion-dollar gas pipelines if you’re intending to screw-up your customers. And you certainly don’t blow them up.

So by 2023, “we” were already well on our way to a Quickstart of The Final World War.

Even Joe Biden recognized it – – –

Biden Says Risk of Nuclear ‘Armageddon’ Is Highest Since 1962 [Cuban Missile] Crisis –The New York Times

So, how have things been going since?

Here are a few points you might consider – – –

James Rickards: Ukraine’s Starting To Get Dangerous, Putin Doesn’t “Bluff”

UK to Give Ukraine Depleted Uranium Shells Despite Russian Warnings

Putin warns the West a Russia-NATO conflict is just one step from World War Three | Reuters, March 17, 2024

And this analysis of the Ukraine situation – – –

Heading Towards Armageddon! –Larry Sparano and Paul Craig Roberts, April 3, 2024

And then there’s this refresher as to what we have to look forward to – – –

Facing Nuclear War –Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, April 6, 2024

And where we came from – – –

Still M.A.D. After All These Years? –L. Reichard White

And finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. And it’s more like a kerosene lantern. And someone has to light it – – –

Preventing a Nuclear War –Alasdair Macleod, March 29, 2024

One of the things Mr. Macleod suggests that might stop WWIII would be to crash the dollar which would first show-up as a jump in the price of gold.

And, according to CNBC, “Gold shatters record roof, heads for third straight weekly gain on buying momentum”

That “record roof” would be $2,368.90 per ounce as of April 15, 2024, 3:27 AM, up an unprecedented $400 in the last three weeks.

So maybe, if they can hold things off till Trump gets re-elected. If he does – – –

If Trump Had Been Sworn-in Instead of Biden, Would There Be a War in Ukraine?

The answer to that question is, “Almost certainly NO!” Because he and Mr.Putin see eye-to-eye on the horrors of nuclear war.

On the other hand, That Thing Living in Washington D.C. is sending another $60.8 billion in Stupid Kill Money to Ukraine, guaranteed by sanctioned Russian money.

And Poland, a member of NATO, is apparently already sneaking some of its troops into a Ukraine “operation zone.”

Poland Sending Troops Ahead of Deployment in Ukraine –Zaporozhye Region Official

According to the NATO treaty, “an attack on any member is an attack on all members” and that commits all NATO members — including That Thing That’s Living in D.C. — to join the battle.

And, if faced with such an “existential threat” Putin [in person] says Russia would use nuclear weapons –YouTube

How about if Biden immediately appoints Mr. Trump as a special envoy to Russia?

Fat chance, right?

Well, maybe Mr. Putin will have enough patience to wait and see if Mr. Trump gets re-elected again.

Unless you have other suggestions, the Quickstart is right on schedule.

As I tell my friends, “Don’t look at the flash!”

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections. AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

The post Don’t Look at the Flash! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Free speech only comes into its own when you freely consent to hear what you hate to hear.

When everyone is singing from the same songbook, it sure may sound mighty sweet – but it is not free speech. It then becomes a type of cackle of congregating geese or perhaps even the synchronized song of several robins of early spring, singing the same song together. Except for the robins themselves (or perhaps even for them!), this would become insufferably boring after the first full flush of amorous feeling.

It is the multitudinous, different tones and timbres and pitches of birdsong that has been the stuff of the poet’s longing and the spurned lover’s consolation when he walks in the woods alone. In comparing the song of the skylark to that of the nightingale and several other choristers of the skies and choosing one (Shelley, the skylark) or the other (Keats, the nightingale), we may join the poet in the exercise of free choice that follows the exercise of free speech.

For those of us who have resolved to fight the good fight of freedom, for those of us who believe in the right to protest and the right to free speech, we must support free speech anywhere, everywhere, even in our universities. Especially in our universities.

We don’t have to agree with those who protest. We may even detest their views with all our hearts. But we of all people must uphold their right to protest. To protest in peace is a fundamental right. It follows from the right to free speech and it is deeply indebted to our Christian civilization and the bequeathing to us of the ability to choose life or death, blessing or curse, for ourselves.

The present, widespread turmoil in American universities is not new. It follows a glorious tradition of civil disobedience and protest which has inspired generations of Americans. Quintessentially, Americans have seen themselves as blessed among the nations in their ability to protest in the hallowed grounds of their institutions of higher education and exercise their “first amendment rights.” That ancient incubator of new ideas which is the university, has nowhere seen as much of the ever present tension between free speech and tyranny, as in America.

The people of the Western world are coming round to the idea at last, that children in Gaza must be protected from harm – from having their limbs and faces blown off, from being burned and incinerated by bombs dropped from the skies; from undergoing ampuations without anesthesia; from being orphaned and seeing adults dying slow, painful deaths all around them; from dying of hunger and thirst; and from being shot and bombed to death themselves -with 15,000 of them killed so far, in the space of just six months. Normal people, who have not lost their common humanity cry out in despair and shake their fists with anger at the powers that have allowed this demonic travesty to happen. And most people, upon witnessing what is happening to the trapped children in the besieged, bombed and battered city of Gaza are, (in the words of Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd frontman), “on the edge of tears.”

But the cowardly powers behind the throne seem to think they can literally get away with murder. The chicken hawk Speaker of the American House has lately put his satanic stamp upon sending 61 billion dollars to the killing fields of Ukraine (where 300+ billion dollars to Ukraine so far has not stopped the Russian advance) and several billion dollars to Israel, which will be used to kill more children in Gaza with American bombs. The world was treated to the curious spectacle in the august hall of Jeffersonian democracy a week ago, when, after unleashing the dogs of war, members of congress started waving little Ukrainian flags no less! Mr. Blinken, America’s secretary of state is acting like a blinking, blundering, but dangerous fool – and there is no coherence or common sense at all that comes out of the mouths of our “leaders” – Trudeau, Biden, Sunak, Macron, Scholz, all seem to be under an evil spell.

Students in numerous American universities have now decided that enough is indeed enough – and for the last week, have been protesting peacefully in Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Berkeley, Emory and numerous other universities. Tyrannies feel particularly threatened by peaceful student protests, since they know that nothing short of brute and crude force will be able to suppress them (temporarily). They also know from recent history that American student protests spread with an organic intensity and fervour from university to university – and then to the public at large. And when American students have spoken their free speech with just cause, the tyranny knows that a whole generation of people have been inspired to stand up for liberty, for freedom, for peace over war and for love over prejudice and hate. The tyranny trembles at the sounds of students marching or camping in protest.

Read the Whole Article

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Last Sunday’s Demonic Flooding of America was so popular, this is its companion piece, a fleshed-out examination of the Head of the Snake, the cabal that is behind the Great Reset, the Covid and Global Warming hoaxes, and every profit-bonanza-war of the last thirty, if not 500 years, but especially Ukraine.

They call themselves by a proliferation of names: the Olympians, the Elect, Bilderbergers, the 300, demi-gods, the Black Nobility, other silly secret names that must not be spoken. They are secret because their intent is evil. They practice the occult – foolish and irresponsible – they are “Masons” of the crazy branch, a cult that operates entirely in the dark and entirely for themselves. They are as power-hungry as Hillary Clinton and far more corrupt than she or Biden or his dreadful son. They have been around for a thousand years, laughably tracing their bloodlines back to Sumer and the Pharaohs and they think that is important. In fact, who they are is Hunter Biden, he is their id, the visual manifestation of their disgusting decadence and sexual compulsion. Hunter, to my mind, was brought into their cult and went mad with the drugs, the blood drinking, the killing and the sexual sacrifices, the intimacy rites that fuel their power.

I wish I was kidding. I wish like hell this wasn’t true.

What I am attempting is to skirt the depths of paranoia by using real world data, and actual documents, as well as planning that is in the public domain and established fact. I am using personal experience in order to real-world it. So many writers in this area tip over into the unprovable, and of course, this is deliberate, yet another foul psyop run on the defenceless and innocent.

I grew up in the richest neighborhood in Canada, Westmount, and in the old money summer place of Canada, or one of them. We were part of them and not. My parents heritage was American, originally, which was a count against us. Both ancestors arrived in Connecticut in the 1630’s when there were a mere handful of settlers in the River Colony and 375 years later, they somehow found each other.

This is how rich the neighborhood was: my second-favorite boarding school roommate’s family house was a castle numbering 50,000 square feet.

This is how close we were to MKUltra and Allan Dulles: That house, Ravenscrag, was given to Allan Dulles and psychiatrist Ewan Cameron, after the family’s four sons died in the second war.  That house was where my mother was used as an experimental subject in MKUltra.

My favorite boarding school roommate’s husband’s father ran the McConnell Foundation as his charity. The McConnells, who owned the Montreal Star among other things, invited the Rockefellers, the CIA and MKUltra to town, contributing to the project of running the first mind control experiments on non-consenting human subjects, including their own wives. This too is established fact, well documented.

Here’s the question everyone asks. How did they get so cruel? How can these men and women, their heirs, bent on forcing the Great Reset, imprisoning everyone in 15 minute cities, chipped, monitored, and fed chemical stew, justify themselves?  How did the top run of health professionals see Covid for what it was, as they had to, and yet go along with the vaccines, knowing, as we now know they knew, how dangerous, how lethal they are. It is impossible to view Edward Dowd’s latest disability figures, look at his projections of illness and death down the line and not think this was a deliberate cull.  Another example of their barbarity, their murderous intent.

I’ll tell you how. They have contempt for nearly everyone. They are so rich and so privileged, and in the case of the people I grew up among, long-held privilege, that they see humans outside their circle as herd animals to be manipulated. I know that because that is how they speak deep inside their world and for six sentient years and eleven years of childhood, I was there in this extremely social world, a string of parties reaching to the horizon every year, listening to every word, divining every thought. The kids mirrored their parents. No outsider can get into that world, so they were safe expressing their contempt for lesser humans. There were so many rules to follow that people were judged on the tiniest of movements, attitudes, the way you walked, ate, spoke. The necessary exquisite manners acted like a fence. It took a good decade to learn the right table manners, which had to be so automatic you could only learn it in early childhood. They could spot outsiders within ten seconds and  instantly exclude them. Among themselves, they spoke freely. Why was it so secret? Because breeding was a principal subject of casual conversation. Bloodlines. And the art of keeping that wealth and privilege. And hate. Contempt.

By the time I left, I loathed their vicious, adamantine selves more than I can say, and if we, my family, were a part of it, I foreswore them. I rejected everything.

After my first book was published, my father gave me my great-great-grandmother’s memoir fragment. I was so traumatized by what had happened to my parents, that I fell into it like a warm bath. I think I met her, Charlotte Phelps St John, when she was ancient and I was four. It took place in my grandmother’s apartment building, one of those vast echoing stone buildings where we used to warehouse the prosperous elderly. She, my great-grandmother, and my great-aunt were in town visiting and they wanted a look at me, the first girl born in the family for two generations.

Everything you have been told about the founding of America is a lie. Especially the role of women. These four women were so powerful, so profoundly, deeply rooted in themselves and their own proven virtue, I’ve not met a modern human male or female that comes close to their banked power.  For 350 years, they and thousands of families like them, ordinary, not “bloodline”, had been building towns, churches, schools, and infrastructure across the continent. In their towns, they knew when someone was in need, and they were there, face to face, helping, through their churches, their clubs and societies. Intimate. Not performative bullshit charity. Right up against it, solving actual problems, helping real people, not fending them off onto “government”.  My great-great-grandmother’s parents and grandparents had been Officers on the Underground Railroad, and their entire family was a fountain of charity. You were judged as an adult on that contribution, not on the money you made. My great- grandmother had started the Vancouver General Hospital, a multi-billion dollar enterprise today, in a tent with her friends from church. All of them were cornerstones of the culture, fully responsible adults.  Her grandson, my great-uncle and his wife were the same. If they were alive, there would be no way in hell that Vancouver would be a sickening hub of child sex trafficking, money laundering, and drugs. We have lost all of that. All of it.

How?

It was taken from us. That strength had to be broken, and the Fabians, the Huxleys and H.G. Wells, to use names that you’d recognize, invented the system of thought that propels the war on us. The thinking started pre-WW1, and flourished, bloomed and metastasized after WW2, when the optimism and creativity and power of the US flew its flag high. They, the Rockefellers, the Bilderbergs, Kissinger, the Black Nobility of Venice, Bank of International Settlements, the owners of the New York Fed, ancient European families who hold American debt, and a hundred others, determined to break US industrial society, to reduce it to its former peasantry, to immiserate its population in order to control it. If America had grown from the 50s, it would have broken their power and their wealth.

And most of all, they hated America’s optimism, its ‘can-do’ attitude, its brazen confidence that did not bow to any man.

Read the Whole Article

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Looking over the last lines of T.S. Eliot’s fabled Four Quartets, the great masterwork on which his reputation rests, one sees in the final movement of the poem a striking reminder of that which we do well never to forget. It is the knowledge that, in this life certainly,

We shall not cease from exploration, 
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.

What Eliot is trying to tell us, it seems to me, putting it in a less poetical fashion, is that the end will always be found in the beginning, and that when we finally do come to the end, it will have been granted to us so that once more we may return to the beginning. But not in a way we might have expected. That is because all too often, as Eliot says elsewhere in the poem,

We had the experience, but missed the meaning, 
And approach to the meaning restores the experience 
In a different form, beyond any meaning 
We can assign to happiness. 

And so the only reason for us to set out at all is so that we may go back to where it all began. Only this time, please God, renewed, repristinated. And thus we may truly come to know the place for the first time.

And what is that place but the half-remembered innocence we lost so very long ago, before the serpent insinuated its poison into the fruit, leaving us bereft in a fallen world where circumstance and sin force our minds to recognize that,

The whole earth is our hospital 
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall 
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us but prevents us everywhere.

And who is the “ruined millionaire” but Adam, in whose fall we sinned all. Which is why it is the world before everything fell apart that we most long to return to, the place to which we are most drawn. “Who indeed would think himself unhappy not to be a king,” asks Pascal in the Pensées, “except one who had been dispossessed?”

It is because we are all deposed kings and queens that we retain, however dimly, memories of what had once been. Why else are we hollowed out on the inside if not to leave room to pine for the world we left behind, the vanished Eden we cannot completely rid our memories of? “The heart is restless,” St. Augustine assures us, “until it finds rest in Thee.” And how does the soul achieve such repose? It is not self-generated, that’s for sure. It is pure gift, due to the overflowing largesse of God. As always, says Eliot, “A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)  
And all shall be well and 
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. 

Read the Whole Article

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“If you care about your country . . . read Ludwig von Mises.”
– UFC Fighter Renato Moicano, Las Vegas, April 13, 2024

The thirty-eighth annual Mises University, where I have lectured for more than thirty of those years, will be held from July 28th to August 3rd at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.  Year after year, student attendees from all over the world tell us that it was the best week of their school year; that they learned more about the economic world in that week than in four years of college; that they would love to come back next summer; and that they will urge their friends and classmates to apply next year.

Mises University is the world’s leading instructional program in Austrian economics.  Staffed by some of the world’s leading Austrian School economists, all of whom are excellent speakers and teachers, students attend lectures and discussions all day long for a week where they learn all about how markets work, competition and monopoly, value and utility theory, money and banking, business cycles, the organization of industry, economic history, the philosophy of science, financial economics, and much more.

After the first two days focusing on the core principles of Austrian economics the rest of the week is filled with dozens of elective classes on myriad subjects ranging from socialism, minimum-wage laws, and political cronyism to protectionism, “wokeness” and Big Tech, economics of regulation, economics of bureaucracy, energy economics, medical care economics, the economics of war, and much more.  A highlight of the week will be a special “mystery speaker.”

The list of topics is so broad because, as Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action:  “Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything.  It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.”  Indeed, Mises believed that it was the “civic duty” of “all reasonable men” (and women) to not rely only on the pronouncements of the “experts” but to educate yourself and essentially become your own economist.  Not to become a “scholar,” necessarily, but a better citizen who has familiarized himself with economic principles.  Mises University is the best place in the world to do that, or to jump start an academic career in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition of the scholarship of freedom.  Indeed, many of today’s Mises University faculty were themselves students at Mises U. during their college years.

Thanks to the generosity of Mises Institute supporters there is no registration fee for students who are accepted.  The only cost is driving to Auburn or getting yourself to one of the nearby airports (Atlanta, Montgomery, Columbus, Birmingham) and taking a taxi or shuttle service to the Auburn University Hotel.  Students receive admission to all sessions, accommodations for seven nights, three meals a day, transportation to and from the hotel to the Mises Institute each day, and refreshment breaks.

In the spirit of meritocracy and capitalism there is an optional exam at the end of the week where the top student as chosen by a faculty examining committee receives the Doug French scholarship prize of $2,500; second and third place students receive the Kenneth Garschina prizes of $1,500 and $750 respectively.

So, dear LewRockwell.com readers, consider getting the college students in your lives – in any discipline – to apply to Mises University.  The deadline to apply to the best week of their year is June 24.

Register here. 

The post Attention LewRockwell.com Readers! Treat the Students in Your Life to The Best Week of Their Year appeared first on LewRockwell.

The leading investment strategies of the day are:

• The university investment model, currently emphasizing non-marketable investments, which I pioneered but which has now become too crowded.

• Momentum investing, in which you or your algorithm buy whatever seems to be going up.

• Indexing, also a form of momentum investing because most index funds are capitalization weighted.

• Risk Parity, which tries to realize equity like returns from fixed income through leverage, although this has faded after the 2022 debacle.

For some time we have had a Momentum Market, both in stocks and some commodities. What had gone up has continued to go up, in some cases a lot. Despite exceptions, especially in recent weeks, it has now become commonplace for large companies ($10 billion or more market capitalization) to enjoy price to sales ratios of 20-97x sales.

There are many examples of momentum driven, manic markets: the years leading up to 1929, 1973, 2000, and 2022. Not all stocks were expensive, but the momentum stars were hyper-expensive.

Then as now, corporate executives were selling. The executives may not be selling directly to their own shareholder “bosses,” but given the high level of company share repurchases, the net effect may be the same.

Some Math from the Dot-Com Bust of 2000

The worst Momentum Market bust was of course 1929 and aftermath. Investors buying in at the top then would have had to wait half a century for their market values to catch up with a portfolio of treasury bills, although far fewer years if dividends were reinvested. What about the dot-com bust in 2000, the one following a tech driven market eerily like our own? How bad was it?

Bear market change, March 27, 2000 – October 9, 2002:

• S&P 500: -49.03%

• Nasdaq: -82.84%

But is this the whole story?

The bubble had looked like it might be bursting in 1998:

July 20, 1998 – October 8,1998:

• S&P 500: -18.97%

• Nasdaq 100: -22.99%

Then the Nasdaq in particular staged a spectacular comeback:

October 8, 1998 – March 27, 2000:

• S&P 500: +58.83%

• Nasdaq 100: +316.76%

What if you had invested in Nasdaq in the first half of 1998? Yes, you would have taken a hit in the second half, but you then would have experienced the huge gains of 1999 before falling into the 2000 collapse. How would you have  fared under that scenario:

 (First half of 1998 high to end of bear market) July 20, 1998 – October 9, 2002:

• S&P: -34.40%

• Nasdaq: -44.92%

What if you got really lucky and came in just after the 1998 correction but before Nasdaq soared 300%, then held on through the dot-com bust?

October 8, 1998 – October 9, 2002:

• S&P: -19.04%

• Nasdaq: -28.48%

So even a 300% gain for Nasdaq shortly before 2000 would not have protected you from the major loss that followed.

Many of the stars of the dot-com era fell forever in the bear market of 2000. A few barely survived, remained in the wilderness for many years, then eventually returned as members of today’s Magnificent Seven (or Six or Five or whatever it has now morphed into.)

For example, Amazon rose 21 times from the beginning of 1998 to its 1999 peak, fell 92% from 2000 to 2002, essentially returning to where it started. By the end of 1999, Microsoft had a market capitalization of $620 billion based on a $33 share price, $20 billion in sales, and a 38% profit margin. After the collapse in 2000, it took fourteen years for the share price again to hit $33.

Buy and Hold?

This implies that buy and hold might not be a rewarding strategy for new investors or new money. On the positive side, major opportunity awaits on the far side of a bust.

This originally appeared on HunterLewisLLC.com.

The post How Bad Could It Get? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is an excerpt from David Stockmans book: Trump’s War on Capitalism.

As it happened, the US Congress acted like greased lightning, enacting the  $2.2 trillion CARES act  virtually sight unseen just  eleven  days  after  The  Donald’s March 16 press  conference initiated the  Covid lockdowns. The  bill  was over  eight hundred pages long and included a more ostentatious cornucopia of spend- ing authorities and  free stuff than had  ever before been  imagined in even the  most  profligate quarters of Capitol Hill. This tsunami of money amounted to roughly $6,000 for every man, woman, and child  in America, or 45 percent of all federal government expen- ditures in 2019.

