Is the covid ‘pandemic’ merely economic theatre?

 

Off Guardian Jan 22, 2021

Bringing together the US emergency bank lending crisis and the now massive Covid response, I’ve concluded that one of the main reasons it is happening, apart from the corporate looting, is because of a historic event, the USA’s economic collapse and the dollar’s demise, which started just weeks before this Covid operation kicked off, and has been put on hold by a world wide manufactured economic ‘freeze’.

The end of ‘Extend and Pretend’

A few months before Covid appeared, the Fed were busy pouring literally trillions of dollars into the US banks, to prevent inter-lending bank-runs which were starting to develop. These were the same tectonic fissures that developed prior to the 2008 crisis, where the banks became so distrustful of each other’s solvency, that they massively increased interest rates to each other to factor in the risk. If unsuppressed the lending rates would continue to rise, laying a path to bank failures and a contagion which would eventually derail the economy and undermine the dollar itself.

In September 2019 the Fed intervened in the repo. markets for four consecutive days, pumping $75 billion per day into the banks, as the inter-banking interest rate – the repo rate – peaked at a terrifying 10% [1]. If this level were allowed to contaminate regular highstreet lending, it would cause widespread debt defaults & insolvencies.

The dangers are far greater today because, unlike in 2008, Quantitive Easing (QE) has pushed the Fed to the limits of its credibility, and are forcing them into causing some serious currency debasement. If they continue with the forms of QE they are shackled to, then dollar debasement becomes a certainty in a US economy that is far more fragile & indebted generally and less able to cope.

The Fed must have known for a few years that QE was not returning the economy to economic normality, and that they were still trapped in the solvency crisis of 2008. Knowing this, the Fed were prepared for the latest crisis. They had made it possible to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system discreetly, unlike in 2008, without any additional Congressional fanfare, via the Financial Stability Oversight Council, formed in 2010.

They had given themselves almost unlimited funds and the resources of the entire government if necessary, to reassure the banks that collapse was impossible. This ‘rescue operation’ was being played out, relatively unreported except in the financial press, only weeks prior to the Covid flu appearing on the world stage. Issuing…

….. cumulative repo loans totalling more than $9 trillion to the trading houses on Wall Street that the Fed had been making from September 17 of 2019 – months before the onset of COVID-19 anywhere in the world…

Italy Government on Verge of Collapse as Renzi Party Quits

 

Bloomberg January 13, 2021

 Italy’s government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte risks collapsing in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic after a junior coalition partner pulled out.

Former Premier Matteo Renzi said his Italy Alive party is quitting the coalition, attacking Conte for failing to do enough to tackle the country’s problems. Though the party is tiny, Conte relies on it to maintain his majority in parliament.

Renzi’s decision sparks a government crisis which could last days or even weeks, and has no clear solution in sight.

After accepting the ministers’ resignation, Conte could step down himself. That would likely trigger a new round of talks among parties and lead to another Conte government, a new premier or a technocratic administration. Snap elections, although a risk, appear unlikely for now.

America, A Nation In Crisis

Last Trumpet  October, 2020

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."

Psalm 42:11

"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

II Corinthians 1:3-4

As the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2020, revelry and mirth were seen and heard all around the world. A new year is often said to be a fresh start brimming with hope and new possibilities. Adding further to the excitement is the fact that this year is the beginning of an entire new decade, which only amplified the anticipation of good things to come. However, few could have predicted the distressing events in store for the world in 2020. Did all of these things just happen to happen, or is there an unseen force at play working to weaken and transform the United States? Even as the new year began, the Democratic Party had already set in motion an attempt to impeach American President Donald Trump. Democrats pursued these efforts despite knowing that their gambit would likely fail since the Republicans controlled the Senate and were unlikely to evict their party's leader from his residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. While politicians busied themselves with partisan projects and the President was distracted and obsessed with crafting his defense, a new virus was spreading in China, seemingly under the radar of almost everyone.

The New York Times published its very first article about the disease, now known as COVID-19, on January 6, 2020, less than one week into the new year. It hardly seemed a reason for concern at the time with the article informing its readers that "59 people in the central city of Wuhan have been sickened by a pneumonia-like illness." (1) By January 21, 2020, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported by government officials in the state of Washington. (2) The rest, as they say, is history, and these circumstances feel as if they took place years ago.

