There is no need to go into the sorry details, to get into the weeds. The point is, Washington picked up the phone to Berlin and Paris, and said, quash Minsk II! Negotiations with Moscow were throttled. Minsk II was jettisoned.
That clown in London—what’s his name?— P.M. Johnson, encouraged Berlin and Paris in their folly. Now Europe’s economy is collapsing from lack of energy which Russia routinely supplied. Russia was not (and is not) an enemy of Europe. It was a partner.
As soon as Germany and France threw Minsk II overboard, and let Washington dictate the agenda, Europe was doomed.
OMG. Is Germany about to hit the wall? From what I’ve been reading, outside the inner precincts of the American mainstream media, the answer to that question appears to be, “Yes, if nothing changes, the wall will be hit this winter.” Certainly, the possibility is there.
It all comes down to the Washington-instigated war in Ukraine and the fact that Germany as well as the rest of Europe have been foolish enough to swallow Washington’s false narrative and follow its self-destructive lead.
The offramp to a negotiated settlement with Ukraine, prior to the Russian intervention on February 24th, was blown up when the EU and NATO, basically Germany and France, walked away from the Minsk II agreement.
That agreement, which Ukraine signed, with France and Germany as guarantors, would have provided a degree of autonomy within Ukraine for parts of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. If you look at the current battlefield map, it is this limited area which Russia now occupies.
It is this area that wanted to break away from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. The Russian population there had been asking Putin for help ever since the CIA and Neocon battle-axe Victoria Nuland orchestrated the 2014 coup in Kiev which overthrew the elected government.
Pentagram foreign policy-The gift that keeps on giving.
“Biden should immediately reverse his executive order,” said one humanitarian. “With millions of Afghans impoverished and starving, the U.S. must return to the Afghan people what is rightfully theirs.”
The United Nations aid chief on Monday led calls for a resumption of the humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan that ended after the Taliban reconquered the war-ravaged nation one year ago – pleas that came as six million Afghans face famine and the Biden administration continues to refuse to return billions of dollars in frozen funds.
“The people in Afghanistan continue to face extreme hardship and uncertainty,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told the world body’s Security Council.
Noting that the U.N.’s Humanitarian Response Plan for Afghanistan is currently facing a more than $3 billion shortfall, Griffiths called on donors to immediately provide $754 million in aid to help Afghans survive the coming winter.
“Close to 19 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity, including six million people at risk of famine,” he warned. “More than half of the population – some 24 million people – need humanitarian assistance. And an estimated three million children are acutely malnourished. They include over one million children estimated to be suffering from the most severe, life-threatening form of malnutrition. And without specialized treatment, these children could die.”
Government is not a wealth generator, as it relies on its sources of funding on the private sector. If government could generate wealth, then obviously it would not need to tax the private sector.
We conclude that it is not possible to have a effective tax cuts without a cut in government outlays. A so-called tax cut while government spending continues to increase is just an illusion.
According to many economic commentators, an effective way to generate economic growth is through the lowering of taxes. The lowering of taxes, it is held, will place more money in consumers’ pockets, thereby setting in motion an economic growth. This way of thinking is based on the belief that a given dollar increase in consumer spending will lift the economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) by a multiple of the increase in consumer expenditure.
Assume that out of an additional dollar received individuals spend $0.9 and save $0.1. Also assume that consumers have increased their expenditure by $100 million. Because of this, retailers’ revenue rises by $100 million. Retailers in response to the increase in their income consume 90 percent of the $100 million—i.e., they raise expenditure on goods and services by $90 million. The recipients of these $90 million in turn spend 90 percent of the $90 million—i.e., $81 million. Then the recipients of the $81 million spend 90 percent of this sum, which is $72.9 million and so on. Note that the key in this way of thinking is that expenditure by one person becomes the income of another person. At each stage in the spending chain, people spend 90 percent of the additional income they receive. This process eventually ends, so it is held, with total output higher by $1 billion (10*$100 million) than it was before consumers had increased their initial expenditure by $100 million.