The money was literally shoveled into  the US economy in mas- sive dollops with virtually no eligibility standards, qualification pro- cesses, and  enforcement/accountability procedures. This included:

• $425 billion for the Federal Reserve to support business loans and  bailouts.
• $75 billion for direct subsidies to airlines and other industries.
• $350 billion to launch what became the notoriously corrupt SBA-operated Paycheck Protection Program (PPP for small  businesses).
• $300 billion to fund checks amounting to $3,400 per family  of four, going to approximately 90 percent of the US population.
• $250 billion mainly for the $600 per week unemployment insurance benefit on top  of normal state  program benefits averaging $355 per  week.
• $150 billion in walking-around money for state, local, and tribal governments.
• $140 billion for a sweeping, open-ended array of public health programs.
• Tens of billions more  in special interest pork of every kind, shape, and  purpose.

Not  surprisingly, The  Donald did  not  hesitate to  take  credit for this  grotesque act of fiscal malfeasance:

We are marshalling the  full power of government and  society to achieve victory over  the  virus.  Together, we will endure, we will prevail, and  we will WIN! #CARESAct

Signing Ceremony for The Most Grotesque Act of Fiscal Malfeasance in American History.

The   budgetary  outcomes  were   truly   astounding—especially when  the  second Covid Relief  bill  signed by The  Donald in Dec- ember 2020 and  its extension and  companion, Biden’s American Rescue Act enacted in March 2021, are  added to the  total. In all, Washington enacted $6.5 trillion of Covid-relief measures in barely 365 days.  This figure  was nearly 50 percent larger than the  entire federal budget—defense, social  security, education, Medicare/ Medicaid, interest and  all the rest—in  the pre-Covid year of 2019.

That’s   right. Trump ignited a  grotesque outbreak  of  fiscal recklessness far worse  than anything GOP orators had  inveighed against since  the  time  of FDR. And  much of this  spending erup- tion   was  recorded in  the  government data series  for  personal transfer payments. The latter is posted monthly and  at annualized rates, thereby capturing in real  time  the  impact of Trump’s fiscal cyclone ripping through the US economy.

The  annualized run   rate   of  government transfer payments, including the  state  and  local  supplemental portions, posted at a normal level  of $3.15 trillion in February 2020. So that’s  the  pre- Covid baseline. But after  the sight-unseen $2.2 trillion CARES act was enthusiastically signed into  law by The Donald in late March, it erupted to a $6.42 trillion annualized rate  in April.

Thereafter a  second wave  surged the  transfer payment rate to  $5.682 trillion in  January 2021 when  the  second relief  act  was signed by The Donald in December, followed by a final burst at an annualized rate to $8.098 trillion in March 2021 owing to Biden’s American Rescue Act.

But even in the case of the latter, the driving force was completion of the $2,000 per person stimmy that The Donald had  advocated in the run-up to the election, which  had  been  only partially funded in the  December legislation. And this  stimmy completion came  along with  extension of unemployment toppers and  other expenditures that had  been  originated in the two earlier Trump-signed measures.

This  was the  very  worst  kind of government spending explo- sion  imaginable. That’s  because transfer payments are inherently inflationary poison when   they  are  funded by  new  government debt which, in turn, is monetized (purchased) by the Fed,  as these clearly  were. This kind of regime of spend, borrow, and  print pow- erfully gooses demand without adding an iota  to supply.

Ironically,   therefore,   Trump-O-Nomics   was   the    epitome of  anti-supply side.  It was  a stark repudiation of  the  theory of Reaganomics, and  far, far worse  in its practical impact on federal spending and deficits  than the accidental ballooning of the public debt on the Gipper’s watch.

None of this  fiscal madness, of course, would have  been  even remotely plausible without the  utterly unnecessary lockdowns. Even  then, however, no real Republican would have  signed legis- lation authorizing such  massive  transfer payments if they  were to be funded exclusively with  borrowing and  money-printing.

The Donald did so, of course, and there is no mystery as to why. Trump has  no  fiscal policy  compass at all. So, it was a good way to quiet what  otherwise would have been  a fatal  political uprising against the  public health martial law that his administration had imposed during an election year.

That’s  the  real  irony of the  story. When it comes  to  the  core matter of fiscal discipline, The Donald was no disrupter at all. He was  actually the  worst  of the  lot  among the  last  half-century of Washington spenders, and  by a long  shot, too.

Annualized  Rate of Government Transfer Payments, 2017 to 2021.

For avoidance of doubt, here is a longer-term perspective, reflect- ing  the  year-over-year rate  of  change in  government transfer pay- ments going back  to 1970. That  was shortly after  the  Great Society legislation had kicked off today’s $4 trillion per year flood of transfers.

To  appreciate the  veritable fiscal  shock that issued from  The Donald’s pen,  it needs be  noted that in  the  last  quarter of 2019 the Y/Y gain in government transfer payment spending was about $150 billion, which  was consistent with  the longer-term trend.

However, by Q1 2021 that Y/Y gain had  soared to $4.9 trillion. Again,  that was the delta, not  the absolute level. That  is to say, the year-over-year gain  from  The Donald’s Covid Relief  Bacchanalia was 33x larger than the pre-Covid norm!

And, no, you can’t blame this inflationary time-bomb solely on Biden as the MAGA partisans insist, although Biden would surely have  signed the  two  early  COVID-bailout measures had  he been in The Donald’s shoes  during 2020.

But  that’s  just  the  point—The Donald is a paid-up member of the Washington uniparty when  it comes  to government spending. All of the  hideous excesses of the  Covid bailouts were  launched on  his  watch, signed into  law  with  his  pen,  and/or legitimized with  the  imprimatur of an  ostensible Republican president. The American Rescue Act  was  just  the  final  installment of  Trump’s unhinged Covid spend-a-thon.

After all, the  overwhelming share of the  $6.5 trillion of Covid spending consisted of  $2,000+  stimmy checks   to  90  percent of the  public, the  $600 per  week  unemployment toppers, the  mas- sive Payroll Protection Program (PPP) giveaways, and  the  flood of money into  the  health, education, local  government, and  non- profit sectors. Every one of these  items was blessed by The Donald twice  before Sleepy  Joe reclaimed these  measures as the  Dem  big spenders’ apostasies that they  actually were.

Needless to say, the Covid bailouts were not The Donald’s only fiscal  sin.  When you  compare the  constant dollar growth rate  of total federal spending during his  four  years  in  the  Oval  Office with  that of his recent predecessors, it is evident that The Donald was in a big spender’s league all of his own.

Trump   Shoots  the  Moon:  Y/Y   Change  in  Government  Transfer  Payments, 1970–2021.

In constant 2021 dollars, for  instance, the  federal budget grew by  $366 billion per  annum on  The  Donald’s watch, a level  qua- druple the  big  spending years  of Barack Obama, and  nearly 11x higher than during the 1993–2000  period under Bill Clinton.

Federal  Spending: Constant 2021 Dollar Increase Per Year:

• Trump, 2017–2020:  +$366 billion per annum.
• Obama, 2009–2016:  +$86 billion per  annum.
• George Bush the Younger, 2001–2008:  +$136 billion per annum.
• Bill Clinton, 1993–2000:  +$34 billion per  annum.
• George Bush  the Elder, 1989–1992:  +$97 billion per annum.
• Ronald Reagan, 1981–1988:  +$64 billion per  annum.
• Jimmy Carter, 1977–1980:  +$62 billion per  annum.

The  same  story  holds for  the  annual growth rate of  inflation-ad- justed federal spending. At 6.92 percent per annum during Trump’s sojourn in the Oval  Office it was 2x to 4x higher than under all of his recent predecessors.

At the  end  of the  day,  the  historical litmus test  of GOP eco- nomic policy  was restraint on government spending growth, and therefore curtailment of the relentless expansion of the Leviathan- on-the-Potomac. But when it comes to that standard, The Donald’s record stands first among no equals on the wall of shame.

Federal  Spending: Annual Real Growth Rate:

• Trump, 2016–2020:  6.92 percent.
• Obama, 2008–2016:  1.96 percent.
• George Bush  the Younger: 3.95 percent.
• Bill Clinton, 1992–2000:  1.19 percent.
• George Bush  the Elder: 3.90 percent.
• Ronald Reagan, 1980–1988:  3.15 percent.
• Jimmy Carter, 1976–1980:  3.72 percent.

Likewise, when  it comes  to ballooning federal deficits  and  public debt, Donald Trump earned his sobriquet as the King of Debt and then some. Relative to the  nation’s economic base,  the  average of The Donald’s four  deficits  at 9.0 percent of GDP was literally off- the-charts of modern presidential history.

Average  Surplus/Deficit  as  Percent   of  GDP   Under  Post-War

Presidents (fiscal years):

• Truman (1947–1953): +0.73 percent.
• Eisenhower (1954–1961): -0.37 percent.
• Kennedy-Johnson  (1962–1969): -0.88 percent.
• Nixon-Ford (1970–1977): -.2.38 percent.
• Carter (1978–1981): -2.33 percent.
• Reagan-Bush (1982–1993): -4.13 percent.
• Clinton (1994–2001): -0.13 percent.
• George W. Bush  (2002–2009): -3.31 percent.
• Obama (2010–2017): -4.98 percent.
• Trump  (2018–2021): -9.00 percent.

Similarly,  in  inflation-adjusted terms  (constant  2021  dollars), The Donald’s $2.04  trillion per  annum add-on to the  public debt amounted to double the fiscal profligacy of the Obama years,  and orders of magnitude more  than the debt additions of earlier occu- pants of the Oval  Office.

Constant 2021 Dollar Additions to the Public  Debt per Annum:

• Donald Trump: $2.043 trillion.
• Barack Obama: $1.061 trillion.
• George W. Bush: $0.694 trillion.
• Bill Clinton: $0.168 trillion.
• George H.  W. Bush: $0.609 trillion.
• Ronald Reagan: $0.384 trillion.
• Jimmy Carter: $0.096 trillion.

Indeed, in the  long  sweep  of things, the  real damage was done in the  Covid/Lockdowns/Stimmies year  of 2020.  Federal spending erupted by  nearly $2 trillion during that year  alone and  soared from  22.3 percent of GDP in 2019 to nearly 32 percent of GDP in 2020. And when state and  local  outlays are included, The Donald managed to bring government spending in the US to a European social  democracy–style 40 percent of GDP.

It might be  well  and  truly   asked: With   charts like  the  one below, who  needs Republicans of the  ilk represented by Donald Trump?

Federal Spending Share of GDP, 2000 to 2021.

There is no secret  as to how spending and  debt soared like never before during Trump’s time  in the  Oval  Office.  Trump wanted to wield the biggest defense stick on the planet on the primitive theory that he could bluster his way to foreign policy  success  just  like he claims  to  have  done with  the  trade unions and  subcontractors in New York City.

But  to  get  his  big  defense stick,  he  had  to  accommodate the Congressional  porkers  on   nondefense  discretionary  spending and  leave  entitlements untouched. And  that he was happy to do because Trump just  didn’t care about federal spending.

Thus,  when  big-spending Barack Obama left the White House the national security budget properly measured totaled a stagger- ing  $822 billion. That  included $600 billion for the  Pentagon,  $46 billion for  security assistance and  international operations and

$177 billion for veterans’ compensation and  services, which  reflect the deferred cost of prior wars.

So  much for  the  “peace candidate” of 2008 and  the  anti-war democratic party of the Vietnam era and  its aftermath. To the con- trary, Obama’s $822  billion national security budget embodied the cost of global hegemony and the Forever Wars to which  it gave rise—notwithstanding that the  only  real threat to homeland secu- rity  in  the  post-war period, the  former Soviet  Union, had  been consigned to the dustbin of history twenty-five years earlier.

Donald Trump came  bounding into  the  Oval  Office  talking what  sounded like a different game—America First. But as his last Attorney General, Bill Barr,  recently noted, even if you believe in his  policies don’t expect him  to  execute them. His four  years  in the  White House proved he can’t organize or lead  his way out  of a wet paper bag,  and  his budgetary fiasco in the national security space  provides striking confirmation of Barr’s  observation.

To  be  sure,  Trump did  manage to  see through the  uniparty’s demonization of Putin, and the feckless neocon claim that he seeks to  recreate the  former Soviet  Empire. After  all,  in  Washington’s theater of the absurd Vlad Putin was simply The Donald’s doppel- ganger when  it came  to demonization and  putting on the beltway hate. So, Trump got that part of the equation right.

But  Trump actually had  no  idea  what  he  meant by “America First”  except that the line elicited boisterous cheers from the patri- otic  throngs at  his  campaign rallies. The  fact  is, he  was  histori- cally ignorant beyond measure; lazy as they come when  it involves studying your  brief; and  a total sucker for military pomp and  cir- cumstance and  the medal-bedecked uniforms of the generals.

So while  Trump talked about bringing the  Empire home, he actually fueled its  budget like  never  before. The  vastly  bloated national security budget left  behind by Obama took on  $215 bil- lion  more   girth on  The  Donald’s watch. His outgoing  broadly measured national security budget (FY  2021)  actually broke the trillion-dollar barrier, weighing in at $1.035 trillion, or 26 percent more  than what  Obama and  the  Congressional uniparty had  frit- tered away in FY 2017.

In short, The Donald was so ill-informed and  confused that he ended up  with  a national security budget which  amounted to the Military-Industrial Complex first, not  one  designed strictly for the defense of the  homeland—better termed Fortress America, which was advocated in the early post-war era by Mr. Republican, Senator Robert Taft  of Ohio. The  latter’s views were  the  very  opposite of today’s global  hegemony  views  of  the   neocons who   dominate the  GOP ranks on  the  military and  foreign affairs  committees on Capitol Hill.

Indeed, the  truth of the  matter is that the  present-day GOP was hijacked a few decades ago by a loathsome tribe of born-again Trotskyite statist, who  discovered that a perpetual condition of global war  was the  true  passageway to  state  power and  political self-aggrandizement in the Imperial City.

That  is more  than evident when  you  compare Trump’s result- ing  trillion-dollar national security budget  with  the  maximum

$500 billion spending level  that would be  needed to  fully  fund Fortress America. The staggering $500 billion per  year  difference makes it  starkly evident that even  on  the  Pentagon side  of  the Potomac, The Donald was a thorough-going patsy  for the Swamp creatures.

In the  first  place, a Fortress America–based implementation of The  Donald’s vague notions about bringing the  forces  home rests on the truth that in the present world order there are no tech- nologically-advanced industrial powers who have either the capa- bility  or  intention to  attack the  American homeland. To  do  that you need a massive  land armada, huge air and  sealift  capacities, a Navy  and  Air Force many  times  the  size of current US  forces  and humongous supply lines  and  logistics capacities that have  never been  even dreamed of by any other nation on the planet.

You  also  need an  initial GDP of  say  $50 trillion per  year  to sustain what  would be  the  most  violent conflagration of  weap- onry  and  material in human history. And  that’s  to say nothing of needing to be ruled by suicidal leaders willing to risk the  nuclear destruction of their own countries, allies, and economic commerce in order to accomplish, what? Occupy Denver?

So  the  entire idea  that there is a  post–Cold War  existential threat to America’s  security is just plain bogus because, obviously, no alleged foe has the requisite GDP or military heft. Russia’s GDP is a scant $1.8 trillion, not  the $50 trillion that would be needed for it to  put an  invasionary force  on  the  New  Jersey  shores.  And  its pre-Ukraine defense budget was just $75 billion, which  amounts to about four  weeks of waste  in Washington’s trillion-dollar monster.

As for  China, let  us  not  forget that even  its  communist rul- ers  sill believe it is the  “Middle Kingdom” and  therefore that it already occupies the most  important territory on the entire planet. So why would Beijing’s rulers want  to occupy Cleveland OH or Birmingham AL to either extract high-cost production or root out dissenters from  Chairman Xi’s thought?

More importantly, China doesn’t have  the  GDP heft  to  even think about landing on the California shores, notwithstanding Wall Street’s endless kowtowing to the China Boom. The fact is, China has accumulated in excess of $50 trillion of debt in barely two decades!

Therefore, it didn’t grow  organically in the  historic capitalist mode; it  printed, borrowed, spent, and  built like  there was  no tomorrow. But the resulting façade of prosperity would not last six months if China’s $3.6 trillion global export market—the source of the hard cash that keeps  its Ponzi upright—were to crash, which is exactly what  would happen if it tried to invade America.

To  be  sure,  its  totalitarian leaders are  immensely misguided and  downright evil from  the  perspective of their oppressed pop- ulation. But  they  are  not  stupid. They  stay  in power by keeping the people relatively fat and  happy and  would never  risk bringing down what  amounts to an economic house of cards.

And  the  nuclear blackmail card  can’t be  played by  either of these  foes, either. According to a recent CBO analysis, the annual cost  of maintaining and  investing America’s  triad nuclear deter- rent—submarine-launched ICBMs, land-based ICBMs, and  the strategic nuclear bomber fleet—is just  $52 billion per  year,  or less than 6 percent of the pentagon’s current budget and  barely 4 per- cent  of overall national security spending.

That   triad  deterrent  is  what   dissuades both  Moscow and Beijing from  attempting nuclear blackmail and  therefore invasion by  nuclear checkmate. That  is to  say,  the  lynchpin of America’s security lies in the  arrangement known as MAD  (mutual assured destruction), a mechanism that has worked for seventy years.  And it worked even at the peak  of the Cold War when  the Soviet  Union had  forty  thousand nuclear warheads and  leaders far more  unsta- ble than either Cool-Hand Vlad or Xi Jinping.

At the  end  of  the  day,  it  is the  great ocean moats, the  triad nuclear deterrent, and  the  relative economic diminutiveness  of Russia and  China that keep  the  American homeland secure and safe  from  hostile foreign encroachment. Most of the  rest  of the massive  pentagon budget is based on  false predicates, fabricated threats, and  the  budget-grabbing  prowess of its  own  marketing (i.e.,  think tanks) and  lobbying (i.e.,  defense contractors) arms.

In this  context, Trump did  ask  the  right question, even  if he never  came  up  with  an  actionable answer. Namely, why  in  the world do  we still  have  costly,  obsolete arrangements like  NATO thirty-two years after  the Soviet  Union perished?

The  only  real  answer is that it is a mechanism to  sell arms  to its thirty-one-member states. Indeed, Europe had  long  ago proved it  did  not  really  fear  that Putin would be  marching his  armies through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. That’s why Germany pre- viously  spent only  1.3 percent of GDP on  defense and  was more than happy to buy cheap energy via Russian delivered pipeline gas.

Germany’s current quasi-warlike posture vis-a-vis  Russia doesn’t gainsay that history, either. The truth is, the German Green Party—which is what  keeps  the  Scholz social  democrat govern- ment in power—has gone full-on warmongering for  the  hideous reason that the  Greens live to end  the  era of fossil  fuel.  So, what better way to do it than cut off the cheap oil and  gas supplies from Russia on  which  Germany’s fossil-fueled economy is based and then blame it on a demonized Putin?

Moreover, even  a  passing familiarity with  European history reminds you  that Russians and  Poles  hate  each  other and  have done so over  centuries of wars  and  bloody altercations. So Vlad Putin may not  be a Russian Gandhi, but  he is sure as hell way too smart to  attempt to  occupy Poland. Ditto France, Germany, the Low Countries, Italy, Iberia, and  the rest.

In short, Washington doesn’t  need NATO to  protect our allies  in  Europe  because they   are  not   facing any  threat that can’t  be  handled by  their own  ways  and  means, preferably of the  diplomatic variety. In fact,  the  whole   disaster in  Ukraine today is rooted in the  War  Party’s mindless expansion of NATO in  violation of  all  of  Washington’s  promises to  Gorbachev to not  expand an  inch  to  the  east  in  return for  the  unification of Germany. Yet the double-cross has been  so extensive that NATO now  includes every  one  of the  old  Warsaw Pact  nations and  has even  attempted to  extend its reach to  two  of the  former Soviet Republics (i.e.,  Georgia and  Ukraine).

The same holds for Washington’s so-called “allies”  in East  Asia and  the  massive  US  military resources committed to  the  region. The truth is, functioning as the gendarme of the planet is the only possible justification for the extra $500 billion per year cost of the current national security budget.

For example, why does the US still deploy 100,000 US forces and their dependents in Japan and Okinawa and 29,000 in South Korea?