We now come to the tenth month of 2020. The months since the pandemic began have brought lockdowns, restrictions, and regulations. The world has dramatically changed so much that it is now unusual to see a bare face in public as most folks are compelled to wear face coverings. People are constantly reminded to observe social distancing and stay six feet apart from other people who do not live in the same household. Businesses have failed. Restaurants have closed, and many of them will never reopen. In fact, the business rating and review website known as Yelp reported in September 2020 that 163,735 businesses that they list have now closed, with an astonishing 97,966 of these closures being permanent. (3)

Many American people are suffering right now. A report dated September 9, 2020, indicates that more than half of all households in four of the United States' largest cities - New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Houston, Texas - have struggled financially during the coronavirus pandemic. (4) Further complicating matters, numerous states are set to end moratoriums on utility shutoffs, meaning that millions of Americans could soon be without power, water, and sewer service. "Every utility in the country is facing the same situation. It's rather unprecedented. We have to balance the needs of customers with what makes the most sense to keep the lights on," said Chris Eck, a spokesman for the energy provider known as FirstEnergy. (5) Another report from September 2020 claims that one-tenth of American households have struggled to put food on the table in recent months. (6) Furthermore, a study by Pew Research found that 52 percent of young adults aged 18-29 are presently living with their parents. This is the largest share of this demographic to do so since the time of the Great Depression. (7) "Essentially we saw about a little over 3 million more people moving home… with their parents or grandparents, from a year ago. That's up about 9 percent," informed Cheryl Young, a senior economist at the real estate database company known as Zillow. (8)

To help struggling Americans, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020. The mammoth bill, which was quickly signed by President Trump, allowed for the disbursement of 2.2. trillion dollars, and amongst other features, provided most tax-paying Americans with a check for 1,200 dollars. (9) Since that time, there has been ongoing talk of passing more stimulus, and many Americans could certainly use some financial help, but it has not materialized. While Democrats and Republicans claim they cannot agree on the finer points of a new stimulus package, part of the reason for the reticence, at least for some lawmakers, might be the fact that the American national debt has exploded to absolutely historic levels. As of this writing, the national debt now exceeds 26.7 trillion dollars. (10) Clearly, the accrual of debt has taken on great speed in recent decades. The national debt first hit one trillion dollars in October 1981. By 2017, just three years ago, the debt topped 20 trillion for the first time. (11)

Even as the American government continues to pile on trillions of dollars worth of debt, the Congressional Budget Office has sounded the alarm in a recent report stating, "The fiscal path over the coming decades is unsustainable." (12) This is a serious warning, and unless significant policy changes are implemented, the United States could face a financial disaster in the not-to-distant future. In fact, it is predicted that four important government trust funds, including two Social Security funds, Medicare's hospital insurance fund, and the Highway Trust Fund, could be completely exhausted by the year 2031. (13) In other words, the government might be unable to make social security payments in a little over a decade.

If the economic system in the United States collapses, I strongly suspect it will be replaced with a new cashless monetary system. This country, and, indeed, many other countries around the world, have been trending towards a cashless society for quite some time. This trend has only accelerated amid the global pandemic. According to an article published by Fortune Magazine in August 2020, 54 percent of Americans surveyed are afraid to touch cash because of coronavirus, while 60 percent said they plan to use cashless payments on a permanent basis going forward. (14) All of the issues at hand are greatly weakening the United States. Is it a coincidence that all of this happening just ten years before the United Nations wants to establish its one world government?

Based on news headlines, it seems unlikely that life will get easier any time soon. Experts are predicting that COVID-19 is about to surge even more in the United States as we enter autumn and approach the winter. John Hopkins University claims that the virus is rapidly spreading in twenty-four states at this present time, and the University of Washington projects that the United States could suffer three thousand deaths per day by late December. (15) These developments are very troubling. Yet, projections regarding coronavirus have been wrong before, sometimes drastically so, and they certainly could be wrong again. Scientists are fallible men and women; only God knows what the future holds. Thankfully, God saw all of the events of this modern age long before they happened, and He saw our struggles, too. The Scriptures assure us that even in times of trouble and tribulation, God is able to comfort His people. II Corinthians 1:3-4 declares, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." In like manner, Jesus promised in John 14:18, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." As always, I urge every reader of this newsletter to put your faith, trust, and hope in God.

01. Last Trumpet Newsletter, April 2020, By Samuel David Meyer, http://lasttrumpetnewsletter.org.
02. Ibid.
03. CNBC, September 16, 2020, By Anjali Sundaram, http://cnbc.com.
04. The Week, September 9, 2020, By Tim O'Donnell, http://theweek.com.
05. The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2020, By Kris Maher, http://wsj.com.
06. The Week, September 2, 2020, By Kathryn Krawczyk, http://theweek.com.
07. CNN, September 4, 2020, By Catherine E. Shoichet, http://cnn.com.
08. Ibid.
09. Wikipedia, CARES Act, http://wikipedia.org.
10. CNBC, September 21, 2020, By Lindsey Jacobson, http://cnbc.com.
11. Politico, October 22, 2017, By Andrew Glass, http://politico.com.
12. The Washington Times, September 21, 2020, By Stephen Dinan, http://washingtontimes.com.
13. Ibid.
14. Fortune Magazine, August 11, 2020, By Jeff John Roberts, http://fortune.com.
15. UPI, September 27, 2020, By Daniel Uria, http://upi.com.