Observe that the more that is being spent from each dollar, the greater the multiplier is and therefore the impact of the initial spending on overall output will be larger. For instance, if people change their habits and spend 95 percent from each dollar the multiplier will become 20. Conversely, if they decide to spend only 80 percent and save 20 percent then the multiplier will be 5. All this means that the less that is being saved the larger is the impact of an increase in overall demand on overall output.
First, the authors acknowledge that the federal government uses inflation as a tool to handle its debt. In other words, it acknowledges that we’re all paying an inflation tax.
Second, the paper concedes that merely tinkering with interest rates won’t slay inflation if the government continues to spend far beyond its means.
It appears somebody at the Federal Reserve has figured out that the central bank can’t tame inflation, so it’s setting up a scapegoat – Uncle Sam…
A paper co-authored by Leonardo Melosi of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and John Hopkins University economist Francesco Bianchi and published by the Kansas City Federal Reserve argues that central bank monetary policy alone can’t control inflation.
The paper’s abstract asserts, “This increase in inflation could not have been averted by simply tightening monetary policy.”
In a nutshell, Melosi and Bianchi argue that the Fed can’t control inflation alone.
US government fiscal policy contributes to inflationary pressure and makes it impossible for the Fed to do its job.
Trend inflation is fully controlled by the monetary authority only when public debt can be successfully stabilized by credible future fiscal plans. When the fiscal authority is not perceived as fully responsible for covering the existing fiscal imbalances, the private sector expects that inflation will rise to ensure sustainability of national debt. As a result, a large fiscal imbalance combined with a weakening fiscal credibility may lead trend inflation to drift away from the long-run target chosen by the monetary authority.”
There are a couple of startling admissions in this single paragraph.
First, the authors acknowledge that the federal government uses inflation as a tool to handle its debt. In other words, it acknowledges that we’re all paying an inflation tax.
Inflation is a tax. It’s the way government finances deficit spending. Government spends money. It doesn’t collect enough taxes, so it has to run deficits. The Federal Reserve monetizes those defiticts – prints money. They call it quantitative easing, but that’s inflation. Government is getting bigger and bigger, and families across America are going to have to bear that burden through higher prices.”
Second, the paper concedes that merely tinkering with interest rates won’t slay inflation if the government continues to spend far beyond its means.
As the provost and I discussed the prospects of this new program, he smiled and said, “We hope this lottery passes. Then we can raise tuition by $3,000.”
When I interviewed for a teaching job at private college in Alabama more than twenty years ago, the recently elected governor had won partly on a platform in which the state would install a lottery system that would give students a $3,000 grant for college. As the provost and I discussed the prospects of this new program, he smiled and said, “We hope this lottery passes. Then we can raise tuition by $3,000.”
(The Alabama legislature, despite being controlled at the time by members of the governor’s party, failed to pass and implement the lottery.)
In the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s announcement that the government will forgive up to $20,000 of student loan debt for qualifying borrowers, the responses are following the political ideology of the commentators. For example, columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom of the New York Times declared it a “win,” although she then demanded even more loan forgiveness.
College Loans Have Helped Drive Up Higher Education Costs
While government officials are implying this is a one-time thing, we know that the political system will not put this to rest. After all, the forgiveness is being applied to student loans taken out in the past, yet college students continue to take out new loans for the coming academic year—and beyond. In fact, Biden’s loan forgiveness is going to have the same effect that my interviewer hoped would be the case if Alabama implemented a state lottery: higher prices for a college education.
That higher education costs have skyrocketed is a given. As Forbes explains:
What matters to the wokes is virtue-signaling while they have no empathy or compassion for anyone—their materialistic, animalistic desires drive them. Lacking any moral fabric, they have no inhibitions about dipping their hands in others’ pockets. They feel no shame in asking for the unearned. Lacking self-responsibility, they always have someone to blame for their real or imagined suffering. Unable to think critically or think at all, they don’t want their valueless, hedonistic, animalistic ways to be challenged.