These  two  counties have  a combined GDP of  nearly $7 tril- lion—or  235x  more  than North Korea, and  they  are  light-years ahead of  the  latter in  technology and  military capability.  Also, they   don’t  go  around the   world engaging  in  regime change, thereby spooking fear on the north side of the DMZ.

Accordingly, Japan and  South Korea could more  than provide for their own national security in a manner they see fit without any help  whatsoever from  Imperial Washington. That’s  especially the case because absent the  massive  US  military threat in the  region, North Korea would surely  seek  a rapprochement and  economic help  from  its neighbors, including China.

Indeed, sixty-five  years  after  the  unnecessary war  in  Korea ended, there is  only  one  reason why  the  Kim   family   is  still in  power in  Pyongyang and  why  periodically they  have  nois- ily  brandished  their incipient nuclear weapons and   missiles. Mainly, it’s because Washington still occupies the  Korean peninsula and  surrounds its waters with  more  lethal firepower than was brought to  bear  against the  industrial might of Nazi Germany during the  whole  of WWII.

Of  course, these  massive  and  costly  forces  are  also  justified on  the  grounds of supporting Washington’s commitments to the defense of Taiwan. But  that commitment has  always  been  obso- lete and  unnecessary to America’s  homeland security.

As it  happened, Chiang Kia-Shek lost  the  Chinese civil  war fair  and  square in  1949,  and  there was  no  reason to  perpetuate his  rag-tag regime when  it  retreated to  the  last  square miles  of Chinese territory—the island province of Taiwan. The  latter had been  under control of the Chinese Qing Dynasty for two hundred years  thru 1895, and  after  Imperial Japan was expelled from  the island in 1945, Taiwan was once  again “Chinese.”

So  today it  is  separated from   the  mainland   only  because Washington arbitrarily made it  a  protectorate and   “ally”  when the  loser  of the  Chinese civil war set up  shop in a small  remnant of  China’s modern geography, thereby establishing an  artificial nation that had  no  bearing whatsoever on  America’s  homeland security, and  in subsequent decades accomplished nothing except bolster the  case for a big  Navy and  for US  policing of the  Pacific region for no good reason of homeland defense.

That is to say, without Washington’s support for the nationalist regime in Taipei, the  island would have  been  long  ago  absorbed back  into  the Chinese polity where  it had  been  for centuries. Even now,  the Taiwanese would surely  prefer peaceful prosperity  as the  24th province of China rather than a catastrophic war against Beijing that they  would have  no hope of surviving.

By the same token, the alternative—US military intervention— would mean WWIII. The  only  sensible policy, therefore, is for Washington to  recant seventy years  of  folly  brought on  by  the China Lobby and arms manufacturers and green-light a Taiwanese reconciliation with the mainland. Even a few years thereafter, Wall Street bankers peddling M&A deals  in Taipei wouldn’t know  the difference from  Shanghai.

In short, there is no  need whatsoever for  America’s  massive conventional armada and  what  is now  (FY  2024)  its $1.3 trillion annual national security expense. That’s  the  true  implication of America First, but The Donald didn’t have a clue about its bearing on the actual national security budget.

To   the   contrary,  his  support  for   the   massive   increases in Pentagon spending was  based on  the  primitive theory that the route to a successful foreign policy  was, well, himself!

That  is to  say,  national security would come  from  a big  mili- tary  stick in his stubby small  hands and  a lot of eyeball-to-eyeball sit-downs between The Donald and  the other ostensible bad  guys of the world. But that was sheer  nonsense, of course. Implied mil- itary  threats and  dickering at  a one-on-one summit of  the  type Trump had  with  Vlad  Putin, Kim  Jong Un, and  Xi Jinping were mainly just  theater—a global version of The Apprentice. What ulti- mately keeps  America safe,  however, is its  nuclear deterrent.  As long  as that is intact and  effective,  there is no  conceivable form of nuclear blackmail that could be used  to jeopardize the security and  liberty of the homeland.

Yet according to  the  aforementioned CBO study the  current annual cost of the strategic deterrent of just $52 billion includes $13 billion for the  ballistic missile  submarine force,  $7 billion for the land-based ICBMs, and  $6 billion for the  strategic bomber force. On  top  of that there is also  $13 billion to  maintain the  nuclear weapons stockpiles, infrastructure, and  supporting services  and

$11 billion for strategic nuclear command and  control, communi- cations, and  early warnings systems.

In all,  and  after  allowing for  normal inflation and  weapons development  costs,   CBO’s   ten-year  estimate  for   the   strategic nuclear deterrent is just  $756 billion. That  happens to be only  7.0 percent of  the $10 trillion baseline for  the  total cost  of  defense proper over  the  next  decade and  only  5.0 percent of the  $15 tril- lion  national  security baseline when   you  include international operations and  veterans.

The  adoption of a Fortress America national security budget of $500 billion per year over the next  decade would save in excess of $5 trillion. And  that would surely  be  more  than doable from the  $14 trillion CBO baseline for total national security spending excluding the strategic forces.

Under a Fortress America defense strategy, there would be no need for  eleven  carrier battle groups including their air-wings, escort and  support ships, and  supporting  infrastructure.  Those forces  are  sitting ducks in this  day  and  age  anyway but  are  only necessary for  force  projection abroad and  wars  of  invasion and occupation. The American coastline and  interior, by contrast, can be protected by land-based air.

According to another CBO study, the ten-year baseline cost for the  Navy’s  unnecessary eleven  carrier battle groups will approach $1 trillion alone. Likewise, the land forces of the US Army will cost $2 trillion, and that’s  again mainly for the purpose of force projec- tion  abroad.

As Senator Taft  and  his  original Fortress America supporters long  ago recognized, overwhelming air superiority over the North American continent is what  is actually necessary for  homeland security. But  even that would require only  a small  part of the cur- rent  $1.5 trillion ten-year cost  of US  Air Force  operations, which are heavily  driven by global force  projection capacities.

At the  end  of the  day,  if The Donald had  really  been  commit- ted  to  an  America First  foreign policy, he  would have  done his homework, taken on the  national security Swamp Creatures, and put in place  a Fortress America budget that could save $5 trillion over  the  next  decade. And  from  there could have  begun the  pro- cess of putting Washington a sustainable fiscal path.

Then  again, when  has  The  Donald ever  done his  homework, got in real bruising political battles over substantive policy  matters rather than tweetstorms, and  cared a whit  about the nation’s fiscal solvency?

How The Donald Threw In the Towel on Domestic

Spending

Finally, there is one  more  element gravitating toward fiscal catastrophe that got  a  real  boost under Trump-O-Nomics. The truth is, the GOP has been  thoroughly Trumpified and  distracted from  its  main  fiscal  mission by  The  Donald’s utterly misguided war  on  the  US  borders and  demagogic anti-immigrant howling and  by his parallel eagerness to embrace big tax cuts without pay- ing for them (see Chapter 6).

Moreover, with  The  Donald’s loud insistence, the  contem- porary GOP has even  taken a powder completely on Medicare, Social   Security,  and   the   lesser   entitlements.  That’s   $50  tril- lion  of current law spending over  the  next  decade, and  yet the GOP recently agreed with  Joe Biden and  the  Dems  to cut  nary a penny from  these  monster programs in  the  last  debt ceiling settlement.

But no sooner did they brush themselves off from  their shame- ful surrender on  the  debt ceiling deal  than they  were  at it again. This  time  proposing huge tax  cuts  with  no  off-setting spending reductions, and  again with  The Donald’s fulsome support.

In total, the  recently tabled House GOP tax  package encom- passed $240  billion of  tax  cuts  such  as  increasing the  standard deduction on  income taxes,  expanding opportunity zones, roll- ing back  some requirements for reporting transactions to the IRS, and  restoring expired Trump-era business expense write-offs.

Thus, under the new GOP tax plan, the standard deduction for singles would increase by $2,000 to $15,850, and  for married cou- ples  the  standard deduction would increase by $4,000 to $30,700. Accordingly, the  chief  GOP sponsor proclaimed that the  day  of the proverbial free lunch has truly  arrived:

“With this  provision in  place, an  American family  of  four  will not pay a cent in federal  taxes on their first $68,000  of income,” said House Ways and  Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican.

And  if dogs could whistle, the  world would be a chorus! That  is to say, has  Rep. Smith done the  math? Roughly 75 percent of all US workers earn  less than $68,000 and  yet Republicans are going to exempt them from  paying any federal income taxes  at all, even as the  Washington behemoth is allowed to keep  on spending and borrowing like there is no tomorrow?

Of course, there will be a tomorrow, albeit a fiscally disastrous one  for which  the  Trumpified GOP can  share fully  in the  blame. It is supposed to be the party that keeps  Washington on the fiscal straight and  narrow, but  under The Donald’s feckless  MAGA  slo- gans  it has  degenerated into  the  party of gluttonous war  spend- ing,  unpaid-for tax cuts,  and  entitlements cowardice.

Once upon a time  there was a majority of Republicans led by Senator Robert Taft  who  believed in  fiscal  rectitude and  small government—and on both sides of the Potomac River. As we have indicated, Taft advocated Fortress America, not  global hegemony, as the  route to homeland security. His view was right then, and  it is still correct now.  So the truth is, Donald Trump is the anti-Taft. He’s no Mr.  Republican at all—just  a dangerous poseur.

For  avoidance of  doubt, just  consider what  he  embraced in order to  get  his  extra national security spending. It might have been  supposed, of course, that with  control of the  veto  pen  and strong GOP positions in both the House and  Senate during these four  years  that the  near  quarter-trillion dollars per  year  of extra largesse for the  national security state  would have  been  off-set by some  hefty  curtailments on the domestic side.  The party in power being the fiscally conservative GOP and  all.

But  not  a chance. The nondefense budget of $3.38 trillion left by Obama (FY 2017) weighed in at $6.07 trillion when The Donald finally  shuffled out  of the Oval  Office in FY 2021.

That  $2.69 trillion nondefense spending increase amounted to a 79 percent gain  over the four-year period, averaging nearly $675 billion per  year.  Big  spender Obama, by  contrast, had  increased the  non-defense budget by an average of just  $112 billion per  year and  Bill Clinton’s per  annum nondefense increase figure  was but

$85 billion.

Nor  can you blame The Donald’s domestic spending bonanza entirely on entitlements and  interest payments, even though legis- lative curtailment of these mandatory spending accounts is exactly the  job  of the  GOP in our  two-party democracy. As it happened, however, The  Donald also  presided over  a veritable eruption of spending  for  the   third  component of  nondefense  spending— appropriated domestic programs.

That’s  right. We are talking about the  very corner of the  bud- get  where  the  presidential veto  pen  is potentially mightier than the  beltway’s assembled army  of PACs  and  lobbies or  the  over- flowing pork barrels of hometown goodies. But  in round terms, nondefense discretionary spending rose from $600 billion per year to $900 billion during The Donald’s four  budgets. That’s a 50 per- cent  gain,  yet there was nary  a veto  to be hurtled at the  appropri- ations bills  and  eleventh-hour omnibus spending extravaganzas that came  across  The Donald’s desk.

But  here’s  the  thing. Donald Trump has never  made any bones about his  complete disinterest in curtailing government spending and  borrowing. Still,  he did  not  accomplish these  monster spend- ing  increases by unilaterally defying the  will of the  GOP congres- sional delegations, either. These  hideous spending and  borrowing eruptions represented, instead, the  overwhelming consensus of the bipartisan uniparty.

The majority of both parties devoutly desire to feed the Warfare State monster ever greater rations, even as they give a perennial hall pass  to entitlement spending and  jump at every  possible chance, such  as the  trillions of Covid Lockdown relief  spending and  the green energy tax credit scams,  to open the fiscal spigot wider.

Alas,  that gets  us  to  the  dirty secret  of the  nation’s now  $33 trillion public debt. Mainly that the once  and  former conservative anti-spending party has  been  taken over  by the  MAGA  hat  “cul- ture  warriors” and  the  neocon warmongers, but  most  especially by  a permanent class  of Washington Republican legislators and staff who live for the power and  pelf that manning-up the Empire bestows upon them.

Serving on  the  broad array   of  national  security committees, grazing at the  foreign affairs  think tanks and  NGOs, junketing far and  wide  across  the  planet as latter-day pro-consuls, visiting the dozens of occupied countries, and  inspecting America’s  eight hun- dred military bases—all  are  far  more   thrilling than returning to Green Bay to run  a car dealership.

So  they   feed   the   Empire,  and   the   Empire nourishes their sojourns on the great stage  of world affairs.  That’s the heart of the real  Washington Swamp. And  the  clueless Donald Trump fed  it like never before.

The Poison of Relentless Public  Borrowing

Ultimately, excessive, relentless public borrowing is the  poison that will  kill  capitalist prosperity and  displace limited constitu- tional government with  unchained statist encroachment on  the liberties of the people. For that reason alone, The Donald needs be locked-out of the nomination and  banished from  the Oval  Office.

Of  course, the  great enabler of  The  Donald’s  reckless fiscal escapades was  the  Federal Reserve, which  increased its  balance sheet   by  nearly $3  trillion or  66  percent during The  Donald’s four-year term. That  amounted to  balance sheet  expansion (i.e., money-printing)  equal  to   $750  billion  per   annum—compared to  gains  of $300 billion and  $150 billion per  annum during the Barack Obama and  George W. Bush  tenures, respectively.

Still,  Trump wasn’t  satisfied with  this  insane level  of  mone- tary  expansion. He never  did  stop  hectoring the  Fed  for  being too  stingy with  the  printing press  and  for  keeping interest rates higher than the  King of  Debt in  his  wisdom deemed to  be  the correct level.

Balance Sheet of the Federal Reserve, 1960 to 2020.

In short, given  the  economic circumstances during his tenure and  the  unprecedented stimulus emanating from  the  Keynesian Fed,  Donald Trump’s constant demands for  still  easier  money made even  Richard Nixon look  like a paragon of financial sobri- ety.  The  truth is, no  US  president has  ever  been  as  reckless on monetary matters as  Donald Trump. That’s  why  it’s  especially rich  that the  die-hard MAGA  fans  are now  gumming loudly for a revival  of the  great Trump economy. Yet it is the  egregious fiscal, monetary, and Lockdown excesses during his tenure that gave rise to the current economic mess.

Then  again, the  MAGA  faithful have  been  thoroughly Trumpified. After years of The Donald insisting that even more  fiat money should be pumped into  the economy, the GOP politicians gave  the  Fed  a free  pass  during the  2022 campaign—and did  so during an inflation-besotted election season that was tailor-made for a hammer-and-tongs attack on the inflationary money-printers domiciled in the Eccles  Building.

Once upon a  time,  GOP politicians knew  better. Certainly, Ronald Reagan did  amidst the  double-digit inflation of the  early 1980s.

The  Gipper did   not   hesitate to  say  that Big  Government, deficit-spending and  monetary profligacy were  the  cause  of  the nation’s economic ills. He was right, and  he won  the  election in a landslide. Indeed, he was even  persuaded to include a gold stan- dard plank in the 1980 GOP platform.

By contrast, consult the videos or transcripts of a score  or two or three of MAGA  rallies. Did  anything remotely resembling the Reagenesque take  on inflation ever flow from  The Donald’s bom- bastic vocal = cords?

Of course not. So to repeat: Donald Trump is not  an economic conservative in any way, shape, or form. He’s simply a self- promoting demagogue who,  during four  years in the Oval  Office, only  managed to compound the  nation’s ills stemming from  bad policy  ideas  deeply embedded inside the Washington beltway.

Lead  among these  is runaway federal spending, borrowing, and  printing—a terrible policy  malfeasance that Donald Trump pushed into  a League All of His Own.

The post A Big Spender’s League All of His Own appeared first on LewRockwell.

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

~ William Shakespeare, Richard III

How easy it seems to me that people are so readily deceived, and that extreme gullibility among the masses remains as the primary attitude evident. I do realize that this is not uncommon, but it is amazingly confounding, after thousands of years of continuous lies by the ruling State; absurdity beyond reason to be sure. But still they vote to choose (have selected) a master to lord over them. Will this idiocy never end? Now, there is a new ‘Saint’ in town, and as depicted by weak-minded so-called freedom advocates, he is alluded to as a ‘self-described’ Anarcho-capitalist. This is Javier Milei, the new god of ‘libertarian’ type posers. Murray Rothbard would roll in his grave at such an idiotic pronouncement as this.

Yet another politician, the lowest form of human possible, is lauded and bowed down to by the fake alternative crowd, who claim to be the freedom society of the peasant class. Those being fooled by these deceitful political imposters have become tiring to say the least, as one after another of these trimmers takes his place at the top of the power pyramid, only to affect his personal and political desires on others, and sees his need for power over the many as his highest purpose. This is always at the expense of his subject class. There are many of these plotting chameleons who reach high positions of power; Trump comes immediately to mind, but in fact, there will always be more to come, as they gleefully follow in the footsteps of their duplicitous predecessors.

This Milei character is no different, but he has been able to trick the alternative media into a frothing state of undue worship, and has taken center stage by storm, even in the face of complete and total contradiction. First and foremost, he is certainly no Anarcho-capitalist. That term is reserved for true anarchists who abhor government and the State, and capitalists, who in the real sense of the word, believe only in actual free markets; meaning private markets without government or government interference or control. Milei is neither of these things, and in fact is the exact opposite. This can be easily uncovered by merely observing every action he has proposed, mandated, or initiated.

He made many claims while campaigning for the highest position in government, something no real anarchist could ever carry out, making promise after promise to free the people, and make them prosperous, while claiming he would tear down the very government he was seeking to control. Hypocrisy at this level is saved for the most corrupt among us, as no sane or honest person could pull it off without losing his soul. What that means of course, is that he had no soul to begin with, but was seeking a position that he was at the same time condemning. This is a common practice of politicians, and is double-speak of course, but could only be meant to fool the weak-minded proletariat, and claimed ‘intellectual’ liberty frauds, and never be a sincere objective. The proof is in his actions, and they are oh so telling of lies, corruption, manipulation, and power-seeking.

Milei took office in December of 2023, with grand plans to overhaul the Argentine government. His first order of business, as proclaimed by Milei during his campaign, would be to shut down completely, and abolish, the central bank, which is Banco Central de la República of Argentina. Did he do so? Of course not, but he did place some of the same past criminal heads in government, at the helm of that evil institution. He immediately appointed the insider Santiago Bausili as Governor and head of the Board of Directors. Bausili had been with J.P. Morgan for 11 years, and Deutsche Bank for 9 years, responsible for international capital markets in Latin America, handling hedging and derivative (unbridled leverage) instruments. Before then, he was Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury of Argentina. He was in the middle of the latest downfall and economic destruction of Argentina over many years, but he was the immediate and first choice of Milei to head the central bank. So much for “abolishing” the Fed, and saying that it was a “non-negotiable matter.”

The ex-Peronist and now Security Minister under Milei, is Patricia Bullrich, and insider who ran in opposition against Melei, and is the president of Propuesta Republicana, (Republican Proposal) which was made up of the ruling coalition during Mauricio Macri’s presidency from 2015 to 2019. He attended the World Economic Forum seeking investment, and held meetings with the likes of Biden, David Cameron, Branson, Eric Schmidt of Google, the Queen of the Netherlands, and other globalists and CEOs. He was a disaster of course. Inflation rates exceeding 40% during his tenure were common, and Bullrich now has the same position with Milei. There are other suspect cabinet members who have been appointed by Milei, including Luis Caputo, but what else is new? His is a cabinet of insiders with close ties to past Argentinian failures.

But it gets much worse. Milei has tied himself strongly to Israel, and the fanatical and evil murdering Netanyahu, even to the point of converting to Judaism, making Argentina one of the most pro-Zionist supporting countries. This is happening at a time when Israel is committing mass genocide against all Palestinians, and fomenting horrendous regional war that could escalate into world war. As far as I see it, this is a political scam on the part of Milei.

In the midst of claiming to being ‘libertarian,’ Milei has sold his soul to Israel, has destabilized Argentina’s own currency in favor of a failing U.S. dollar; essentially tying Argentina to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank run by private and government criminals and manipulators like Larry Fink of the evil Blackrock. This could lead to massive dollarization of Argentina to the detriment of their own money, and could also lead to the outside privatization of Argentina’s economy at the hands of the U.S., Israel, and all their fascist partners. This is an incredibly dangerous situation for Argentina, as satellites are now mapping out large swaths of this country and others in that region, for globalized control of all natural resources.

When Milei took office, 60% of Argentina’s population was in poverty, and Milei immediately devalued the currency by an additional 50%, leading to a much worse situation for the entire population. In the meantime, Milei has requested to join NATO, to achieve a more intrusive western alliance so as to gain a military guarantee, hoping to get military support at the expense of U.S. citizens and the West.

