The Economic Front
In what follows, the links were inserted by me.
While we wait to figure out what the Fed 25bs rate hike means for the big picture, let’s consider Alastair Crooke’s latest. As I read Crooke, he’s arguing that the big picture is the global economic shift away from King Dollar and US hegemony toward a multi-polar economic system. Every day seems to bring news that confirms this shift. Today we read that Egypt’s parliament has approved a plan to join BRICS. Earlier this week both Brazil (a BRICS member) and Argentina (a wannabe member) told Olaf Scholz to pound sand—neither country is interested in sending weapons to Ukraine. Russian - Iranian - Indian relations continue to develop, and Saudi Arabia has placed itself firmly within the Eurasian scheme.
The US finds itself fighting this development, but is hampered by several factors:
First, having off shored much of its critical manufacturing base, the US finds itself at a competitive disadvantage against nations that it’s seeking to muscle into acknowledging the US’s continuing hegemony.
Second, the US’s important allies are energy poor and have bitten the energy hand (Russia) that feeds them. The US is unable to keep Europe supplied with affordable energy (Europe still gets much of its energy from Russia—via China and India), and Europe’s economy is sinking. The world outside the collective West is not only rejecting the war on Russia but is actively seeking to become part of the emerging Eurasian bloc. Efforts by the Zhou regime to force India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Argentina back into line are failing.
Third, from the West’s standpoint, these effects of the sanctions war on Russia were unforeseeable—but that was because they had closed their eyes to reality. In fact, Russia, taking Western rhetoric at face value, has been preparing for this war and had taken the necessary financial and economic steps to thwart and Great Rest that sought to bring Russia to its knees.
And so Crooke writes:
‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss
Russia is unlikely to take the bait: It has the real strategic advantage in all areas of engagement with the Ukrainian forces.
There is too much ‘noise’ in the system, and it is obscuring the view.
What is the view that’s being obscured? The first part of the view is the "odd couple" nature of the establishment collect West, i.e., “Davos”--a weird marriage of Malthusian Green climatistas and "US and British Neocon Russophobes." Crooke maintains that what we witnessed at Davos 2023 was the ship of the Mathusian Green coalition running into a "credibility iceberg." We should expect increasing pushback against that branch of the coalition as Western living standards continue to collapse. Crooke's concern is that this marginalization of the Malthusian Greens leaves a "void" that will be filled by "the U.S. hegemony ideologues’ (the Neocons)":
The origins to the Davos/Reset end to this framework were always ‘shifty’. The concept’s originator was never Team Schwab, but David Rockefeller, Chair of Chase Manhattan Bank, and his protégé (and later Klaus Schwab’s ‘indispensable adviser’), Maurice Strong.
William Engdahl as written how “circles directly tied to David Rockefeller in the 1970s launched a dazzling array of élite organizations and think tanks. These included the neo-Malthusian Club of Rome; the MIT-authored study, ‘Limits to Growth’; and the Trilateral Commission”:
“In 1971 the Club of Rome published a deeply flawed report, Limits to Growth, which predicted an end to civilization, owing to population growth combined with depleting resources. That was 1971. In 1973, Klaus Schwab at his third annual Davos, presented Limits to Growth as his [vision for the future], to the assembled corporate CEOs. In 1974, the Club of Rome’s Turning Point, subsequently argued that ‘Interdependence must translate as a decrease in independence’: Now is the time to draw up a master plan [for] a new global economic system.
It was Maurice Strong, Rockefeller’s protégé, as Chair of the 1972 Earth Day UN Stockholm Conference, [who] promoted an economic strategy of population reduction and lowering of living standards around the world to ‘save the environment’. As Secretary General of the UN Rio Conference, Strong commissioned the report from the Club of Rome which admitted that the CO2 global warming claim was merely an invented ruse to force change: The real enemy is humanity itself – whose behaviour was to be changed. President Clinton’s delegate to Rio, Tim Wirth, admitted the same, stating, “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the ‘right thing’ in terms of economic policy”.
