Is It Over Yet?

I’m asking that question in spite of the attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge. Clearly the NATO summit at Vilnius marked a sharp turn away from Ukraine on the part of the collective West—which really means the US, which has been far and away the biggest supporter of Ukraine. Hungary’s Viktor Orban wasn’t wrong when he said a few days ago, This war could be over in 5 minutes if the US wants it. Nothing, or almost nothing, is quite that simple. But clearly NATO is looking for a face saving off ramp.

Today there’s a stimulating discussion featuring Tom Luongo, Alexander Mercouris, and Alex Krainer on CryptoRich’s channel. What I’ve done is a transcript cum summary of just a small part of it, to try to provide the overall picture. Luongo’s presentation veers between way to financially technical for me to wrap my head around and stream of consciousness, so I’ll start by providing my sorta timeline of what may have gone down, then I’ll cherry pick from Luongo’s opening presentation (beginning around the middle of an 18 minute segment). That will be followed by Mercouris’ opening to the second segment, which will be mostly a transcript.

So. We start with where matters stood between China and the US a month or so ago. Basically China was refusing to talk to US officials—at all. Blinken, Austin, couldn’t get their phone calls answered. Then, about a month ago Jamie Dimon goes to Beijing. While there he not only meets with the kind of people you’d expect him to meet with—financial types—but also with members of the Chinese Politburo. Dimon, of course, can’t represent the US government, and the Chinese know that. But he can serve as an intermediary—a non-official one—to break the ice and try to come up with a deal. Remember when I said that Dimon’s little speech when he returned from China sounded something like a stump speech? He was saying things that the Chinese wanted to here, the general framework for the agreement they wanted.

Dimon’s visit is followed by CIA Director William Burns contacting the Chinese and persuading them to allow Blinken to travel to Beijing. In Beijing Blinken is called on the carpet by the Chinese and browbeaten for hours on end. He returns to the US and gives an apologetic climbdown that reaffirms the One China Policy. This probably is the tip of the iceberg, a public confirmation that some bigger understanding was arrived at, this time on a more official basis.

Then Zhou screws it all up by insulting Xi. That sends the US Deep State scrambling to put the pieces back together again. The result?

Out of the blue, and right before the NATO summit in Vilnius, Janet Yellen flies off to Beijing. Instead of the originally announced two day stay, Yellen stays for four days, treated like a nobody, bowing and scraping to all and sundry Chinese officials.

Then comes Vilnius and the big climbdown. We turn to Tom Luongo:

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https://odysee.com/@cryptorich:e/talxjuly-yt:c

Luongo:

When things are going bad, there always seems to be some crisis point that causes a rally in US treasuries. So guess what we had this week? On Monday the markets start to break out on the upside on the eve of Vilnius. The the CPI came out--it was unremarkable, but the reaction was off the charts positive on Tuesday. But somebody did a chart on the USDX and timed it to when Yellen landed in Beijing. The dollar dropped like a rock. That never would have happened on a strictly real market basis. Selling pressure on the dollar was relentless. What happened?

Clearly, Yellen must have gone to Xi, hat in hand, and said: I need you to buy treasuries. Because if you don't then the ECB is gonna break, the American markets are gonna break, ... Remember, two weeks ago an auditor said the Bundesbank is basically broke and needs a bailout. This is how close we are to the end of times. It was also on the verge of the NATO summit.

Somebody was selling treasuries to put Lagarde in the box. It coulda been China, it coulda been somebody else. Maybe his name is Jerome Powell. The point is: What did Xi extract from Yellen for bailing the West out?

The markets are screaming that somebody intervened hard in the currency and bond markets this week to save the ECB. Everybody sold dollars like they had Covid. And everybody bought bonds. None of that made sense based on the news about the US economy. It stuck out like a sore thumb that something went on.

This is what I think happened.

Yellen goes to Xi, hat in hand, to get a bailout. My thesis: Yellen works for Davos, she works for Europe--she doesn't work for the United States. At Vilnius, Biden has to back off WW3. Why? Because Xi tells him: Stoltenburg and you are not going to give Ukraine anything. You're going to make it absolutely clear to the entire world that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. Like: Ukraine will have to win the war by December to get into NATO. Guess what? We already know Ukraine will NEVER win the war. Xi put the West in the box and told them: This thing is over. If you don't like that, we can break you. And by we I mean myself, Jerome Powell, and the Pentagon who are literally trying to stop this train.

It all fits in with--

Biden backing Stoltenburg as NATO GenSec for another year--not Ben Wallace, freaking IQ60 soccer hooligan running NATO. Moreover, the Ukrainian offensive failed and everybody who pushed Ukraine into this, losing tens of thousands of young men, are saying, Yeah, we need a way to get out of this.