At this point, Milei should refer to himself as a self-described dictator, and never an anarcho-capitalist, who has seemingly decided to control Argentina by legislative and non-legislative fiat. He is no ‘libertarian,’ even though so-called modern ‘libertarianism,’ is just another arm of an abusive prevailing governing structure, and he is not and never has been an anarchist at any level. Those who continue to applaud these fascist tyrants, are making a great mistake in judgement, but when Trump is ‘elected,’ (selected) the writing on the wall will be telling, and in lock-step with these same type of policies. Criminal all.

The fooling of the voting fools will likely never end, as the herds of the peon class will continue to seek rule. This it seems, is the way of the world, and what a sad commentary this is concerning those beings (humans) who are supposed to be the most intelligent life on earth. That is a joke my friends, but not one worthy of laughter.

“Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails.”

~ Emma Goldman

The post Milei Is Little More Than a Political Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Beware the False ‘Libertarian’ Hype appeared first on LewRockwell.

Fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi are powerful allies to your mental health, courtesy of the neuroactive microbes and molecules they contain.1 Microbes and their metabolites, created during fermentation modulate the microbiota-gut-brain axis, which involves neural, immune, endocrine and metabolic pathways.2

Writing in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, researchers with University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland and colleagues reasoned that fermented foods “offer an affordable dietary intervention strategy” for better mental health.3

Their review highlights how different types of fermented food not only have the potential to alter the makeup of microbiota in your gut but also influence the immune system and microbiota-gut-brain axis, with profound effects on your brain.

Fermentation — An Ancient Tool Valued for Modern-Day Mental Health

Many cultures around the world have relied on food fermentation since ancient times to increase the shelf-life of food. Fermentation also makes food more flavorful while helping to control potentially disease-causing microorganisms and improving foods’ digestibility.4

The process involves the conversion of carbohydrates into alcohol or organic acids using microorganisms like yeasts and bacteria under anaerobic conditions. This leads to the production of beneficial compounds now known to boost physical and mental health.

“Although ancient in origin, fermented foods are now seen as conduits for introducing beneficial microbes and molecules. Moreover, fermented foods are applicable therapeutics across various socioeconomic sectors given their potential affordability and cross-cultural accessibility,” the review explained.5

Fermented foods are rich in phytochemicals and microbe metabolites that include neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. These compounds stimulate pathways of the microbiota-gut-brain axis, including those of the immune system and neuroendocrine, enteric nervous and circulatory systems. When fermented foods are digested, they also produce compounds capable of modulating intestinal barrier and blood brain barrier permeability.6

Fermented foods may also help block dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the system responsible for the management of stress, which has also been linked to multiple neuropsychiatric disorders.7

Researchers with APC Microbiome Ireland at UCC previously investigated the influence of a psychobiotic diet on the microbial profile and mental health of 45 adults.8 Participants were randomized to eat either a psychobiotic diet or a control diet for four weeks. The psychobiotic diet included fruits and vegetables high in prebiotic fiber, including onions, leeks, cabbage, apples and bananas, along with fermented foods, such as sauerkraut and kefir.9

After four weeks, those following the psychobiotic diet had a reduction in perceived stress. Those who followed the psychobiotic diet the most had the greatest decreases in stress. Further, significant changes were found in 40 different chemicals, along with subtle changes in microbial makeup. Professor John Cryan, one of the study’s lead authors who also worked on the featured Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews paper, said in a UCC news release:10

“Although the microbiome has been linked to stress and behavior previously, it was unclear if by feeding these microbes demonstratable effects could be seen. Our study provides one of the first data in the interaction between diet, microbiota and feelings of stress and mood.

Using microbiota targeted diets to positively modulate gut-brain communication holds possibilities for the reduction of stress and stress-associated disorders, but additional research is warranted to investigate underlying mechanisms.”

Virtually Any Fermented Food May Improve Brain Health

In the early stages of the research, study author Ramya Balasubramanian and colleagues compared sequencing data from more than 200 fermented foods in an effort to determine which are most beneficial for the brain. Nearly all of them showed promise, according to Balasubramanian, who said in a news release:11

“I expected only a few fermented foods would show up, but out of 200 fermented foods, almost all of them showed the ability to exert some sort of potential to improve gut and brain health … Fermented sugar-based products and fermented vegetable-based products are like winning the lottery when it comes to gut and brain health.

… For all that we see on sugar-based products being demonized, fermented sugar takes the raw sugar substrate, and it converts it into a plethora of metabolites that can have a beneficial effect on the host.

So even though it has the name ‘sugar’ in it, if you do a final metabolomic screen, the sugar gets used by the microbial community that’s present in the food, and they get converted into these beautiful metabolites that are ready to be cherry picked by us for further studies.”

The Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews paper outlined a wide range of fermented foods that may be beneficial. Among them:12

Both food substrate and environmental conditions alter the fermented food microbiome and therefore its potential health effects. According to the review:13

“Fermented foods are diverse in their preparation, substrate category and type of fermentation. This can influence the microbiota and the molecular composition of fermented foods.

Subsequently, these components can influence the communication between the gut and the brain resulting in modulation of the intestinal barrier and blood brain barrier, peripheral and central immune system and nervous system and thereby modulating the intestinal milieu, general gut and brain health.”

Fermented Foods Help Ward Off Depression

Lactobacillus, found in fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi and sauerkraut, has been dubbed a “psychobiotic”14 because of its effects on mental health, particularly anxiety and depression. Lactobacillus bacteria help dampen stress responses and prevent depression and anxiety, in part, by modulating your immune system.15

Further, a healthy gut microbiome also depends on the consumption of fermented foods. A study assigned 36 adults to consume a diet high in fermented foods or high-fiber foods for 10 weeks. Those consuming fermented foods had an increase in microbiome diversity as well as decreases in markers of inflammation.16

In another example, Lactobacillus was found to produce gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that inhibits excessive neuronal firing, helping to induce a natural state of calm,17 in animal studies,18 while also reducing depression-related behavior.19

A meta-analysis of cohort studies, involving 83,533 people, also found a significant association between consuming fermented dairy foods, including cheese and yogurt, and a decreased risk of depression.20 The study suggested the gut-brain axis may explain the link between fermented dairy foods and depression, as probiotic-rich fermented foods may help:21

• Lower inflammation in the gut
• Make the gut barrier stronger
• Reduce stress responses via the HPA axis
• Alter GABA receptor expression

One study using brain scans found that consuming fermented milk containing a variety of probiotics can lessen brain activity related to seeing sad or angry faces. Another study found that women who took probiotics had lower depression scores.22

Fermented Foods May Help Preserve Mental Health

Dietary interventions based on so-called “psychobiotics” were described as a “novel nutritional approach targeting gut microbiota for managing cognitive performance and preventing memory decline across the lifespan.”23 The review, published in Food Research International, suggests that fermented foods may help preserve mental health.

Further, feeding your microbes with a psychobiotic diet — one that’s rich in prebiotic and fermented foods — can also reduce stress and possibly stress-related disorders. The study authors stressed the benefits of using whole, fermented foods:24

“Although the more traditional psychobiotic candidates, such as probiotic and prebiotic supplementation, are promising approaches, using whole dietary approaches offers a number of advantages.

This includes the benefits associated with nutritional needs met primarily through whole diet, a more accessible way due to the necessity to consume a food daily, costs of supplemental products as well as the potential synergistic effects in the microbiota that could be elicited by complex diets.”

Interestingly, they also found that tryptophan metabolism may be one underlying mechanism behind fermented foods’ stress-relieving effects. “Tryptophan metabolism has been shown to be closely regulated by the microbiota and can serve as important bioactive messengers in the microbiota-brain communication,” the researchers explained, adding that it’s also involved in many brain-related disorders.25

How to Make Fermented Foods at Home

Given the numerous mental health benefits of fermented foods, if you haven’t yet incorporated them into your diet, now is an excellent time to start. Fermented vegetables are both simple and cost-effective to prepare at home. While you can find fermented foods at supermarkets and health food stores, many commercial options, such as yogurt and kefir, are not healthy.

Many of these products contain high levels of sugar, artificial sweeteners and additives, with a relatively low content of beneficial bacteria. The pasteurization process used in commercial products to extend their shelf life actually destroys the beneficial bacteria they’re supposed to contain.

To reap the maximum health benefits, either purchase raw (unpasteurized) versions of these foods at a health food store or food co-op, or make them yourself. Consuming a diverse range of fermented foods is beneficial, as each offers a unique set of beneficial bacteria.

Fortunately, making fermented foods at home is simpler than it might seem. It doesn’t require extensive time in the kitchen. Start by getting some wide-mouth canning jars and filtered water, along with select organic vegetables of your choice for fermenting. After packing your jars, the only step left is to wait a few days for the vegetables to ferment, or “ripen.”

You can view a step-by-step guide in the video above. As demonstrated, you’ll see that culturing vegetables is simple and cost-effective. You can also make your own homemade yogurt and kefir. If you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis, a probiotic supplement shouldn’t be considered a replacement for whole, fermented foods.

Sources and References

• 1 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562
• 2 Scientific Reports March 31, 2023, Introduction
• 3 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, Highlights
• 4, 5 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, Introduction
• 6 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, 2. Fermented food and the microbiota-gut-brain axis
• 7 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, 2.4 Fermented food and the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis
• 8 Molecular Psychiatry October 27, 2022
• 9, 10 University College Cork October 27, 2022
• 11 Microbiology Society April 14, 2023
• 12 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, Table 1
• 13 Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews March 2024, Volume 158, 105562, Figure 1
• 14 Brain, Behavior and Immunity January 2024; 115: 458-469, Introduction
• 15 Brain, Behavior and Immunity January 2024; 115: 458-469
• 16 Cell July 12, 2021
• 17 The Journal of Neuroscience May 1, 2013; 33(18):7770-7
• 18, 19 Translational Psychiatry June 3, 2022, Discussion
• 20 PLoS One. 2023; 18(2): e0281346
• 21, 22 PLoS One. 2023; 18(2): e0281346., Discussion
• 23 Food Res Int. 2022 Feb:152:110892. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2021.110892. Epub 2021 Dec 22
• 24, 25 Molecular Psychiatry October 27, 2022, Discussion

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The Main Goal of the Biden Regime Is to Sell-out the Majority White American Population and to declare them as a menace.

Tucker Carlson points out that president Biden, illegitimately in office due to the theft of the 2020 election, has as president of the United States defined America’s majority white population as the major cause of racism and a threat to national unity. Note: it is the majority that is the threat.

Yet, tens of millions of dumbshit white Americans designated as America’s worst threat by Biden vote for him.

What future can such a collection of morons have?

A white heterosexual who votes for Biden is expressing a death wish.

It is the US whose Democrat Government is alienated from its own white majority population that intends to fight wars against Russia, Iran, and China.

This is insanity. Who is going to fight these wars for Biden? The answer is Europeans and the immigrant-invaders into America thanks to Biden’s open border policy. Like Rome in its own self-inflicted decay, the US will be dependent on troops from the immigrant-invaders overrunning its own borders to fight its wars abroad in defense of the borders of foreign countries.

There is no discussion of this whatsoever.

Ep. 98 There is systemic racism in the United States, against whites. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. How come? pic.twitter.com/hSrU9BPVb4

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 24, 2024

The post Biden: White Americans Are the Threat appeared first on LewRockwell.

Empire managers and propagandists are losing their minds about student protests against the genocide in Gaza on university campuses, so naturally we’re seeing a mad push to frame this as the result of interference by Russia, China, Iran and Hamas. These demented conspiracies of foreign influence come even as Israel’s prime minister openly calls for the US government to quash the university protests by any means necessary.

In a speech supporting the ban of TikTok this past Tuesday, Senator Pete Ricketts said the protests are an example of “the Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to skew public opinion on foreign events.”

“Look what’s happening in our college campuses right now around this country,” Ricketts said. “Pro-Hamas activists are taking over public spaces and making it impossible for campuses to operate.”

“Why is this happening?” Ricketts continued. “Well, let’s look at where young people are getting their news. Nearly a third of adults 18 to 29, these young people in the US are regularly getting their news exclusively from TikTok. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas hashtags are generating 50 times the views on TikTok right now despite the fact that polling shows Americans overwhelmingly support Israel over Hamas. These videos have more reach than the top 10 news websites combined. This is not coincidence. The Chinese Communist Party is doing this on purpose. They are pushing this racist agenda with the intention of undermining our democratic values. And if you look at what’s happening at Columbia University and other campuses across the country right now, they’re winning.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) comes right out and admits it: they’re about to ban TikTok because “young people are getting their news” from the app, and “pro-Palestinian” hashtags generate lots of views. He says Chinese Communists are “pushing this racist agenda” to undermine America pic.twitter.com/ahcRcnXXfU

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 23, 2024

These comments from Ricketts are repugnant and deceitful in a whole host of ways, but let’s touch on the big ones.

The senator’s claim that TikTok is being manipulated to artificially amplify pro-Palestine content is false, as evidenced by the fact that TikTok’s US-based rivals Facebook and Instagram have been showing the same massive gaps between the popularity of pro-Palestine content and the popularity of pro-Israel content. His argument is as logically fallacious as claiming that flat earth content is being artificially suppressed because it’s not as popular as round earth content. Pro-Israel content is just less popular, because it sucks and people don’t like it.

Ricketts’ assertion that “polling shows Americans overwhelmingly support Israel over Hamas” is deceitful; polling shows a majority of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza, regardless of whether they “support” the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Also noteworthy is the way Ricketts just comes right out and acknowledges that TikTok is presenting a problem because its pro-Palestine content has been going viral among young people in ways the legacy media can’t compete with. This amounts to an admission that empire managers like Pete Ricketts really just want TikTok to be banned because young people are using it to share unauthorized ideas and information with each other, and would support its elimination even if they couldn’t justify it under the pretense of fighting China.

It’s probably also worth noting that Rickets has received at least $159,000 from the Israel lobby.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggests some pro-Palestinian protests, especially those against President Biden, have “a Russian tinge to it.”

“It’s in Putin’s interest for ‘What’s His Name’ to win, and therefore I see some encouragement on the part of the Russians.” pic.twitter.com/WgDByTwkGZ

— The Recount (@therecount) April 24, 2024

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated the fartbrained opinion she’s been voicing for months that anti-genocide demonstrations can be attributed to Russia, telling RTÉ News this past Wednesday that opposition to President Biden’s backing of an active genocide has “a Russian tinge to it”.

“It’s in Putin’s interest for ‘What’s His Name’ to win, and therefore I see some encouragement on the part of the Russians,” said the longtime Democratic Party leader in reference to Donald Trump.

Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt says it’s actually Iran who’s tricking all these university students into thinking genocide is bad, telling MSNBC that the two main organizations behind the demonstrations — the Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace — are actually “campus proxies” of Iran.

“Iran has their military proxies like Hezbollah, and Iran has their campus proxies like these groups like SJP and JVP,” Greenblatt proclaimed on literally no basis whatsoever.

They’re getting desperate. pic.twitter.com/G0HYjpUA7g

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) April 23, 2024

The Wall Street Journal tells us that rather than China, Russia or Iran, it’s actually Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis who are behind the university campus protests.

In an article titled “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests,” subtitled “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others are grooming activists in the U.S. and across the West,” The Wall Street Journal’s Steven Stalinsky makes another one of his signature chowderheaded arguments based entirely on vague insinuations, shoulder-socket-jeopardizing reach, Gish gallop fallacy, and no real evidence of any kind.

“Six months after the attack on Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others aren’t merely cheering those protesting in the streets,” writes Stalinsky. “They are working with and grooming activists in the U.S. and the West, through meetings, online interviews and podcasts.”

No no, not meetings, online interviews and podcasts! No wonder they were able to hypnotize university students into opposing daily massacres against a walled-in population driven by ethnically motivated hatred.

Stalinsky runs a think tank called the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which was literally founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer. Pro-Palestine activist and academic Norman Finkelstein has accused MEMRI of using “the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis,” and even brazenly unprincipled empire propagandist Brian Whitaker has written that MEMRI “poses as a research institute when it’s basically a propaganda operation.”

All this drooling imbecility about completely fictional foreign interference being responsible for these campus protests looks even more ridiculous as the Israeli prime minister unabashedly flexes his nation’s extensive influence over US politics to call for a crackdown on campus demonstrations.

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, addressing the American public in his perfect American English.

“It has to be stopped,” Netanyahu continued. “It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now, fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently but there has to be more. More has to be done.”

“Iran has their military proxies like Hezbollah, and Iran has their campus proxies like these groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace.” -Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League pic.twitter.com/JOMBeDZCSu

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) April 25, 2024

It is a very dark kind of hilarious to see imperial spinmeisters falling all over themselves trying to spin the campus protests as a product of imaginary foreign interference even as police launch violent crackdowns on those very same protesters across the United States to advance the interests of a foreign government.

It’s also a big loogie in the eye of any self-respecting free thinker. Unless your brain has been turned into bean curd by empire propaganda, the idea that young people would need to be manipulated into opposing the incomprehensible horrors that are being inflicted upon human beings in Gaza is an appalling insult to your intelligence.

But that just shows how desperate these freaks are getting. More and more people are waking up from the lies they’ve been fed about their government, their nation and their world as western institution after western institution completely discredits itself in the eyes of the mainstream public trying to defend the most indefensible things imaginable.

They’re frantically scrambling to try to remedy this PR crisis they’ve created for themselves, but everything they’ve tried so far has been a pathetic failure that has only made things worse for them, turning an entire generation into wide awake radicals whose bright young eyes will never, ever unsee what they have seen.

______________

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For all intents and purposes, Nikki Haley or Lindsey Graham could be U.S. House Speaker, and we wouldn’t know the difference. Michael Johnson has quickly morphed into another two-bit warmonger and big-government, police-state shill like virtually every House Speaker before him—at least in modern memory.

Before taking the Speaker’s chair, Johnson had a reputation of being a pro-peace, fiscal conservative who wanted to secure America’s borders and stop the out-of-control deficit spending in Washington. That Michael Johnson is no more! The new Michael Johnson is a measly, cowardly, pathetic little weasel whose backbone is made from jelly.

First, see how Johnson betrayed his oath to the Constitution by being the deciding vote in passing the FISA bill with Section 702 intact. This is the Let-The-Government-Spy-On-You- And-Illegally-Raid-Your-Home-Without-A-Warrant bill. And again, Johnson cast the deciding vote to pass it. In so doing, Johnson joined the Deep State coalition that includes traitors such as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.

From Paul Craig Roberts:

Republican Speaker of the House Flushes US Constitution Down the Toilet

As I predicted on April 11, the police state got the Republicans to reconsider and to pass their warrantless spying and home entry. The Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson cast the deciding vote that nixed the warrant requirement.

This tells us all we need to know about Republicans. They are part of the problem. See this.

Edward Snowden reports that the situation is even more serious than I thought. A section of the FISA Act is being enlarged to require every company and person that provides any internet-related service to assist NSA surveillance.

“This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.”

Secondly, Mike Shedlock perfectly pegs Mike Johnson’s passage of a 95 billion dollar aid package for Ukraine and Israel.

Mike Johnson Goes Full Neocon, Nikki Haley May as Well Be House Speaker

In a speech that Nikki Haley would endorse 100 percent, Speaker Mike Johnson begs the House to approve more aid to Ukraine and Israel to the tune of $95 billion total.

The Wall Street Journal reports Mike Johnson Opposed Ukraine Aid. Then He Risked His Job for It.

“I really do believe the intel and in the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said. “I believe Xi [Jinping] and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil,” warning that Russia could march west across Europe if not stopped now. “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.”

That is a false dichotomy.

One does not have to make a choice between sending bullets or men to Ukraine. One could easily do neither or both.

Sending bullets does not preclude further stupidity such as sending troops.

Dave Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, blasted Mike Johnson for his speech.

This is why Speaker Johnson must go. His statement is laced with neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow excuses for warmongering. Putin has no interest in molesting the Poles, to say nothing of storming the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. And Russia has a GDP of $2.2 trillion versus NATO’s $45 trillion.

China’s $50 trillion debt-ridden Ponzi would collapse in months if its $3.5 trillion flow of export earnings were disrupted by an attempting landing by its single modern aircraft carrier on the California coast. And Iran has no nukes, no intercontinental range missiles and a GDP equal to 130 hours of US annual output.

Some Axis of evil!

When House Republicans booted Kevin McCarthy for Mike Johnson, I confidently predicted Johnson would be no better and might prove to be much worse.

The results are now in. Johnson is proven much worse. To get deals, Johnson has even agreed to expand Child Tax Credits.

Not even Nikki Haley would have done that.

The majority of Republicans voted against the $95 billion aid package, which means Johnson sided with Democrats to pass the bill.