German economy shrinks at record pace in recession of a century

Reuters July 30, 2020

The German economy contracted at its steepest rate on record in the second quarter as consumer spending, company investment and exports all collapsed during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, wiping out nearly 10 years of growth.

The Federal Statistics Office said gross domestic output in Europe’s largest economy shrank by 10.1% quarter-on-quarter from April to June after a revised 2.0% contraction in the first three months of the year.

The plunge was the steepest since the office began collecting quarterly growth data in 1970 and was worse than the 9% contraction predicted by economists in a Reuters poll. Adjusted for inflation, seasonal and calendar effects, it erased almost a decade of growth, the statistics office said.

The world stands on the brink of a food crisis

The Guardian June 2020

The world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years, the UN has warned as it urged governments to act swiftly to avoid disaster.

Better social protections for poor people are urgently needed as the looming recession following the coronavirus pandemic may put basic nutrition beyond their reach, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.

“Unless immediate action is taken, it is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food emergency that could have long-term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults,” he said. “We need to act now to avoid the worst impacts of our efforts to control the pandemic.”

Although harvests of staple crops are holding up, and the export bans and protectionism that experts feared have so far been largely avoided, the worst of the impacts of the pandemic and ensuing recession are yet to be felt. Guterres warned: “Even in countries with abundant food, we see risks of disruption in the food supply chain.”

About 50 million people risk falling into extreme poverty this year owing to the pandemic, but the long-term effects will be even worse, as poor nutrition in childhood causes lifelong suffering. Already, one in five children around the world are stunted in their growth by the age of five, and millions more are likely to suffer the same fate if poverty rates soar.

Kushner’s team seeks national coronavirus surveillance system

Politico 04/08/2020

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.

The proposed national network could help determine which areas of the country can safely relax social-distancing rules and which should remain vigilant. But it would also represent a significant expansion of government use of individual patient data, forcing a new reckoning over privacy limits amid a national crisis.

Health privacy laws already grant broad exceptions for national security purposes. But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.

Already, the Trump administration has sought to ease data-sharing rules and assure health data companies they won’t be penalized for sharing information with state and federal officials — a move driven in part by Kushner’s push to assemble the national network, according to an individual with knowledge of the decision.

“This is a genuine crisis — we have to work through it and do our best to protect people’s health,” said Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau. “But doing that doesn’t mean we have to destroy privacy.”

UN Chief Calls For 'Global Ceasefire' To Unite Against COVID-19

Abplive 24 Mar 2020

United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made an emotional plea to put all "armed conflicts on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives" against coronavirus.

Calling for a "global ceasefire," he said at a news conference on Monday, "The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world."

He was overcome by emotions as he started to speak and broke off and gathered himself to start again to speak to a world where conflicts rage even as it is engulfed by coronavirus.

In keeping with the UN headquarters directives and New York City regulations against gatherings, Guterres held the news conference via interactive teleconferencing.

Guterres also appealed for a coordinated international response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We need a much stronger coordination, coordination in suppression of the disease, coordination in making sure that not only the developed countries can respond effectively to the disease but that there is massive support to the developing world not to let the disease spread like wildfire in the developing world," he said.

China’s African Swine Fever Now Global Threat

Neo  30.11.2019

The worst outbreak of fatal African Swine Fever disease ever has devastated the world’s largest pig population, that of China, over the past months. Now it is spreading to neighboring states and even threatens the United States pig herds. The political and human impact could be far worse than imagined as a de facto pandemic disease situation spreads. Globalization of agribusiness is not helping matters.

On August 3, 2018 a case of African Swine Fever (ASF) was confirmed in China’s Liaoning Province. Since then despite various measures to contain the deadly disease it has spread across China where as of November, 2019 in little more than a year, nearly half of China’s huge pig population has either died or been eliminated in a desperate effort to contain the disease. ASF is not deadly to humans but is 100% fatal to any pig that is infected. There is no known treatment to cure it. It can be spread by direct contact with an infected pig, body fluids, contact with equipment or clothing and via certain tick species.

The China Agriculture Ministry issued a report in August that the size of China’s live pig herd had declined by a very precise 38.7% from August 2018. Industry sources suspect underreporting and put the actual number at more like 50%. In any event it is huge, and has impacted the politically sensitive measure of China food price inflation over the past year. Pork is a mainstay of the Chinese diet for meat protein and considered a national security issue. Most pigs in China are raised by small-scale farmers who face ruin now. According to reports inside China this has led many desperate small farmers to try to hide the presence of ASF in their herds, to slaughter and sell, to avoid financial ruin.