The point here is that the Rockefeller-Davos prescription was always a scam for blowing a new financial bubble to keep the dollar hegemony project afloat. The world however, is moving on from the Davos unitary world governance prescription, to de-centralisation and multi polarity – in pursuit of the renaissance of autonomy, historic values and sovereignty. At the WEF this year, it was obvious: Davos is passé.
The more important effect however, often missed, is the import of ‘the Agenda fail’ on the financial war: The Davos ‘new economic system’ envisaged a tidal wave of spending on renewable tech; on subsidies (like CO2 credits) and on liquifying the transition. It was about incubating a new bubble, based on zero-cost new money (known as MMT).
This is why corporates such as Blackrock and the oligarchs are so excited by Davos. The arrival of high interest rates however, effectively kills the new ‘bubble option’ – precisely at a moment when the western world stands at the cusp of a severe economic contraction.
What's distracting attention from this shift is the hubbub about tanks and other Western weapons for Ukraine. Looking past the noise, however, the reality is that the collective West, led by the US, is losing its proxy war on Russia—an existential threat to NATO itself as an ongoing organization. We're seeing indications of this dawning realization leaking from the Deep State via the Rand study. The mood in DC has changed, says Douglas Macgregor, even as Zhou remains surrounded by war-hawks. The military professionals know the score, and they know that relying on warlike rhetoric from failed nations like the Baltics won’t get the job done. The militaries appear to be structuring weapons deliveries so that they will be too little too late. Public opinion is also shifting, gradually but noticeably, against war with Russia. This is especially the case in the key EU economy--Germany.
The Ukro-Nazi regime has reached what looks like the breaking point--it's bankrupt and has been warned by CIA Director Burns that financial support may not last beyond July. The guess is that the collective West--but especially the US--will provide what they hope will be enough weapons to prevent a total military collapse in Ukraine over the intervening months, while looking for some plausible narrative or exit strategy that they can deploy against their publics. “We did all we could; our failure is someone else’s fault.” It may work--especially for Americans, for whom Ukraine is simply a remote concern both figuratively and geographically. What could prove more difficult may be explaining away the coming economic crisis, which was precipitated by the sanctions war on Russia.
That being the case, Crooke pivots back to the economic front, because:
The axis of states “at war with Russia” stand at the edge of an economic precipice. Living standards are collapsing at the fastest rate since WW2. Anger, slow to ignite, is now burgeoning. The British and EU political classes have no answers to this crisis. The Ruling Class try to sit tight, and trust that the people will accept all ‘things’: Spiralling prices, jobs priced out by higher energy costs, empty spaces on shop shelves, the energy spikes – and the pockets of system dysfunctionality (i.e., at airports and on transport systems) that confound the smooth running of society. It’s the same for Americans.
The flunkies charged with the management and the running of ‘the system’ are confused. Their (high) self-esteem until now has rested on their articulation of ‘correct views’ and espousing the ‘prescribed causes’ – more than manifesting any particular competence in their work. Now they do not know what to say, or which cause is ‘correct’. Narratives are falling apart; the Twitter revelations have disrupted the former ‘equilibrium’.
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Who knows … But what is evident is that there is a faction in the U.S., that like the Europeans, opposes the Biden Team predisposition towards escalation. The Europeans fear kinetic war in Europe, whereas the American faction more fears the prospect of financial melt-down, should the war widen.
In fact, reading between the lines, the Rand report did, in fact, pointedly note the importance of economic factors in recommending a negotiated exit from the war on Russia at the earliest possible date. One thing seems certain. The shifting dynamics of the global economy cannot be controlled by Fed rate hikes or pivots. The economic uncertainty is not going away. Change is coming to the collective West.
I was just listening a bit to Alex Mercouris. He was saying that his impression from remarks Putin made today--I was unable to locate them--is that Putin is determined to "see this thing through, all the way to the Polish border." I have to say, I've always been very skeptical about the idea of Russia allowing Poland even an inch of territory to the east of their current borders. For various historical and national reasons, but especially given Poland's performance in this crisis.
There is an amazing global dichotomy at work here: The West pouring all its economic wealth into the Ukrainian blackhole while the East is creating a whole new economic universe. And Ukraine is the dividing wall between the two rapidly diverging worlds. It's staggering to witness.