And as far as Israel being the poor innocent victim and Iran being the big, bad aggressive wolf, Tim Brown provides us with much needed perspective:

Robert Inlakeshl reminds readers of how Israel has behaved in the past.

Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.

As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.

While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.

Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.

However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.

As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.

In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.

The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.

More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran.

None of these actions, which would likely elicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.

In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.

Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.

And before closing this column, Newsweek had an interesting analysis of why Johnson became the overnight neocon war hawk that he is now. One paragraph in this report I found extremely enlightening:

The speaker has also been meeting with Ukrainians in Washington D.C. Conversations with evangelicals in particular “moved” the speaker—who is deeply religious—according to Melinda Haring of the Atlantic Council think tank. [Emphasis added]

Noted in the report was one prominent Ukrainian evangelical, but what was not reported in the Newsweek article was that notable “Christian” war hawk and Zionist extremist Pastor John Hagee also made the rounds on Capitol Hill to lobby for more aid money for the wars in Ukraine and Israel—especially Israel.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Johnson was also heavily influenced by Hagee.

Of course, Hagee represents the very worst of all things Christian Zionism. But being an outspoken evangelical himself, it is almost certain that Johnson shares Hagee’s Christian Zionist convictions.

These Christian Zionist preachers and politicians are pushing the world into World War III over their flagrantly false prophecy doctrines. Include Michael Johnson in that list.

By the way, I invite all my readers to watch this brief 4-minute video I produced last Sunday entitled Questions For Mr. Christian Zionist, John Hagee. I really hope you’ll watch it and share it with everyone you can. Someone in the pulpit had to call out Hagee for his wretched, blasphemous false prophecy teachings; and that’s what I did last Sunday.

Here is the YouTube link to my 4-minute video.

Once again, the American people have been betrayed and the U.S. Constitution has been trashed by a professing conservative Republican—and a professed Christian conservative at that. But then again, conservative Christians have been selling out our liberties for decades. And they will keep selling us out as long as they keep believing in the devilish false doctrines of Christian Zionism.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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Prometheus the ancient Greek god of fire defied Zeus and brought the gift of fire to humanity. Prometheus’s punishment was to be chained and pinned to a rock where a giant eagle descended every day to eat his liver. Being immortal, Prometheus’s wounds healed every night only to undergo the same torment each day for eternity. Prometheus’s only solitude was knowing that he had angered the gods by bestowing such a gift to humanity. Eventually after Prometheus helped Heracles with one of his labors, Zeus’s anger waned, and he released Prometheus who spent his days a bit more behaved. The deed, however, was done.

This is the ancient Greek mythological explanation for man’s mastery over fire. This achievement deserves a myth. Arguably it is the mastery of fire that has allowed the human species to dominate the globe. The ability to master fire provided light, warmth, defense against the elements, and predators. It also facilitated early engineering feats. It allowed man to fashion the environment to suit his needs.

Long before the Greco Roman pantheon, there existed a domestic religion, out of which, laws, private property rights, and many of the institutions that eventually gave rise to city states in the Mediterranean arose. The ancient Greeks and ancient pre–Roman Italians worshipped their ancestors as localized deities. Families had their own unique deities. The father was the priest and in charge of the domestic religion. It was the worship of entombed ancestors that gave rise to private property rights as land was passed down to the eldest son. One of the greatest fears was that there would be nobody around to place offerings for a person after they died, as they believed this sustenance was necessary to survive in the next world.

Even as this domestic religion evolved into cities, the private laws emanating from the domestic religion had precedent over the early city laws. Even as the more commonly known Greco Roman pantheon developed each city had its own version of these common deities. This religion developed spontaneously from the bottom up.

The ancient Greeks, Italians, and Hindus were all different branches of the ancient Indo-European peoples and shared a basic worship of the sacred fire, which was embedded in the domestic religion. Each family kept and maintained a sacred fire of the hearth that was maintained at all times in their homes. This was the center of early worship. Later, it was extinguished and reignited on March first each year using the rays of the sun or rubbing certain special twigs together to reignite it. The fire could only be reignited with these specific methods as it was holy.

Later, it was the sacred fire of Vesta that was kept lit by the Vestal Virgins for over a thousand years in Rome. Sylvia a priestess of the temple of Vesta was said to have been impregnated by Mars before giving birth to Romulus and Remus. In the few reported incidents of the fire extinguishing from storms or neglect, it was it was immediately reignited using mirrors to harness the pure rays of the sun. The sacred fire of Vesta was permanently extinguished in A.D. 391 when Emperor Theodosius I had the fire extinguished to stamp out pagan worship. Less than a hundred years later, Rome fell.

In The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, Gibbons uses a few more words to explain this process, but why mess with tradition?

As Western civilization evolved it was private property rights that gave birth to the more modern conceptions of individual liberty, and unalienable Natural Rights that preexist and transcend government. While people may no longer engage in a domestic religion or literally worship the sacred fire of the family hearth, the sacred fire has become symbolic of human liberty. The flame of liberty or the torch of liberty are metaphors often used to give meaning to the power, importance, and fragility of human liberty. Fire, if neglected, can easily be extinguished. It needs to be fed and nourished.

The men that fought and won the American Revolution epitomize the strength, power, and fragility of human liberty. The flame of liberty was kindled and nurtured, until it became a torch. The torch of liberty was passed on from James Otis to John and Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, to name a few of the revolutionaries, until it became a brushfire that spread wildly.

Through greed, apathy, ignorance, corruption, cowardice, and neglect, the flame of liberty, that sacred fire, has dwindled to a mere flickering light, that may be extinguished in America, and across the globe.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Sacred Fire appeared first on LewRockwell.

The other day, to celebrate one more atrocious piece of legislation that slapped average Americans in their already battered faces, members of your Congress waved a flag in celebration. Well, that’s par for the course, you might say. After all, our “representatives” love to cloak themselves in false patriotism.

But they didn’t wave the American flag. Old Glory. The Stars and Stripes. The one that once still waved over the land of the free and the home of the brave. By the way, the guy who wrote our National Anthem, Francis Scott Key, would probably have reconsidered his own patriotism if he’d lived to see his grandson imprisoned by the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. No, our “representatives” were waving the Ukrainian flag. It’s the most popular flag out there. Well, the LGBQT+ model is pretty chic as well. The last known Americans to be waving an American flag in the Capitol are now sitting in prison, victims of the draconian January 6 political prosecutions. Don’t even ask what happens to anyone daring to wave a Confederate flag.

I saw one photo of a couple of blonde bimbos (yeah, I’m sure that’s a hopelessly sexist term now, but I’m just an old White guy), who were hamming it up in a shared selfie, with the Ukrainian flags waving in the background. They looked for all the world like the interchangeable pretty White chicks (there’s another sexist term- consider it a bonus) that litter the landscape of the digital world, with their duck faces and proud hands on hips. But these weren’t anonymous young women trying to get clicks from strangers. They were allegedly members of Congress. Well, why not? They can’t very well be any dumber than AOC. Or Sheila Jackson Lee. I don’t think there are any Americans dumber than Sheila Jackson Lee. And yet, she “represents” them. The ultimate Affirmative Action politician.

The deal they were celebrating was a real monstrosity. To be fair, pretty much every deal these cretins agree to is a monstrosity. But this was a super monstrosity. Our “representatives” approved giving $95 billion to the penis-piano playing former comedian turned leading Zionist in Ukraine, as well as more for our “favorite” ally Israel. I think they also included another disastrous proposal, that of outlawing the social media platform TikTok, in there as well. But nothing for border security. Our border security. Not that it would have done anything, anyhow, because Republicucks have often demanded that the Democrats includes some meaningless “border security” provision in the especially bad laws they reluctantly agree to.

But this time, the Stupid Party- now more stupid than ever- didn’t even bother with the pointless semantics about “border security.” And when Thomas Massie, one of the few good ones in Congress, published video of his colleagues cheering and waving the Ukrainian flag on the floor of Congress, he was threatened with a fine of $500 by the House Sergeant at Arms. Gee, you think they’d be proud. After all, they sure looked excited. More excited than the drunks used to look on the floor of the party conventions, with their ridiculous hats and streamers. But that was back in America 1.0, when things were more innocent. I don’t know if you can get drunk on the floor of Congress any more (though Nancy Pelosi may have had something to say about that), but some recent video proved you can have gay sex there. Not sure about straight sex.

The deal was made possible through the cooperation of the RINOs, the most unprincipled bunch on earth. Led by “MAGA Mike” Johnson, who is proving to be an even more cucky House Speaker than Kevin McCarthy. When Johnson was a single twenty five year old, he “adopted” a fifteen year old Black male. Hmm. Sounds very Dennis Hastert-like. I mean, if any twenty five year old man wanted to “adopt” a fifteen year old girl, would society have any doubts as to what his motivation was? But Donald Trump loves Johnson. He loves all RINOs. He loves them even more than I love hippos. Trump recently endorsed some horrible candidate running against Blake Masters, who was one of the victims of the 2022 vote fraud. But Trump never endorses people like Masters, who seem to support his MAGA platform.

One of the other few seeming “good guys” is Senator Rand Paul. While’s he’s never measured up to his legendary father, he has been a voice of non-interventionism. At the same time that Congress was capitulating to the actor/tyrant Zelinsky yet again, Paul was recorded as saying “everything” is on the table in terms of spending cuts, including “entitlements.” We all know what is meant by “entitlements.” If you were “Woke,” you’d call it a dog whistle. That would be the money they withheld from every employee for Social Security and Medicare. And the Republicucks clearly don’t want to pay it back. Only a party run by stupidity could make cutting that their top priority. But it is. They can’t stop from mentioning it. Not only is it wrong, but incredibly stupid political strategy. Well, it is the Stupid Party.

At a time when the battle between Zionism and the empowered anti-White masses is reaching a crescendo on college campuses, it’s clear that at least in Congress, the Zionists are still in charge. Back in the 1980s, one of the really good Republicans serving in Congress, Rep. Paul Findley, was defeated for reelection thanks to the power of AIPAC, which was incensed over his persistent criticism of Israel. Findley wrote a book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, which was published in 1985. Naturally, Findley’s book changed nothing, and his political career was over (although he did live to be ninety eight). Looking at the present situation, where for the first time ever, there is actually a public discussion about Zionism, somewhere Findley must be smiling.

I don’t know how they’ll manage to do it, but somehow Zionism will remain the predominant orthodoxy in America, while the anti-White agenda marches on simultaneously. They’ve sold Double Think before. Maybe they can distract them with the Ukrainian mess by suggesting that Zelensky is partially Black. The Man, of course, has been covering that up. They need to have a nonwhite victim, if they’re going to sell Putin as a “White Supremacist.” But the Zionists have taken off the gloves. Ilhan Omar’s daughter has been suspended from college or something. Shit is getting real. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has gone off the rails, claiming that those who think 9/11 was an inside job or that we never went to the moon “hate America.” That phony “conservative” outlet has fully discredited themselves. And that’s a good thing.

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Earlier this week, Candace Owens announced that she had converted to Catholicism. Posting about her conversion on social media, she wrote:

Recently, I made the decision to go home. There is of course so much more that went into this decision and that I plan to share in the future. But for now, praise be to God for His gentle, but relentless guiding of my heart toward Truth.

For those who have been following her career, this was hardly a surprise given the fact that she has been more and more vocal about the Kingship of Christ and her husband, George Farmer, has spoken publicly about his conversion to Catholicism and his affinity for Tradition. While her conversion did seem inevitable, it was a joyful thing indeed to learn that a new soul had entered the Roman Catholic Church, especially given her platform and influence.

Recently, there have been a number of high-profile conversions, including former X-rated actresses who have been vocal about their massive change of heart and desire to make amends for their former professions, as well as Tammy Peterson, the wife of Jordan Peterson. In addition, despite the continual shenanigans that emanate from Rome and the fact that the Church under Pope Francis is less than appealing—to put it mildly—there does seem to be a growing trend of public figures heading toward Rome.

Why is this the case? Why would someone like Candace Owens convert to Catholicism, and in such a public way? Of course, I do not know Owens, and I will not pretend here to psychologize or offer any insight into her personal reasons. However, I believe her religious trajectory—something she has been public about—offers some insight into why someone like her, or anyone for that matter, would convert to the Church of Rome despite the myriad problems in the Church today.

Owens is a highly intelligent person who demonstrates a keen moral sense. She also seems to be somewhat of an absolutist about her beliefs; she has never been one to present her opinions in a squishy or relativistic manner. In addition, she has demonstrated a fighting spirit and a fearlessness when tackling topics that others find radioactive.

She was an early critic of the Covid regime, which I found very refreshing, and she went to war with the Covidians long before it was fashionable to do so. When the Black Lives Matter mania gripped the world during the 2020 Summer of Love, she had no issue warring with race hustlers and Marxists despite her own ethnicity, which sparked even more outrage at her. She took a stand against the Covid jab, even though her former colleague Ben Shapiro had essentially called anyone who wasn’t jabbed a “dope.” She took her anti-Big Pharma crusade even further and questioned the proliferation of vaccines as such.

When the Israel-Palestine conflict erupted last October, she went against the predominant conservative narrative and would not bend the knee to the Israel lobby, yet again in defiance of the intensifying position of her colleagues at The Daily Wire. Not only did she take a stance against the pro-Israel mania—something seen as heretical by most of the American Right—she engaged various Rabbis and Jewish spokesmen in the public forum.

Now, it should be noted just how difficult it would be to persist with all these positions, constantly engaged in conflict with her peers and strong cultural forces. As tough as Owens may be, she is still human, and I imagine that, like all good mothers, she has a tender heart. It doesn’t matter who you are; if you are constantly engaged in this type of information warfare with millions of eyes judging your every move, there is no way to avoid feeling the pressure substantially.

Yet, through all of her commentating and opining, she remained strong and did not lose her head. We have never seen her “go off the deep end”—despite what her critics say—and her reasoning skills and rhetoric have only sharpened and become more surgical as time has passed. She did all of this, mind you, without the help of sanctifying grace, which is a miracle in and of itself.

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di Francesco Simoncelli

Un brutto posto è dove siamo diretti. Tanto per cominciare cerchiamo di capire come ci arriveremo. Il periodo 1950-1980 non ha rappresentato grossi grattacapi in termini di problemi economici, ma poi è arrivato il successivo periodo di 40 anni: l'arco temporale 1980-2020 avrebbe dovuto essere il periodo più ricco della nostra storia, invece s'è rivelato un grande flop. Nonostante alcune delle più grandi innovazioni tecnologiche mai realizzate, i tassi di crescita sono diminuiti, i salari reali sono rimasti stagnanti e, secondo quasi tutti i confronti e gli indicatori, le cose sono andate male. “Cosa è andato storto?” è la domanda più importante nell’economia moderna. Le banche centrali non hanno stimolato abbastanza l'economia? Gli ultimi 40 anni sono stati il teatro dei più grandi stimoli monetari mai visti. Sfortuna? Dove? Come? Nel XIII secolo la peste colpì l’Europa e sterminò circa un terzo della popolazione; il Covid è stato un lieve fastidio al confronto. Non ci sono state grandi pestilenze negli ultimi 40 anni, nessun vero disastro climatico e nessun meteorite si è schiantato sulla Terra. Allora, cosa è andato storto? Un’ipotesi: la maggior parte del progresso degli ultimi 150 anni è venuto da macchine alimentate a combustibili fossili e quella svolta potrebbe aver raggiunto un punto naturale di declino dell’utilità marginale. Avanzamenti tecnologici in termini informatici? Certo, ma hanno generato solo guadagni marginali e incrementali.

Ciononostante non spiega ancora il sopraccitato rallentamento e certamente non spiega come i guadagni, così com'è stato, siano finiti maggiormente nelle tasche delle élite. Ed è forse più che una coincidenza che suddetto periodo abbia visto anche un’impennata mozzafiato nel numero delle stesse élite: dottorandi, ingegneri e scienziati, ma anche ingegneri sociali, policymaker e politici. Tutti si sono messi all'opera per cercare di migliorare le condizioni materiali della nostra vita. Hanno fallito tutti? Oppure il peso di così tanti miglioramenti ha trascinato al ribasso l’intera economia?

Una delle caratteristiche più insidiose delle linee di politica statali è che i “miglioramenti” sono ostinatamente duri a scomparire: le guerre vanno avanti per anni – a costi sconcertanti – anche se non c’è alcun guadagno all’orizzonte. Intere carriere vengono spese per combattere la Guerra alla droga, o la Guerra alla povertà, ad esempio, senza alcuna vittoria. Agenzie, progetti, commissioni, dipartimenti... l'elenco si allunga piuttosto che restringersi. I politici annunciano la creazione di una squadra destinata a fronteggiare l'emergenza e ottiene titoli, spazi per uffici e un budget. Dopo un po' non se ne sente più parlare; diventa eterna come il peccato, mentre le luci della ribalta si spostano sulla prossima crociata.

Questa è una caratteristica dello stato e del relativo apparato burocratico. Col passare del tempo la palude di programmi inutili, scrocconi, clientelisti e di crociate idiote diventa sempre più profonda. Imprenditori, riformatori e aspiranti innovatori lottano nel fango delle normative e annegano nella melma della politica.

QUANDO LE ÈLITE AL COMANDO RAGGIUNGONO LA DATA DI SCADENZA

Le élite controllano i media e la tendenza, in ogni sistema politico stabile, è quella in cui “la casta politica” manipola le leggi e il governo in modo da aumentare la propria ricchezza e potere. Il processo viene interrotto solo da qualche evento importante che le élite non possono controllare. Guerre o rivoluzioni hanno questo effetto – spesso cambiano le persone al vertice della piramide sociale, o le uccidono. Prima della rivoluzione francese, ad esempio, l’aristocrazia si era concessa privilegi esorbitanti – inclusa l’esenzione dalle tasse – permettendole di vivere nel lusso mentre la maggior parte delle persone era sull’orlo della fame. Le élite avevano il sistema che volevano e pensavano che sarebbe durato per sempre... solo che poi hanno tagliato loro la testa.

L’altra cosa che può forzare un grande cambiamento è una crisi finanziaria. L’iperinflazione cancella il valore dei crediti esistenti, sconvolge i rapporti tra chi ha/chi non ha e distrugge le promesse e le pretese delle élite. In una democrazia, ad esempio, queste ultime possono ancora promettere ricompense agli elettori, ma ormai la realtà è evidente a tutti: “Non ci sono più i soldi... degli altri”. Senza grossi shock, le persone al comando rimangono al comando e continuano a derubare tutti gli altri. I ricchi diventano ancora più ricchi; i poveri diventano (relativamente) più poveri. E il malcontento cresce. I 40 anni, dal 1980 al 2020, che avrebbero dovuto essere i più gloriosi della storia umana, si sono trasformati in un periodo sconcertante di patetica sottoperformance.

“Che cosa è andato storto?” è la domanda sul tavolo. Eppure gli economisti mainstream non se la pongono mai, perché sollevarla metterebbe in dubbio la loro competenza. Sono stati al posto di guida negli ultimi 40 anni; il fosso in cui si trova ora l'autobus economico è quello in cui hanno contribuito anche loro a farci finire. Fanno parte della “casta politica”, o dell’élite manageriale, che ha guadagnato tanto negli ultimi 40 anni. In Argentina sono loro le persone di cui Milei vuole ridurre la ricchezza e il potere; in confronto la roccia di Sisifo dev'essere stata un gioco da ragazzi.

La storia, quindi, per quanto possa mutare fa sempre rima con sé stessa e il periodo attuale non è diverso: una guerra e una rivoluzione sono in corso e stanno cambiando le componenti al vertice. Quando la gestione di un'azienda si rivela incompetente dopo l'ultima promessa di rimettere le cose a posto, non si può far altro che cambiare la classe manageriale e sostituirla con personale competente. I dipendenti nel frattempo soffrono per la mancanza di una guida che porti stabilità e prosperità alla “grande famiglia” dell'azienda e spesso vengono chiamati a compiere sacrifici. Ovviamente di durata temporanea. Vi ricorda qualcosa? Più che essere andato storto qualcosa, potremmo dire che l'avidità, l'arrivismo e la scarsa competenza di alcuni personaggi nella sfera pubblica hanno accelerato il processo di disintegrazione socioeconomico di cui parlava Mises quando, in Planned Chaos, descrisse la deriva che intraprende la società quando il linguaggio base attraverso il quale parla viene costantemente contaminato: i prezzi.