The smoking gun that came out of Vilnius--no WW3--was presaged by Yellen going to Beijing and the moves we saw in the bond market this week. The West was told: You will do this or we will break you.

The Sirius Report

@thesiriusreport

Rumours the US is about to slash budgets and aid to Ukraine.

Let's see what happens.

Yellen went to Beijing as the rep of the ECB and the WEF and the US Treasury--because Treasury has to raise a trillion dollars to refill the Treasury general account which she ran down during the debt ceiling crisis. She's gotta raise a trillion dollars. Someone's gotta buy that debt. I expected foreign central bank takeup to be pretty good--but not THIS good. Central Bank buying of US treasuries has been off the charts the past few auctions. What the heads of state say usually comes in after something happens in the financial markets.

At that point Xi can extract almost anything he wants from the US--back off the trade war, back off on Taiwan.

The Sirius Report

@thesiriusreport

The US State Department website has dropped the word “country” from its travel advisory notice for Taiwan.

The Chinese don't want to simply dump all their treasuries and destroy the dollar. They want a smoothly operating system--even if that involves dedollarization. Jamie Dimon has said multiple times now, You're not going to decouple the US and Chinese economies. When Dimon goes to China a month ago, sets up a huge symposium, meets with all these Chinese CEOs, AND MEMBERS OF THE POLITBURO, and Dimon gets a warmer greeting than Yellen, who's effectively the president setting foreign policy, I think we know where China is. Then this week Klaus Schwab comes out cozying up to the Chinese.

https://odysee.com/@cryptorich:e/TLX-JULY-P2:5

Mercouris: I think this is actually the most interesting piece of analysis I've heard, certainly this year and probably for the past two years. It explains an awful lot. Quickly--

Ben Wallace is probably "out" in a more radical way than you probably know. The word is out in London that he'll stop being Defense Minister in September and he won't be standing again for Parliament. His political career seems to be ended.

But, coming back to the main thing--Yellen's visit to Beijing. I don't think anyone up to now [Luongo] has been able to explain what that was all about. It came out of nowhere! We had a disastrous visit by Blinken a few weeks ago--it wasn't disastrous by itself, but the Chinese absolutely "carpeted" Blinken. They gave him lecture after lecture. He was supposed to be working towards some sort of summit meeting with Biden. Biden got word of it and got furious about what happened to Blinken. Biden made extraordinary statements about Xi Jinping being a "dictator" and that Xi had been "humiliated" over the balloon. The Chinese were furious again and then suddenly, out of nowhere, we get this report that Yellen is on her way to Beijing.

Nobody can understand that. Everybody I know is scratching their heads, trying to make sense of why she's going. And, of course, there Yellen was, you saw all the pictures. She was basically nodding in agreement with people. First we were told she was going to be there for two days and then it turned out that she was there for four! We don't even know exactly who she met, by the way. She certainly met the Chinese Prime Minister [= Premier], Li Qiang, but we don't know who else she met. Presumably the financial people. We don't actually know that she did meet Xi Jinping [Blinken got a photo-op with Xi].

This is incredibly interesting, and it's the kind of thing that happens in conflicts. For example, something very much like this took place in 1956. Britain and France [and Israel] attacked Egypt in the Suez Crisis. Eisenhower was absolutely furious about this--he hadn't been consulted--and he started looking for ways to put pressure on the British. We were, of course, at that time under the Bretton Woods system. The United States started to put pressure on sterling and the British were forced into compliance. It was that [financial pressure], more than anything else, that forced [the British] to stop.

And that, by the way, is when--people will tell you--the British Empire basically ended. It died when that happened. Something like that coulda happened last week! All of the indicators seem to align with [Luongo's] theory. It's the first theory that actually explains Yellen's [trip to Beijing] that seemed to come out of nowhere, and the Chinese decision to actually receive Yellen in Beijing.

One last thing. Yellen didn't even get a banquet at the Great Hall of the People. She was taken off to a restaurant.

Luongo: That's a very important point. The lack of Chinese recognition of Yellen and of US officials in general coming out of Beijing. This isn't so much about the end of the American Empire as the end of the ability of the remnants of the Old European empires to influence American policy toward both Russian and China. The Americans are slowly but surely declaring real independence from Europe.

We get blamed for all the terrible things we do--and rightly so! But people go: None of that serves American interests--why are [the Americans] doing it? If you stop at: Because the US is evil, you expose yourself as a moron, because IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. The history shows there is a close intertwining between Old Europe--especially the UK--and the United States. As Alex Krainer likes to point out: All roads lead to London.