The disease is especially dangerous. According to experts it’s hard to kill. One report notes, “It lives in feces for 11 days and blood for 15 weeks. It lives in salted meat for 182 days, dried meat for almost a year, and frozen meat for three years. The Chinese love to take meat snacks with them when they travel. Rules can be bent in Asia.”

Half the world's banks are too weak to survive downturn - McKinsey

RT 22 Oct, 2019

A new survey from consultancy McKinsey & Co has found that a majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs.

The study looked at 1,000 banks in developed and emerging countries and found that just over a third had made a return on capital of just 1.6 percent over the past three years. This compares to returns of just over 17 percent for top banks over the same period.

"Nearly 35 percent of banks globally are both sub-scale and suffer from operating in unfavorable markets", as well as having flawed business models, said McKinsey.

It added that "to survive a downturn, merging with similar banks may be the only option, if a full reinvention is not feasible."

According to the report, banks are not as well-prepared for a downturn as they were when the global financial crisis erupted in 2007 in terms of profitability.

"While the jury is still out on whether the current market uncertainty will result in an imminent recession or a prolonged period of slow growth, the fact is that growth has slowed," McKinsey said.

Stock Market Crash Near? Nobel Laureate Sees 'Bubbles Everywhere'

Investors   10/25/2019
When Nobel Laureate and "Irrational Exuberance" author Robert Shiller says he sees bubbles in the financial markets — you'd better listen up. He literally wrote the book on stock market crashes and bubbles after all.

"I see bubbles everywhere," Shiller, economics professor at Yale University and author of just-published "Narrative Economics" told investors gathered in Los Angeles on Oct. 23. "There's no place to go. You just have to ride it out. You invest even though you expect the price to decline." Shiller famously predicted the 2000 stock market crash and the 2007 crash of the housing market.

The timing of Shiller's ominous warning comes at a scary time. This is the month of the 90th anniversary of Black Monday. That day on Oct. 28, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13%. That still stands as the second-worst drop in history and, combined with the pounding the stock market took in early days of the depression, took 25 years for investors to recover from.

Shiller sees bubbles in the stock market, bond market and the housing market. "You get ... in a situation where you know it's going to decline, but you still saved enough to hold you over; you have no choice."

The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.

August 21, 2019 Rutherford

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out ... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken

The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.

No, this is not another conspiracy theory.

Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.

Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.

Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.

Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely ten short years away—but the future is here ahead of schedule.

We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.    More

The battle over heritable genome editing

Evolution NewsJuly 23, 2019

Genetic engineering is among the most powerful human technologies ever invented. It holds great hope for everything from medical uses to cleaning up the environment. But it could also unleash a deadly pandemic or lead to a “new eugenics” with very sharp teeth.

The last time we witnessed something like this was the splitting of the atom. At that time, we had a sufficiently cohesive and responsible world community to enact meaningful legal and regulatory restrictions to govern the technology’s development, which have been generally successful — with some obvious exceptions. Imagine where we would be if atomic energy had developed under an “anything goes” paradigm.

Anything Goes?   

We are apparently no longer sufficiently cohesive or responsible to similarly come to grips with the vast power of biotechnology. As a consequence, experiments are going forward that are both unwise and potentially unsafe. For example, even though the biotech world was in a supposed uproar about the birth of the first germ-line genetically engineered babies (meaning the changes will flow down the generations), nothing has been done to stifle supposedly rogue scientists from continuing to pursue such unethical human experimentation.

And now, two influential bioethicists take to the venerable Journal of the American Medical Association to ask: “Heritable Genome Editing: Is a Moratorium Needed?” You can guess what their answer is: no.

No Principled Opposition

Indeed, the Brave New Worlders candidly reveal that within the biotech/bioethics community, there is essentially no moral or principled opposition to engaging in germ-line human engineering:

The battle lines over heritable genome editing currently pit those who choose to ask “whether” to proceed against those who ask “how” to press on.
The latter hold that the collective ethical good is best served by a “responsible path” toward the prevention of crippling monogenic disorders; they are willing to trust that regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will hold applications for heritable genome editing to rigorous demonstrations of safety and efficacy before they garner agency approval.

The “latter” approach is rank subterfuge. Without an enforceable, international legal ban on these experiments in humans to allow the regulations to catch up with the technology — which these authors and many other heavy hitters in the sector oppose — experimenters will simply do what they want. If U.S. agencies won’t give the green light, some will simply resort to “outsourcing ethics” (a term coined by my friend, the Stanford bioethicist, William Hurlbut) and conduct research in other countries, particularly China or Africa. I suspect that is already going on.

Davos no-shows reflect world in crisis

Dhaka Tribune  January 21st, 2019