I PREZZI: CINGHIA DI TRASMISSIONE DEL MALESSERE ECONOMICO

La manomissione delle normali fluttuazioni dei prezzi è portata avanti tramite due fattori principali. Il primo è la creazione di denaro, ovvero troppe unità monetarie rispetto ai beni disponibili. Le banche centrali di tutto il mondo hanno inondato il sistema con valuta fiat sin dalla crisi del 2008 e la crisi sanitaria del 2020 ha fatto deragliare ancor di più questa tendenza disastrosa. Gli stimoli monetari e fiscali che hanno caratterizzato quel periodo hanno rappresentato la classica goccia che ha fatto traboccare il vaso. L’altra causa principale è la carenza, o l’interruzione, delle risorse chiave, tra cui petrolio ed energia. Tenete presente che la guerra in Ucraina ha tagliato fuori l’Occidente da ampie porzioni del mercato russo e la guerra a Gaza ha portato gruppi in Medio Oriente, come gli Houthi, a impedire a una moltitudine di navi mercantili e petroliere di attraversare il Mar Rosso.

Di per sé ciascuno di questi eventi sembra una piccola minaccia per le catene di approvvigionamento mondiali, ma quando si accumulano gli effetti essi diventano dannosi. Per ora il fattore più importante è l’aumento dei prezzi dell’energia, perché questa è la risorsa chiave che consente a tutta l’agricoltura e al settore manifatturiero di funzionare. Ogni volta che i prezzi del petrolio aumentano, vedrete aumentare i prezzi di tutto il resto. Questo è il motivo esatto per cui l’amministrazione Biden ha continuato a vendere sul mercato le riserve petrolifere strategiche negli ultimi due anni. Era il loro modo di abbassare i prezzi del petrolio al fine di mitigare o nascondere gli effetti maggiori dell’inflazione. Ora che tali riserve devono essere ricostruite e il petrolio acquistato (a un prezzo molto più alto), i prezzi mondiali dell'oro nero, e i prezzi al consumo in particolare, si stanno nuovamente impennando.

Finora infatti i prezzi alimentari hanno mostrato un aumento a doppia cifra e anche se l’IPC fa registrare un “rallentamento” dell’inflazione complessiva, ciò non significa che i prezzi scenderanno tanto presto. Quando i media generalisti pubblicizzano un ribasso nell'indice dei prezzi al consumo, quello che di solito non menzionano è che tale statistica rappresenta solo l’aumento dei prezzi: un IPC più basso non significa che i costi delle cose sugli scaffali scenderanno. L’inflazione dei prezzi è cumulativa. Ciò significa che l’aumento dei prezzi alimentari non scomparirà, solo che non sta aumentando tanto velocemente come prima. Non è un caso, poi, trovare articoli sul Corriere come questo in cui la colpa viene addossata principalmente “all’avidità”: le aziende fanno pagare troppo i prodotti alimentari. In altre parole, dare la colpa alle imprese e lasciare fuori del tutto banca centrale e stato. Finora non ci sono prove concrete a sostegno della cosiddetta Greedflation. Ogni azienda ha spese uniche, spese generali uniche, costi industriali unici, controllo di qualità unico e costi delle risorse unici; i profitti di un’azienda saranno diversi da quelli di un’altra azienda. Detto questo, ci sono costi universali che sono direttamente correlati all’aumento dei prezzi, indipendentemente dall’azienda, e che includono energia, manodopera e materie prime.

Il PPI è molto più alto oggi rispetto al 2020, insieme ai prezzi del petrolio e del gas. Ogni risorsa di base utilizzata dalle aziende per realizzare prodotti è aumentata di valore e quindi costa di più produrla. L’agricoltura in particolare è fortemente influenzata dai prezzi del petrolio, nonché dai prezzi dei fertilizzanti e delle attrezzature agricole, per non parlare dell’aumento dei costi della manodopera. I media generalisti vogliono farvi credere che i prezzi alti dei prodotti alimentari presto saranno un ricordo del passato e, per ingannarvi, devono convincervi che la causa è qualcosa che può essere “controllato” o “regolamentato”. Non vi è alcuna indicazione che i costi agricoli smetteranno di aumentare nel prossimo futuro, quindi ciò significa che ogni anno il cibo costerà di più rispetto all’anno precedente.

L'IPC è uno strumento per misurare gli aumenti medi dei prezzi di prodotti e servizi in un ampio spettro. Molte di queste voci non sono necessarie e quindi diluiscono l’inflazione effettiva che vediamo nelle spese quotidiane. Se dovessimo considerare la media delle necessità quotidiane, come immobili, energia, cibo, ecc., l’indice dei prezzi al consumo sarebbe molto più alto. E infatti questo punto è stato dimostrato anche empiricamente da un recente paper di Marijn Bolhuis, Judd Cramer, Karl Schulz e Larry Summers. Per quanto questa scoperta non sia niente di nuovo nell'ambiente accademico, gli autori del documento sopraccitato hanno costruito una versione alternativa dell'IPC che includesse “pagamenti degli interessi sui mutui, pagamenti degli interessi per prestiti auto e per altri consumi non immobiliari, e prezzi di leasing per veicoli”. Ciò che hanno scoperto è che la loro misura alternativa del tasso d'inflazione ha raggiunto il picco intorno al 18% nel novembre 2022 ed è rimasta notevolmente più in alto rispetto a quanto abbiano mostrato i calcoli ufficiali dell’IPC.

Gli autori di tale paper hanno mostrato che la loro misura alternativa dell’inflazione dei prezzi è in grado di spiegare perché la fiducia dei consumatori rimane bassa. Inoltre hanno mostrato che questo non è un fenomeno esclusivo degli Stati Uniti, dato che forniscono prove provenienti da 10 Paesi che le variazioni dei tassi d'interesse possono spiegare le fluttuazioni della fiducia dei consumatori che altri indicatori economici non possono spiegare. Indipendentemente dal fatto che si pensi che l’IPC debba includere i tassi d'interesse e/o i prezzi degli asset, è chiaro che i consumatori tengono conto di questi costi quando valutano il costo della vita e descrivono le loro opinioni sullo stato dell’economia.

MISMATCH DOMANDA/OFFERTA

Abbiamo ricordato di come l’inflazione dei prezzi sia principalmente il risultato dell’offerta di denaro che cresce più velocemente della domanda, ma anche la domanda e l’offerta dei beni fluttuano nel tempo il che si traduce in cambiamenti nei prezzi (relativi) e nelle quantità. Tali cambiamenti sono diventati più marcati dall'inizio dei lockdown, i quali hanno segnato un'accelerazione della de-globalizzazione e un accorciamento delle catene di approvvigionamento. Gli Stati Uniti, in particolar modo, hanno iniziato a rimpatriare a ritmo battente quelle società che in passato avevano delocalizzato altrove (soprattutto in Cina) e a incentivare l'importazione di capitali finanziari. In breve, hanno capito che la guerra finanziaria contro il resto del mondo stava entrando in una nuova fase e l'indipendenza energetica/finanziaria sarebbe diventata cruciale per ottenere un vantaggio strategico. Il periodo pre-2016, il quale aveva portato a una distensione mondiale e a un allungamento delle supply chain, è finito e con esso adesso le supply chain si stanno accorciando. Questo processo porterà inevitabilmente degli scossoni di prezzo improvvisi all'interno dei mercati finanziari mondiali, soprattutto in quello delle commodity e materie prime.

Anche qui, “Che cosa è andato storto?” In parole povere, la ZIRP delle banche centrali ha alimentato un mercato sintetico (derivati) nel settore delle commodity che ha creato (artificialmente) un'offerta illusoria a fronte di una domanda del sottostante in organica salita. Nel momento in cui il treno delle banche centrali ha staccato la spina alla linea di politica dei tassi a zero, l'offerta illusoria ha smesso d'essere tenuta in vita artificialmente e ha iniziato il suo percorso di doveroso ravvedimento con la realtà. Al contrario la domanda del sottostante ha continuato a salire in modo naturale. Inutile dire che man mano che viene a galla l'ingegneria finanziaria del passato e i player coinvolti fanno i salti mortali per non finire a gambe all'aria, ecco che i movimenti nervosi dei prezzi diventeranno una norma che ci accompagnerà nel tempo a venire.

A tal proposito, quindi, non sorprende più di tanto vedere prezzi del caffè o del cacao che schizzano alle stelle. Né sorprende vedere l'oro fare nuovi massimi. La radice di tutti i mali in questa storia è solo una: il mercato degli eurodollari. Per quanto le banche centrali abbiano la loro parte di colpe nel caos economico che si sta dipanando oggigiorno, la riserva frazionaria e la leva finanziaria cui è stato sottoposto tal mercato hanno rappresentato un danno ben peggiore. L'abuso degli eurodollari, a scapito degli Stati Uniti usati come garanzia, ha creato una selva intricata di titoli tossici che adesso vagano per i bilanci dei vari player finanziari del mondo i quali pregano (letteralmente) di non essere loro ad avere questa immondizia qualora dovessero scattare gli allarmi di una prossima criticità sistemica. Avere flussi di capitali finanziari in entrata, rimpatriare industrie strategiche, accorciare la filiera industriale, ecc., tutte queste mosse sono un vantaggio non indifferente alla proverbiale race to the bottom che stiamo vendendo. Impediscono d'avere forti contraccolpi nel momento in cui i vari vasi di vermi vengono scoperchiati. Ecco perché in Europa si sta parlando di come affrontare il “problema” dei risparmi europei che volano disperati negli Stati Uniti per trovare sicurezza. Solo che la “soluzione” proposta prevede Letta e il potenziamento dei criteri ESG.

Si ha la CERTEZZA che l'UE è morta quando la nuova riunione ha come ordine del giorno il documento di Letta in cui si vuole "armonizzare il mercato dei capitali europei in modo da fermare i risparmi che volano negli USA". Come? Potenziando i criteri ESG.????https://t.co/B8QHx0qw0F

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) April 20, 2024

A parte l'unica azienda olandese che è coinvolta nella filiera dei semiconduttori, l'industria europea ormai non ha niente che produca valore aggiunto. L'unica cosa che sa fare è rubarlo agli altri attraverso la regolamentazione. Ma questo a sua volta è un disincentivo a fare affari nel continente, spalancando invece le porte ai Paesi arabi, asiatici e africani. Il sintomo di questa malattia è evidente nel seguente grafico, il quale ci mostra  come l'euro abbia perso appetibilità a livello internazionale come mezzo di saldo commerciale.

Ed essendo anche un Paese importatore di materie prime, diventa ulteriormente chiaro il motivo per cui le fluttuazioni violente nel mercato delle commodity siano destinate a rimanere alte. Oltre ai meri scopi industriali qui si tratta sostanzialmente di tornare ad avere qualcosa di tangibile a fronte di un mercato finanziario che in passato ha creato talmente tante illusioni (nell'offerta) da impedire di capire a un certo punto cosa fosse vero e cosa no. Di conseguenza la narrativa a supporto della salita dell'oro, dei metalli preziosi e delle commodity in generale che li raffigura come una protezione contro l'inflazione dei prezzi, è incompatibile con quanto sta accadendo oggi e con quanto accaduto anche in passato: non abbiamo una crisi monetaria bensì una finanziaria, quindi la percezione di riserva di valore è quel fattore che sta determinando la salita degli asset sopraccitati. Altrimenti non avremo il dollaro, nonché i T-bond, che si apprezzano e che rappresentano altresì strumenti finanziari indispensabili per superare la tempesta in atto. Forse è proprio con il passaggio all'SOFR e alla conseguente contrazione del mercato dei “dollari ombra” che gli USA hanno ricoperto infine il ruolo di nazione con la valuta di riserva mondiale: adesso chiunque voglia accedere a un mercato finanziario e dei capitali liquido deve comprare dollari; adesso chi vuole proteggere la propria divisa dalle fluttuazioni violente nei mercati dei cambi deve vendere titoli di stato americani oppure usarli come collaterale per ottenere prestiti. Niente più pasti gratis dal sistema bancario ombra.

E questo ci riporta al discorso delle commodity, perché rappresentano una via di fuga da un sistema al collasso. Nonostante la spesa in deficit dello zio Sam rappresenti una criticità per il Paese a livello fiscale e di tenuta dei conti, i titoli del Tesoro sono relativamente scarsi se si osservano le cose a livello internazionale e di un sistema finanziario che per decenni ha fatto ricorsi ai finanziamenti a tassi ridicoli per operare. In assenza di questa opzione bisogna accontentarsi di qualcosa che sia tangibile e abbia usabilità nel mondo reale, non un titolo alla cui base non c'è sottostante credibile. A tal proposito anche Bitcoin rientra in questa categoria, data la certezza matematica con la quale funziona il suo protocollo e l'immutabilità della sua blockchain. Per ricordarlo, adesso gli investitori non vanno cercando una protezione contro l'inflazione dei prezzi, ma una riserva di valore credibile che permetta di avere per le mani qualcosa di concreto in un mondo finanziario che deve ripulirsi da decenni di distorsioni, contorsioni e artifici vari. Nel frattempo il comparto industriale deve anch'esso sopravvivere e data l'estensione che è arrivato nel tempo a incarnare, avrà bisogno di input la cui domanda/offerta deve riallinearsi con la realtà.

Tutto ciò è sostanzialmente alla base del rialzo marcato dei prezzi di Bitcoin, delle commodity e dei metalli preziosi. Di conseguenza, a parità di domanda, bisogna aspettarsi ulteriori squeeze nell'offerta delle commodity, come ci ricorda anche HSBC.

Infatti, dopo caffè e cacao, il prossimo candidato per un'impennata dei prezzi potrebbe essere lo stagno. Come il nichel e altre materie prime, lo stagno è soggetto a forti short squeeze e i trader lo hanno scoperto nel 2022 dopo che un evento simile ha interrotto le negoziazioni del nichel sull’LME. La riduzione dell'offerta avviene in un momento in cui le scorte di stagno sono crollate del 47% quest'anno a 4.045 tonnellate. Il prezzo spot del metallo viene scambiato con un premio rispetto al contratto futures a tre mesi, producendo una struttura nota come backwardation. Una situazione simile l'abbiamo sperimentata negli ultimi due anni con l'impennata del litio, la cui domanda, però, è stata pompata ad hoc dal chiacchiericcio Green sulle auto elettriche. Ora che la bolla di quest'ultime si sta sgonfiando, soprattutto perché i criteri ESG vengono abbandonati da Wall Street, il prezzo del litio sta subendo anch'esso una correzione.

Ohibò! Senza più i tassi a zero le scelte industriali scellerate non sono più perseguibili a cuor leggero.https://t.co/u7PulBEV9E

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) April 16, 2024

Discorso diverso per il comparto energetico, soprattutto i combustibili fossili e l'uranio, dove quest'ultimo è il “diamante grezzo” di quello che si prospetta essere la vera energia pulita del futuro.

SOBRIETÀ FISCALE = DISINTOSSICAZIONE DIFFICILE DA ACCETTARE

La guerra tra le élite, l'azzardo morale per sopravvivere alle sconsideratezze economiche del passato, i tradimenti usando l'eurodollaro e il caos nelle catene di approvvigionamento sono tutti legati da un filo rosso che rende la spesa in deficit degli Stati Uniti l'unico parametro che tiene ancora in vita i suoi aguzzini. Ecco perché c'è stata lotta serrata e senza esclusioni di colpi affinché venisse approvato l'ultimo pacchetto di aiuti di guerra. L'amministrazione Biden, così come il Congresso degli Stati Uniti, è infiltrato da personaggi che lavorano contro la nazione e sanno quali leve muovere durante le situazioni di emergenza. Quella di oggi è una situazione di super emergenza per loro, dato che il rubinetto monetario che alimentava il flusso degli eurodollari è stato chiuso. Powell, infatti, sta forzando sobrietà monetaria alla Federal Reserve, cercando al tempo stesso di forzarla anche a livello fiscale, ma quest'ultimo è un compito di gran lunga più arduo di quello che sta portando avanti col suo “higher for longer”.

Matt Gaetz warns about a motion to vacate Speaker Johnson. GOP could possibly lose Speakership to Democrat.

"In a one-seat majority, there could be 1-3 of my GOP colleagues who would take a bribe in order to deprive the GOP of our majority." pic.twitter.com/mOVYn5Wzp7

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 19, 2024

Più gli Stati Uniti vengono impantanati in un conflitto estero, più saranno costretti a spendere dal punto di vista fiscale e quindi far circolare dollari e T-bill/T-bond in giro per il mondo. L'espansione dei BRICS per permettere alla Cina di allungare l'elenco di nazioni da cui poter attingere in caso di crisi, la decrescita volontaria dell'Europa in una sorta di modalità stand-by e il saccheggio della propria classe media per sopravvivere al cambiamento epocale introdotto dal 2022 dagli USA, rappresentano una riorganizzazione dettata dalla disperazione e dal panico. Bisogna ricordare, per l'ennesima volta, che i confini nazionali servono solo a giustificare davanti alla popolazione il loro uso come “scudi umani fiscali”. A tal proposito la scuola pubblica è un'ottima fucina per il lavaggio del cervello. Sopra la loro testa c'è una cupola mafiosa che usa la popolazione come carne da cannone nei propri giochi geopolitici e come ogni cupola mafiosa che si rispetti essa è composta da clan/famiglie che possono finire in lotta tra loro.

Quindi non sorprende se a volte un personaggio pubblico o un partito politico che sembravano dalla “nostra parte” fanno inversione di marcia e abbracciano nuove idee. Le alleanze vengono strette per essere rispettate... almeno all'inizio. Poi il tempo e le circostanze dettano il passo. Il punto è che le persone che muovono i personaggi pubblici (addetti alla comunicazione) non hanno pagine su Wikipedia, né hanno bisogno di ottenere visibilità. Sono quelle stesse forze che, ad esempio, stanno lavorando per disinnescare un'escalation in Medio Oriente. Infatti la recente risposta dell'Iran all'attacco di una sua sede diplomatica in Siria da parte di Israele è il perfetto esempio di guerra asimmetrica. Le regole d'ingaggio sono cambiate, far sciamare droni è più economico, ciononostante non sono cambiate le manovre sotterranee per evitare guai più grossi a seguito di errori di valutazioni. Quando, ad esempio, venne ucciso Soleimani la rappresaglia iraniana si scagliò su truppe statunitensi di stanza in Iraq; fu un attacco mirato e senza grosso clamore. Un messaggio mafioso. Gli USA compresero, Trump in particolare, di essere stati spinti a fare un passo più lungo della gamba (molto probabilmente dallo stesso Netanyahu) e lasciarono cadere la cosa.

Oggi accade la stessa cosa con gli americani che suggeriscono a Israele di lasciar cadere la cosa, il problema però è che la carriera politica di Netanyahu è agli sgoccioli e l'unica cosa che la tiene in piedi è la sua aggressività bellica. In assenza di nemici, lui è bello che cotto. È un animale all'angolo, potremmo dire, e in quanto tale pericoloso. Per quanto l'opposizione interna al partito di Netanyahu sia un male peggiore (esseno in sintonia con la cricca di Davos), i suoi interessi personali stanno avendo la meglio sulle alleanze. Ricordate che non è un caso che lo stato d'Israele si trovi proprio lì dov'è, dato che è circondato da popoli tanto violenti quanto quello israeliano. Gli attentati terroristici sono stati perpetrati sia dai palestinesi che dagli israeliani, non c'è nessuna verginella illibata in questa storia ma tanta intromissione inglese (come al solito) a scatenare inutili vespai. Temo quindi che l'unica soluzione per Netanyahu sia quella di cercare a tutti i costi l'escalation con l'Iran e un confronto diretto, tirandoci dentro anche gli Stati Uniti che si vedrebbero conseguentemente confrontati con la Cina.

Quest'ultima, infatti, ha interessi economici in Iran e ovviamente farà il possibile per proteggere i propri asset. Interverrà direttamente a quel punto? Probabilmente no, incanalando supporto militare e finanziario in Iran attraverso la Russia. Ciononostante è una pentola a pressione che fischia rumorosamente: la risposta dell'Iran è stata necessaria per non perdere la faccia, ma al contempo testare il sistema di difesa israeliano senza offrire il fianco a un'ulteriore risposta della controparte. Ma dato il contesto storico e la carriera politica di Netanyahu in gioco (e forse non solo quella), c'è da aspettarsi che la polvere ricada a terra da qui in poi? Attualmente i mercati del petrolio stanno scontando un rallentamento delle ostilità, anche perché le guerre sono troppo costose per essere combattute con tassi alti, inflazione dei prezzi alta e prezzi dell’energia alti.

Gli stati produttori di petrolio possono continuare a rallentare la produzione e recuperare i barili perduti con prezzi più alti. Jerome Powell ha ribadito la sua posizione: non c'è alcun motivo per prendere in considerazione un taglio dei tassi in questo contesto. I mercati obbligazionari cominciano a credergli, avendo ormai scontato quasi tutti i tagli dei tassi previsti all'inizio dell'anno. Chissà che a questo punto non sorprenda tutti e prima della fine dell'anno faccia entrare in scena un nuovo rialzo dei tassi. Malgrado ciò sarà felice di mantenere il 5,5% e di continuare a ridurre il bilancio della FED, lasciando al Congresso il compito di correggere il lato fiscale dell’equazione.

CONCLUSIONE

“Cos'è andato storto?” è la domanda che ci siamo posti oggi. Come mai le persone più ricche del mondo, in quello che avrebbe dovuto essere il periodo più ricco della loro storia – 1980-2020 – hanno fatto così pochi progressi e, in realtà, sono regredite in base alla maggior parte dei parametri?

La potatura, così come nel settore botanico, è altrettanto vitale nella vita di tutti i giorni: le imprese vanno a gambe all’aria, gli investimenti falliscono, le persone vengono licenziate, le mogli chiedono il divorzio, i clienti si rivolgono al concorrente, la gente muore. Il rumore delle motoseghe è continuo e i rami non necessari, o improduttivi, vengono tagliati. In un certo senso, l’idea alla base delle politiche statali e delle banche centrali negli ultimi vent’anni e più è stata quella di spegnere le motoseghe. Il legno morto è stato sostenuto da tassi d'interesse artificialmente bassi; le cattive idee sono state finanziate con prestiti al di sotto del tasso d’inflazione; gli “investimenti” senza speranza hanno attirato miliardi di denaro. Non c'era disciplina, nessuna correzione. Con i prezzi fasulli, molto spesso non c’era modo di dire cosa fosse un buon uso del denaro e cosa no.

E l'esempio di potatura e motoseghe non è stato preso a caso. Infatti la prima cosa che viene in mente è l'Argentina, quel Paese che era il più ricco in termini di prodotto interno lordo pro capite verso la fine del diciannovesimo secolo, ma che ora si colloca al sessantatreesimo posto. Non c’è nulla di sorprendente nella spirale discendente in termini di prosperità di cui ha sofferto: è stato il risultato di un ingrandimento ipertrofico dello stato e delle sue agenzie governative. Rispetto ad altri Paesi del Sud America, le amministrazioni dell’Argentina non hanno usato il militarismo per controllare le persone, bensì il controllo burocratico. Invece di un esercito di soldati, gli argentini si trovano di fronte a un esercito di burocrati che vivono a spese del settore produttivo. In nome del cosiddetto “interesse nazionale” ciò che dovrebbe essere gestito dall’impresa privata viene invece controllato dai burocrati. L'inefficienza è diventata dilagante.

Lo stato incoraggia il collettivismo perché crea divisioni all'interno della società e crea una distinzione “amico-nemico”: Divide et impera attraverso la creazione di miti. Uno di questi è l'interventismo statale negli affari economici per aggiustare le cose, ma è ormai evidente il danno causato da questo approccio ideologico. Fortunatamente la più recente elezione di Milei potrebbe spingere l’opinione pubblica verso il libero mercato, ma la strada da percorrere è ancora lunga. Egli infatti sta cercando di ridimensionare l'apparato burocratico e le sue regolamentazioni, oltre a risolvere i problemi monetari della nazione. Smantellare l’esercito di burocrati si rivelerà un compito arduo da portare a termine, perché non è in gioco solo l'interesse di questa casta, ma anche quello di molte persone che non fanno parte di tal sistema di saccheggio ma ne sono comunque vittime e, al tempo tesso, beneficiari. In questa guerra sono usati come scudi umani dai burocrati.

1/ Quattro anni fa ho scritto il pezzo "L'ultimo pilastro" (https://t.co/3VUn4bYSVX) in cui descrivevo la natura del sistema pensionistico e come esso fosse l'ultima colonna a reggere la credibilità/affidabilità dell'apparato statale agli della maggior parte delle persone.

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) April 13, 2024

L’elemento più significativo del periodo 1980-2020 è stato il debito pubblico. Ogni unità monetaria è un segno di vergogna. I baby boomer volevano “qualcosa in cambio di niente” e l’hanno ottenuta lasciando il conto ai loro figli e alle loro figlie. Le generazioni più giovani pagheranno, probabilmente per tutta la vita e probabilmente sotto forma di caos finanziario, guerra e prezzi più alti per beni e servizi forniti ai loro predecessori.

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

 

 

di Jimmy Song

Nelle prime due parti di questa serie ho scritto sugli incentivi a livello individuale e a livello aziendale che vengono alimentati dal denaro fiat. Gli incentivi a livello individuale hanno fatto sì che le persone abbiano preferenze temporali molto più elevate a causa del debito onnipresente e della mancanza di veicoli di risparmio. Gli incentivi a livello aziendale hanno reso la vita comunitaria molto più simile a uno zombi attraverso aziende innaturalmente grandi che hanno sostituito le nostre famiglie.

Oggi esplorerò gli incentivi a livello nazionale, dove il denaro fiat ha forse il suo effetto maggiore. Il suo potere dà agli stati la capacità di diventare più autoritari: guerra e stato sociale pervasivi, uno stato di sorveglianza, uno stato di polizia e tirannie militaristiche e corrotte. Il canto delle sirene del marxismo, del diritto positivista e di una visione autoritaria sono alcuni dei suoi frutti marci. Il potere distruttivo e senza precedenti degli stati negli ultimi 100 anni può essere imputato direttamente al denaro fiat. L'autorità e il potere dello stato si sono espansi ben oltre la vita dell'americano medio e le conseguenze sono state altrettanto mortali.

DA UN GRANDE POTERE DERIVA UNA GRANDE RESPOSNABILITÀ

Il controllo centrale sul denaro è un premio enorme, come il Guanto dell’Infinito nel mondo Marvel, che dà a chi lo detiene il potere e la capacità di rubare a suo piacimento la ricchezza della nazione. Ciò non è ovvio a prima vista perché i meccanismi delle banche centrali non rendono facile comprendere questa dinamica.

Il principale beneficiario di questa oscura capacità di stampare denaro è lo stato, il quale può avere deficit di bilancio molto più facilmente. Dal punto di vista storico questa non è sempre stata la via seguita de facto, poiché contrarre debiti con una moneta sana/onesta è molto costoso. I tassi d'interesse in un libero mercato si aggirano solitamente intorno al 5,6% o più, a seconda delle circostanze economiche e dell’affidabilità creditizia. Indebitarsi con una moneta sana/onesta significa in genere dover restringere i budget o aumentare le tasse in un secondo momento, due cose che non sono popolari. C’è un costo opportunità inerente alla moneta sana/onesta che più o meno scompare con la moneta fiat. In passato le principali battaglie sul bilancio riguardavano i compromessi tra varie voci di bilancio; con la moneta fiat le battaglie sul budget riguardano chi potrà distribuire più posizioni in cerca di rendita.

Avere un deficit significa che non è necessario fare scelte difficili. Invece di dover scegliere tra debito ad alto interesse, aumento delle tasse, o tagli al bilancio, la moneta fiat consente agli stati di evitarli tutti e tre con un’opzione aggiuntiva: la tassazione implicita attraverso l’inflazione sotto forma di debito a basso interesse e facilmente rinnovabile!

La capacità di gestire un deficit non solo butta fuori dalla finestra tutta la disciplina finanziaria, ma consente alle persone al potere di utilizzare quei soldi per ciò a cui esse tendono a interessarsi: rimanere al potere. Di conseguenza proliferano le linee di politica che favoriscono determinati collegi elettorali o addirittura le tangenti. Il potere di controllare il denaro è grande e, a differenza di Spiderman, gli stati non usano questo potere con molta responsabilità, come si può vedere dal modo in cui si gestiscono.

RESTARE AL POTERE

Gli stati, qualunque sia la forma che assumono, hanno come priorità principale l’obiettivo di restare al potere. Ciò è vero non solo per le dittature, ma anche per le democrazie rappresentative; le differenze tra loro sono i mezzi impiegati. Una dittatura può arrestare, incarcerare e uccidere i dissidenti politici; una democrazia rappresentativa può conferire nuovi benefici agli alleati politici. L'obiettivo in ogni caso è neutralizzare le minacce alla continuazione dello stato e rafforzarne i sostenitori.

Ciò che la moneta fiat fa è dare a chi è al potere molte più opzioni. Con una moneta sana/onesta i budget devono essere equilibrati, il che significa che per ogni programma di spesa deve esserci qualche generatore di entrate, come le tasse, per compensare. In generale le tasse sono impopolari e troppe provocano la rivolta della popolazione, cosa che rischia di far perdere potere. La moneta fiat è quindi una manna dal cielo per chi è al potere, poiché evita di rendere esplicite le tasse.

Con questo potere di stampare denaro, chi è ai posti di comando può trarne vantaggio in vari modi, cosa di cui ci occuperemo ora.

DIRITTI SOCIALI

Gli stati possono fornire benefici a vari elettori per ottenerne il sostegno. Ciò può includere qualsiasi cosa, dall’assistenza sanitaria al cibo fino alle pensioni. Infatti dall’avvento della moneta fiat, questi diritti sono diventati comuni in tutto il mondo. Sono generalmente venduti alla popolazione come una forma di compassione e sono molto popolari grazie alla percezione che siano “gratuiti”. La tassazione nascosta dell’inflazione raramente viene riconosciuta, e ancor meno biasimata.

Il problema dello stato sociale è che diventa un costo che cresce in modo incontrollabile. In passato i beneficiari potevano ottenere solo ciò che lo stato poteva permettersi entro un budget limitato. Doveva essere contenuto e bilanciato insieme a molte altre voci di bilancio. Con l'avvento del denaro fiat i benefici dello stato sociale non smettono mai di crescere: vengono finanziati i diritti sociali, i quali entrano nell’economia e fanno aumentare i prezzi di tutto il resto. Presto i benefici dovranno compensare la perdita di potere d’acquisto, cosa che aggiunge ancora più denaro fiat all’economia, facendo salire i prezzi e così via.

La previdenza sociale, ad esempio, è iniziata come un piccolo programma nel bilancio degli Stati Uniti. Attualmente rappresenta il 21% di suddetto bilancio ed è cresciuta enormemente man mano che sono stati concessi benefici sempre più generosi. Programmi simili, come il Medicare, continuano a crescere. I buoni pasto coprivano tre milioni di persone nel 1969, ne coprivano 15 milioni nel 1974 e circa 42 milioni oggi. Abbiamo oltrepassato il punto in cui il voto egoistico non si trasformerà automaticamente in un’escalation nella stampa di denaro.

Il problema è che non c'è volontà politica di fermare i programmi dei diritti sociali perché inducono dipendenza. Le persone dipendenti sono leali e lotteranno affinché lo stato mantenga il suo potere.

L’unico modo in cui questi programmi possono essere smantellati è attraverso l’iperinflazione o attraverso vincoli di bilancio imposti dall’esterno. Quest’ultima misura è imposta da organizzazioni quasi internazionali come il Fondo Monetario Internazionale, la BRI e la Banca Mondiale. E infatti questo sarà l'argomento del prossimo pezzo, ma in caso di iperinflazione tutto precipita nel caos. È un risultato economico fin troppo comune per molti Paesi in tutto il mondo, in particolare quelli che non hanno ottimi rapporti con gli Stati Uniti.

STATO DI POLIZIA

Un altro utilizzo del denaro fiat per il potere politico è il rafforzamento dello stato di polizia. Restare al potere richiede molta vigilanza e l’attenzione agli aspiranti rivoluzionari fa parte dell’agenda di ogni governo. La moneta fiat ha diversi meccanismi per disinnescare il dissenso.

In primo luogo, poiché il denaro fiat è sempre più digitale, gli stati possono limitarne i movimenti per coloro che sono all’opposizione. Congelare i conti bancari è un modo relativamente economico per tagliare i fondi all'opposizione. Molti attivisti per i diritti umani in tutto il mondo hanno sentito la stretta soffocante dello stato sui loro soldi.

In secondo luogo, il denaro fiat può finanziare la sorveglianza diretta. Gli stati hanno molti programmi per monitorare le persone e, dal loro punto di vista, la sorveglianza è un piccolo prezzo da pagare per evitare di essere rovesciati. La sorveglianza è molto difficile e costosa e richiede molta tecnologia e personale, ma poiché è una parte fondamentale per restare al potere, gli stati pagheranno e lo faranno svalutando le proprie valute.

In terzo luogo, il denaro fiat può finanziare più forze di polizia e militari. Queste sono alcune delle voci di bilancio più costose, ma chi è al potere spenderà in deficit per costruirle. Il motivo è che sono un'assicurazione contro qualsiasi tipo di colpo di stato. La capacità di spendere in deficit significa che chi è al potere può creare una polizia e un esercito innaturalmente grandi per imporre il proprio governo. È un uso terribile delle risorse economiche, soprattutto nei luoghi più poveri, ma questo è il potere dato dal denaro fiat, la capacità di spendere le risorse di un intero Paese nel modo desiderato dai leader.

L'esercito può essere utilizzato anche per la conquista al di fuori dei confini del Paese ed è di questo che ci occuperemo ora.

GUERRA

Finora abbiamo discusso i vari modi in cui gli stati possono utilizzare il denaro fiat per difendere le minacce interne contro il loro governo. L’altra grande minaccia è rappresentata dalle minacce esterne, che assumono la forma di altri stati che vogliono rovesciare il Paese.

Difendersi dalle minacce esterne significa rafforzare le forze armate, soprattutto attraverso armi altamente distruttive come le testate nucleari. Molti paesi utilizzano la moneta fiat per rafforzare i propri eserciti.

Mentre il potenziamento militare impedisce scaramucce più piccole, quando scoppia una guerra si verifica una rapida degenerazione verso una guerra totale. Con il denaro fiat la guerra può essere facilmente intensificata attraverso la stampa di denaro, questo perché il normale sostegno al fallimento finanziario non esiste più. Dato che essa rimuove le normali remore finanziarie, le guerre generalmente coinvolgono le economie di interi Paesi, pertanto vengono spesso intraprese finché una delle parti non viene completamente distrutta.

Lo abbiamo visto in entrambe le guerre mondiali, dove vennero impiegate tutte le risorse di un’economia per alimentare lo sforzo bellico e distruggere una parte significativa della civiltà.

RICERCA DI RENDITE

L’uso per eccellenza del denaro fiat nella lotta per restare al potere è la corruzione. Di solito pensiamo che essa vada nella direzione opposta, cioè che il settore privato corrompa i funzionari governativi per ottenere favori speciali. E infatti ciò accade ancora, ma ciò che fanno gli stati è per molti aspetti peggiore: usano la moneta fiat per comprare voti. In un certo senso i diritti sociali sono una forma di ciò, ma più efficace è portare sempre più persone nello stato stesso.

Soprattutto nei Paesi con disoccupazione cronica, dare posti di lavoro agli elettori è un modo molto più efficace per garantire la lealtà. Se combinato con l’imperativo morale di assumersi maggiori responsabilità, gli stati possono crescere molto anche solo in termini di personale. Ad esempio, circa un terzo della popolazione attiva del Libano è impiegata a livello pubblico. C'è da stupirsi se soffrano di iperinflazione?

La maggior parte di queste persone vengono ricompensate più per la loro lealtà che per le funzioni che svolgono per lo stato, quindi possono essere giustamente descritte come cercatori di rendite.

STATO IPERTROFICO

Nella seconda parte di questa serie ho mostrato come il denaro fiat alimenta la crescita delle grandi aziende. La stessa dinamica potenzia la crescita dello stato, tranne che al posto delle banche commerciali che concedono ingenti prestiti a quest'ultimo, c'è la banca centrale. La dinamica è tanto più potente in quanto lo stato è un monopolio e non vi è alcuna necessità di realizzare profitti.

Lo stato cresce come un cancro, ben oltre i livelli necessari per adempiere alle funzioni che gli sono state assegnate. L’accesso al denaro è ancora maggiore rispetto a quello per le società e, quindi, gli stati crescono a passi da gigante attraverso meccanismi diversi. Il denaro fiat è il fertilizzante su un campo fresco che viene invaso dalle erbacce dello stato.

Il primo e più ovvio modo in cui gli stati crescono è assumendosi maggiori responsabilità. Come vedremo, esiste un imperativo morale a fornire soluzioni a tutti i problemi, pertanto le responsabilità che si assegna diventano sempre più grandi. Una responsabilità assunta, come quella di creare energia sufficiente per il Paese, diventa il suo stesso complesso normativo. Tutto ciò che viene percepito come troppo rischioso per il mercato, o antieconomico, è il luogo naturale in cui interviene lo stato, pertanto otteniamo cose come l’assicurazione nazionale contro le alluvioni e l’elettrificazione rurale. Anche se lo stato facesse un buon lavoro, questi programmi perdono molti soldi, perché se ci fosse da guadagnare il settore private c'avrebbe pensato prima. Lo scenario più probabile è che lo stato non solo perda molti soldi, ma svolga anche un pessimo lavoro.

Un secondo modo in cui gli stati crescono è attraverso la nazionalizzazione. Sovvenzionare le grandi aziende zombi è una parte normale di un’economia fiat, ma a un certo punto le loro finanze cadono così profondamente in rosso che non riescono più a ottenere prestiti dalle banche commerciali. A questo punto quando sono necessari ingenti fondi, gli stati spesso intervengono per fornire salvataggi. Un piano di salvataggio governativo significa necessariamente più voce in capitolo da parte dello stato, fino al punto in cui la società ora apparterrà a quest'ultimo. La nazionalizzazione è la fine naturale delle società fiat. I salvataggi, però, non sono l’unica strada verso la nazionalizzazione: se un settore viene percepito in qualche modo come ingiusto, o se c'è una sufficiente emergenza bellica, quell'industria potrebbe essere conquistata con la forza.

Un terzo modo in cui gli stati crescono è attraverso l’ingorgo burocratico. Soprattutto nei Paesi più poveri dove non c’è molta industria, la creazione di posti di lavoro tende a essere una responsabilità che si assume lo stato. Dato che spesso le responsabilità non sono sufficienti, questi diventano lavori di compensazione, l’equivalente amministrativo di scavare buche e riempirle. È a quest'ultimo metodo di crescita che ci rivolgeremo ora.

GLI STATI, SEBBENE COME LE AZIENDE, SONO PEGGIO

Si suppone che i posti di lavoro pubblici siano al servizio del Paese, necessari per svolgere funzioni come la giustizia, la difesa e le infrastrutture. Questi compiti richiedono una certa organizzazione e, dato che è lo stato a pagare gli impiegati, tali lavori sono ricercati. Il motivo: è molto difficile essere licenziati dai lavori pubblici. Come ho accennato nell'ultimo saggio, le organizzazioni superiori al numero di Dunbar presentano grossi svantaggi e gli stati, essendo ancora più grandi delle aziende, presentano grandi svantaggi a questo riguardo.

In particolare è molto difficile per i responsabili sapere cosa stanno facendo i lavoratori e la ricerca di rendite in tali organizzazioni tende a proliferare. Inoltre i manager sono poco incentivati a preoccuparsi delle prestazioni dei dipendenti, in quanto non vi è alcun feedback diretto dal mercato. I beni e i servizi forniti dallo stato non sono guidati dal mercato e richiedono ondate elettorali, o cambiamenti di governo, anche per una leggera variazione. Quindi l’unico modo in cui questi cercatori di rendite perdono il lavoro è attraverso una qualche forma di sconvolgimento politico.

La sicurezza insita nel lavoro pubblico lo rende molto attraente, anche se non paga tanto quanto quello nel settore privato. Come accennato nell’ultimo saggio, le aziende offrono molti vantaggi oltre allo stipendio e questo vale generalmente anche per lo stato: l'assicurazione sanitaria, l'indennità di disoccupazione, le pensioni, ecc. sono tutte a disposizione dei dipendenti pubblici. Se aggiungiamo la sicurezza del lavoro, anche per alcuni dei Paesi con i risultati peggiori, otteniamo un clamore per questi lavori, soprattutto nei luoghi in cui la disoccupazione è elevata.

Tutto ciò, combinato con il desiderio dello stato di conservare il proprio potere, significa un gigantesco amalgama burocratico. Poiché la moneta fiat ovvia alla necessità di qualsiasi tipo di disciplina fiscale, i posti di lavoro vengono assegnati a persone politicamente connesse: potrebbero essere sostenitori politici, parenti, o forse anche ex-oppositori politici. I problemi politici sono spesso facilmente risolvibili con le tangenti e queste possono assumere la forma di posti di lavoro pubblici e, naturalmente, le tangenti sono finanziate dal denaro fiat. L’unico limite alla crescita dello stato è l’iperinflazione, che è essenzialmente la morte di un’economia. Il cancro può crescere solo finché l’ospite è vivo.

INSENSIBILITÀ AI PREZZI

Il cancro dello spreco alimentato dal settore pubblico si diffonde alle aziende attraverso l’approvvigionamento di beni e servizi. Non tutte le funzioni governative sono svolte direttamente dallo stato: ad esempio, non produce i propri computer o telefoni cellulari, quindi i contratti per l'acquisto di questi apparecchi sono ancora una volta opportunità estremamente redditizie per la corruzione.

La ragione degli appalti esterni è ovvia: i beni e i servizi creati dallo stato tendono a essere di qualità inferiore rispetto ai loro equivalenti nell’industria privata. Basta andare dal proprio burocrate automobilistico locale per vedere quanto possono essere scadenti i servizi governativi. Pertanto gli stati appaltano molti beni e servizi che non offrono autonomamente e questi contratti sono estremamente preziosi, senza contare che ci sono molte società in cerca di rendite che vendono esclusivamente allo stato.

Molti sono appaltatori della difesa, ma possono essere qualsiasi cosa, dagli organizzatori di eventi, ai fornitori di hardware, ai servizi di ristorazione e praticamente qualsiasi cosa vi possa saltare in mente. La chiave qui è che gli stati possono spendere in deficit e non sono particolarmente preoccupati per il prezzo; si possono scrivere leggi e regolamenti per cercare di convincerli a preoccuparsi dei prezzi, ma in pratica i budget tendono a essere enormemente gonfiati.

Questo è stato il caso di uno dei più grandi disastri IT a cui abbiamo assistito: Healthcare.gov. Il sito web era una delle tante parti della legislazione colloquialmente chiamata “Obamacare”. Per convincere le persone a iscriversi, il governo federale spese oltre $1,7 miliardi.

Se sembrano tanti soldi, lo sono, e di quanto la cifra sia stata gonfiata ne parleremo più avanti, ma non è insolito per la spesa pubblica. Il sito web Healthcare.gov fu appaltato a un'azienda nel settembre 2011. Dopo l'avvio gli americani scoprirono che il sito web non poteva gestire nemmeno 50 utenti in simultanea e che era completamente inutilizzabile.

La Casa Bianca e Obama andarono nel panico e incaricarono il personale di risolvere il problema. Dopo aver scoperto che il sistema era costruito in modo estremamente scadente e che avevano bisogno di persone esterne per ripararlo, assunsero ingegneri della Silicon Valley. Riuscirono a sistemare le cose, ma risultò un compito titanico e che richiese mesi di lavoro ad alcuni dei programmatori più talentuosi del Paese. Un normale sito web come quello richiede dai $3 ai $10 milioni e l’industria privata li costruisce in tempi molto più brevi rispetto ai 24 mesi concessi agli appaltatori governativi.

Ecco quanto è inefficiente lo stato e quanto poco si preoccupa dei costi. Il potere della stampa di denaro gli concede talmente tanto margine di manovra che ha speso 10 volte il tempo e 100 volte il budget di persone effettivamente competenti. Si trattò di un fallimento di alto profilo, quindi è facile liquidarlo come un caso isolato, ma anche se altre parti dello stato sono cinque volte più efficienti del fiasco sanitario, ci sono una grande quantità di risorse che come minimo sono mal gestite e sprecate.

Pensate a come queste risorse verrebbero utilizzate dal libero mercato! Pensate a quanta prosperità potrebbero creare! Invece vengono sprecate in burocrazia, ricerca di rendite, clientelismo, corruzione e appropriazione indebita.

OBBLIGHI MORALI DEL DENARO FIAT

La capacità di stampare denaro ha anche un altro effetto sullo stato: ne aumenta la capacità di essere qualsiasi cosa, dato che usarlo per risolvere qualsiasi problema. Infatti questo è ciò che promettono i politici.

A livello morale la logica è comprensibile: se si ha il potere di stampare denaro, esso dovrebbe essere usato per alleviare ogni sofferenza, pertanto esiste l'obbligo morale di risolvere eventuali problemi e ingiustizie.

Se qualcuno sta soffrendo, lo stato ha l’obbligo di intervenire; se qualcuno è povero, disabile, malato o oppresso, lo stato ha l’obbligo di rimediare. Non esiste più alcun limite reale, perché lo stato opera secondo la fantasia keynesiana: non esistono compromessi quando si crea nuovo denaro. Invece di misurare il vantaggio di un programma rispetto a un altro, che è ciò che si è costretti a fare con un budget normale, c’è più denaro che può essere stampato per risolvere il problema attraverso la spesa in deficit.

Non esistono più i problemi personali, anch'essi appartengono allo stato. Sempre più persone rifuggiranno dalla responsabilità personale, perché lo stato ha il potere di stampare denaro e lo usa per dare alle persone una vita decente.

Naturalmente questa è una bugia poiché ci sono dei compromessi: il valore del denaro stampato proviene dai risparmiatori e tutti i programmi governativi hanno un costo.

UNA TENDENZA VERSO LA STANDARDIZZAZIONE

Risolvere problemi su scala nazionale significa tendere verso soluzioni valide a livello generalizzato. La scala su cui le aziende devono operare è ampia, ma per uno stato la scala è ancora più ampia. In combinazione con il monopolio e i lunghi cicli di feedback del mercato dei servizi governativi, la personalizzazione di qualsiasi tipo viene completamente messa da parte.

Anche le grandi aziende operano in questo modo, motivo per cui il mondo moderno sembra così impersonale. Veniamo trattati dalle aziende e dagli stati come parti intercambiabili. Il sistema scolastico è un esempio emblematico.

Affinché lo stato e le aziende possano funzionare in modo ragionevole, ogni persona dev'essere un ingranaggio di una ruota che può essere sostituito. Una parte insostituibile non si ridimensiona, pertanto i ruoli aziendali e governativi sono molto standardizzati e il sistema scolastico facilita tutto ciò sfornando ingranaggi. Se siete un contabile, potete inserirvi in molte aziende diverse; un ingegnere, la stessa cosa. Infatti molti di questi ruoli sono protetti dalla regolamentazione governativa.

Inoltre il processo di formazione di questi ingranaggi ha conferito agli stati un’autorità senza precedenti: determina chi può fare cosa attraverso la concessione di licenze, dal taglio dei capelli alla vendita di immobili. Lo stato controlla l’offerta di varie professioni e otteniamo restrizioni artificiali su alcuni dei lavori più desiderabili.

Poiché siamo stati creati per essere gli ingranaggi di un sistema, c'è anche una forte tendenza a standardizzare in altri modi.

TENDENZA ALLA TIRANNIA

Considerati tutti i soldi a disposizione e la responsabilità morale che si sono assunti, la maggior parte dei leader inizia a lavorare alla propria versione di utopia. Una volta dato loro l’imperativo morale di risolvere tutti i problemi, il passo è breve per indirizzare tutti questi sforzi verso una sorta di ideale percepito.

Ecco il problema: tale ideale richiede un'ingegneria sociale significativa per funzionare ed essa porta rapidamente al totalitarismo. La Germania nazista e l’URSS furono due esempi di Paesi che cercarono d'inaugurare un’utopia attraverso il totalitarismo. L’enorme sofferenza umana che ne risultò fu finanziata col denaro fiat.

Naturalmente non tutti gli stati finiranno per uccidere milioni di persone, ma vorranno controllare i comportamenti dei loro cittadini affinché contribuiscano alla realizzazione della loro utopia. La solita strategia per progettare socialmente una società verso una visione particolare è convincere le persone della giustezza di questi risultati. La propaganda è una conseguenza di questo desiderio di controllo e i mezzi, ovviamente, sono rappresentati dal denaro fiat. La propaganda è l’unica cosa in cui gli stati tendono ad essere bravi, perché è così che coloro che detengono il potere sono arrivati dove sono.

Inoltre la moneta fiat dà agli stati la capacità di controllare il comportamento senza leggi totalitarie. Pagando per i risultati che desiderano, possono ingegnerizzare socialmente le loro nazioni verso il risultato desiderato attraverso incentivi economici.

Ad esempio, l’assistenza sanitaria può rappresentare un vantaggio diretto, il che significherebbe arruolare molti medici e attrezzature/strutture mediche. Però le cose tendono a non funzionare molto bene data la mala gestione statale, ma fornendo denaro fiat ecco che la tirannia viene camuffata.

La dipendenza dallo stato aumenta e ci dirigiamo verso uno stato totalitario attraverso la porta di servizio.

BITCOIN RISOLVE QUESTI PROBLEMI

Bitcoin risolve questi incentivi distorti, perché lo stato non ha più l’incredibile potere di stampare denaro. La spesa in deficit diventa più costosa e quindi meno utilizzata; l'apparato burocratico diventerà molto più piccolo perché sarà vincolato da individui sovrani sulla propria ricchezza. Non ci sarà più la possibilità di furto nascosto tramite l’inflazione; il Guanto dell'Infinito verrà distrutto.

L’apparato statale, compresi i diritti sociali, la burocrazia e il complesso militare-industriale, verrà drasticamente ridotto. L’impopolarità della tassazione esplicita ridurrà il settore pubblico e i posti di lavoro che ne derivano. La tirannia sarà limitata, perché gli stati non saranno in grado d'indurre dipendenza stampando denaro senza fine.

In quanto tale tutto diventerà meno politicizzato, poiché la politica non sarà presente in ogni cosa. L’imperativo morale dello stato non sarà più quello di risolvere i problemi di tutti, perché i suoi limiti saranno evidenti. Ciò ne ridurrà il ruolo nella società, soprattutto nella sfera delle esigenze morali. Invece di qualche ideale autoritario, potremo vivere i nostri sogni e fissare i nostri obiettivi.

Bitcoin è la libertà dalla tirannia.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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di Jane L. Johnson

Le banche sono attività altamente regolamentate, come ci si aspetterebbe da entità a cui affidiamo il nostro denaro e dalle quali un giorno potremmo accendere in prestito per acquistare una casa o avviare un’impresa.

I banchieri interagiscono quotidianamente con le autorità di regolamentazione e quegli investitori che desiderano costituire una banca devono prima ottenere impegni di capitale dai futuri azionisti e richiedere uno statuto bancario alle autorità di regolamentazione.

Una volta in attività, una banca è supervisionata da uno o più dei seguenti regolatori statali e federali: una commissione bancaria statale se è una banca riconosciuta dallo stato, l’Ufficio del controllore della valuta se è riconosciuta a livello federale, la Federal Reserve se è membro di tale sistema e/o una holding bancaria, la National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) se è una cooperativa di credito, la Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), il Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), la Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) e il Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

Sebbene questa struttura normativa possa imporre un intervento eccessivo nell’economia privata e creare indubbiamente una certa ridondanza, la natura unica del sistema bancario suggerisce che la regolamentazione bancaria, almeno in un certo senso, è giustificata, dato che le banche operano a riserva frazionaria.

La caratteristica peculiare del modello di business bancario

L'attività bancaria è unica nella sua dipendenza dalla “leva finanziaria”, cioè l'utilizzo del denaro di qualcun altro per realizzare un profitto per sé stessi. Il settore bancario è unico anche nel suo ruolo di intermediario tra i depositanti e i mutuatari, dato che utilizza i fondi dei primi per concedere prestiti ai secondi. L’utilizzo dei fondi dei depositanti, inoltre, è spesso a breve termine poiché i proprietari dei conti bancari possono ritirare i propri fondi su richiesta, mentre i prestiti ai mutuatari sono tipicamente a lungo termine, come i mutui trentennali. Tutte queste caratteristiche uniche del settore bancario possono renderla un’attività intrinsecamente rischiosa, come ha dimostrato la storia.

Le banche sono redditizie quando pagano ai depositanti un tasso d'interesse e poi ne addebitano ai mutuatari uno più elevato. Come dice un proverbio, i banchieri vivono secondo la Regola del 5-4-3: addebitare il 5% ai mutuatari, pagare ai depositanti il 4% ed essere sul campo da golf entro le tre.

Molte altre attività, alcune ad alta intensità di capitale, non utilizzano la leva finanziaria. Ad esempio, un produttore che gestisce una catena di montaggio con macchinari pesanti non è un intermediario come lo è una banca, e non si verificano prestiti a leva come nel settore bancario. La maggior parte delle imprese di servizi operano in modo simile, anche se senza proprietà immobiliari ad alta intensità di capitale. Queste attività senza leva non richiedono la supervisione normativa sul capitale tipica delle banche.

Requisiti patrimoniali giustificati per quelle attività che sfruttano la leva finanziaria

È nella natura delle banche, in quanto imprese a leva, essere sottocapitalizzate perché non esserlo le vincolerebbe ad avere fondi per concedere prestiti o coprire le spese operative. Il capitale bancario dovrebbe essere considerato un cuscinetto in grado di assorbire le perdite tra uno o più asset bancari, come prestiti in sofferenza o cali del valore di mercato nel portafoglio titoli.

Il conto capitale di una banca è costituito da fondi investiti dagli azionisti originali, aumentati dagli utili non distribuiti nel corso della vita della banca. Il capitale viene normalmente investito in titoli del Tesoro statunitense e non è disponibile per concedere prestiti o coprire le spese operative. Non costituisce né un attivo né una passività nel bilancio; si tratta piuttosto di una voce sequestrata separatamente sul lato destro (passivo) del bilancio. Il capitale può essere calcolato come la differenza tra gli attivi e le passività bancarie. Con una corretta gestione bancaria, questa differenza è positiva; se negativa, la banca sarebbe considerata insolvente.

I requisiti patrimoniali sono espressi come rapporti capitale/asset e che i regolatori bancari tengono d’occhio. I rapporti variano tipicamente dal 6 al 10%, a seconda della rischiosità imputata agli asset di una banca. Qualsiasi deficit nel rapporto capitale/patrimonio di una banca è motivo di seria preoccupazione e dev'essere corretto il prima possibile, magari anche con un'offerta di ulteriori azioni bancarie agli azionisti esistenti o nuovi.

Una nota sulle riserve bancarie e sui contanti nei caveau

“Capitale” e “riserve” sono spesso facilmente confusi, quindi è importante utilizzare i termini correttamente. Molti giornalisti finanziari, che dovrebbero saperle le cose, a volte scambiano “capitale” e “riserve” riferendosi anche in modo approssimativo a uno o entrambi come “liquidità”. Di recente uno scrittore finanziario del New York Times ha ammesso di aver travisato per molti anni il capitale bancario, paragonandolo a un “fondo di emergenza”.

Le “riserve” bancarie, un termine dal significato molto specifico, sono calcolate come percentuale (normalmente il 10% o meno) dei depositi. Se una banca detiene $1 milione in depositi, ad esempio, è tenuta a trattenere $100.000 (10%) in riserve, fondi sotto forma di contanti nel caveau e/o riserve nel proprio conto presso la banca distrettuale locale Federal Reserve. Entrambe le forme sono considerate attivi per la banca. I restanti $900.000 sono disponibili per creare nuovi prestiti.

Una banca che non è in grado di soddisfare i propri obblighi di riserva può sempre prendere in prestito le “riserve di riserva” (chiamate “fondi federali”) da altre banche che le hanno in eccesso, o in caso di necessità richiedere alla Federal Reserve un prestito a breve termine. Il mancato mantenimento delle riserve minime richieste è considerato un'anatema nel mondo bancario ed esistono opzioni per ottenere riserve aggiuntive, se necessario.

“Liquidità” è un altro termine bancario che deve essere utilizzato correttamente. Sebbene non siano monitorate dalle agenzie di regolamentazione, le banche mantengono contanti nel caveau (banconote della Federal Reserve e monete del Tesoro) per soddisfare le richieste di prelievo allo sportello o ai bancomat. Conservare contanti è una spesa per le banche, perché non frutta interessi e dev'ssere conservato in depositi sicuri. Le banche assorbono queste spese, ma sarebbero giustificate nel chiedere ai clienti di coprire il costo della gestione del contante (e in effetti alcune banche addebitano i prelievi ai bancomat).

Sebbene il capitale sia considerato un segno della salute finanziaria di una banca, né le riserve bancarie né i contanti nel caveau forniscono in alcun modo tale indicatore.

Le recenti richieste di requisiti patrimoniali più elevati

In seguito ai problemi di liquidità dello scorso anno tra la Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), la Signature Bank e la First Republic Bank, molte agenzie di regolamentazione e politici (mi ripeto) hanno chiesto requisiti patrimoniali più elevati alle banche. È chiaro, tuttavia, che l'insufficienza di capitale non è stata una delle principali cause delle difficoltà di queste banche.

SVB, ad esempio, ha subito una corsa agli sportelli dell'era moderna in cui i depositanti (alcuni dei cui conti superavano i limiti assicurativi della FDIC) hanno improvvisamente richiesto ingenti prelievi online.

Incapaci di attingere ad asset che tradizionalmente fornirebbero fondi per i prelievi — contanti dal caveau, asset in portafoglio come investimenti a breve termine, o strutture di prestito della Federal Reserve — la FDIC e il Dipartimento del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti sono intervenuti per onorare i saldi dei depositanti di SVB al di sopra della normale assicurazione di $250.000 per conto. Il colpevole qui era il portafoglio di SVB contenente titoli del Tesoro il cui valore di mercato era diminuito quando la Federal Reserve ha iniziato a rialzare i tassi d'interesse nel 2022, causandone un calo dei prezzi mark-to-market al di sotto della base di costo pagata da SVB.

Una successiva analisi dei suoi problemi ha rivelato che non era sottocapitalizzata e che il suo rapporto capitale/patrimonio era del 10,4%, ben al di sopra del requisito normativo del 7%. E se avesse incluso le perdite non realizzate sul suo portafoglio titoli nei calcoli del suo capitale regolamentare, il rapporto capitale/attivi sarebbe stato ancora più alto, ottenendo buoni risultati negli stress test bancari della Federal Reserve.

Il problema principale di SVB non era l'insufficienza del capitale, ma piuttosto l'incapacità di raccogliere liquidità vendendo i titoli in portafoglio senza subire grandi perdite sugli investimenti. Come ha concluso la relazione della Federal Reserve sul crollo di SVB e Signature Bank “[...] la sua leadership non è riuscita a gestire il tasso d'interesse di base e il rischio di liquidità [...] e le autorità di vigilanza della Federal Reserve non sono riuscite ad intraprendere azioni sufficientemente energiche [...]”. La relazione ha poi evidenziato come criticità la “[...] crescita rapida e sfrenata [...] attraverso un'eccessiva dipendenza da depositi non assicurati [...] e l'incapacità di comprendere il rischio della loro associazione con l'industria delle criptovalute”. Il capitale non è stato citato come fattore del fallimento di queste banche.

Considerazioni conclusive sul modello di business e sul capitale delle banche

Idealmente le banche ben gestite (e i loro depositanti) dovrebbero essere libere di determinare il livello di capitale adeguato al loro modello di business, ma l’unicità del settore ha indotto le autorità di regolamentazione a far rispettare i requisiti patrimoniali. Negli anni successivi alla creazione della FDIC, sia le banche che i depositanti sono diventati indifferenti all'importanza del capitale bancario perché la FDIC copre le perdite sui depositi fino a un limite noto e in alcuni casi anche oltre tale limite, come con SVB ad esempio.

L’esistenza di questa generosa copertura assicurativa è un esempio di ciò che gli economisti chiamano “azzardo morale”, quando gli attori economici (le banche e i loro depositanti in questo caso) sono incentivati ​​a correre rischi più grandi perché non ne sopportano tutti i costi. Nel salvataggio dei depositanti di SVB da parte della FDIC, un costo maggiore è sostenuto da tutte le altre banche (e dai loro depositanti), che pagano direttamente o indirettamente i premi assicurativi sui depositi, socializzando così quello che avrebbe dovuto essere un costo privato e che sarebbe dovuto gravare totalmente sulle spalle del management di SVB. 

Un’ultima osservazione è che i fallimenti bancari del 2023 potrebbero riflettere lo stato di paura che affliggeva gli Stati Uniti durante la crisi sanitaria del 2020-23 e che ora sta finalmente iniziando a dissiparsi mentre gli americani ritornano a una relativa normalità. Le agenzie di regolamentazione bancaria, chiedendo alla FDIC una copertura estesa delle perdite sui depositi e raccomandando poi requisiti patrimoniali più elevati per le banche, potrebbero aver reagito in modo eccessivo al fallimento di SVB, temendo un contagio simile a un virus in tutto il settore bancario. Alcuni hanno ipotizzato che le misure di lockdown fossero una prova generale di qualcosa di ancora più controverso e distruttivo; forse gli storici futuri analizzeranno con successo e descriveranno gli effetti collaterali attuali e postumi di quest'epoca.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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