There are a whole range of gradations between what were the progressives of the past and this emergent popular culture, wokeism, represented by the Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau and his team of federal ministers, the US President, Joe Biden, the Vice President, Kamla Harris, the Supreme Court Justice who cannot define “woman.” None of these people would have come to power had we not upended meritocracy by choosing our leaders through democracy, handing over institutional control in the West to the lowest common denominator, the bread-and-circuses masses, the bottom 51% of the voters.
Some people consider Christianity or Islam to be the fastest-growing religion. As statistics are presented, that is indeed the case, but unaware of the nuances, one can be misled.
A rapidly rising insidious religion is wreaking havoc in the West and the Third World. It has hallowed out Christianity. It is quickly finding converts in the Muslim world, in a silent apostasy that even the fundamentalists cannot challenge. It is finding converts worldwide, even when people speciously continue to adhere to their formal religions.
It looks cute, non-violent, mostly innocuous, secular, and even kind-hearted.
It is proliferating, not because of any conspiracy or proselytization but because its growth is a natural outcome of falling away from civilizational restraints and ethical conduct. It is a result of entropy. It has come to be known as “wokeism,” a belief system of no beliefs, a value system of no values, where there is no objective morality. If you engage in female genital mutilation as an immigrant, there is no problem among the “wokes.” You have the right to preserve your culture.
For the wokes, everything is subjective and relative. Emotions, not reason or morality, are the basis of logic.
They have come to control the institutions in the Western world. They don’t understand the concept of classical justice. Their ideology is deeply imbued with multiculturalism, diversity, feminism, LGBTQ, environmentalism, egalitarianism, affirmative actions, safe spaces, etc. It is not that there is a problem with any of the issues they raise, but they lack comprehension or understanding of the associated costs. More importantly, behind the façade of their activism is an attempt to transfer the responsibility for their failure in life to others and to get free resources.
What matters to the wokes is virtue-signaling while they have no empathy or compassion for anyone—their materialistic, animalistic desires drive them. Lacking any moral fabric, they have no inhibitions about dipping their hands in others’ pockets. They feel no shame in asking for the unearned. Lacking self-responsibility, they always have someone to blame for their real or imagined suffering. Unable to think critically or think at all, they don’t want their valueless, hedonistic, animalistic ways to be challenged.
Those who provide a counterpoint get a fatwa—they get canceled and removed from functioning in society. Worse is to come in the West as the cancel culture matures slowly and surely. A valueless, amoral society is not in-your-face evil but barbarous and savage in its outcome. And that outcome is inevitable in a society that has lost its civilizational moorings.
Most people think wokeism to be childish and irresponsible. Some might say that a dose of wokeism can soften fundamentalist Islam. What is wrong if something challenges the fundamentalism that Islam engenders? That is until you have not experienced wokeism. I should know better. I grew up in a woke culture—in India—which had no values, morality, or civilizational constraints and where getting away with crime was glorified.
A few days back, the Indian government, in a widely publicized event, released some men who had been in prison for rapes, brutalities, and killings, which included children and babies. On their release, sweets were distributed. Politicians of the ruling party called them “good Brahmin.” The criminals’ release before the upcoming regional elections should tell you something.
No one knows better about the psyche of the citizenry than politicians. Politicians know how to motivate voters. The release of the criminals is a well-calculated affair. It will increase the vote in favor of the ruling BJP party. These voters are not criminal or evil in the conventional sense. But, as is the culture of India, these voters have no values. They overlook the pain that the rapes and killings inflicted on their victims.
Hannah Arendt rightly invoked the concept of the banality of evil. When civilizational constraints fall away, you are left with savagery and barbarism, even when you mostly see innocent-looking people around you.
Evil hardly ever is a fierce-looking, sharp-toothed devil. It is usually alluring. It caters to our animalistic instincts.
Those who grow up in a culture that subliminally enculturates ten commandments, compassion, and empathy might assume that these values occur naturally to human beings. These values came to exist in the West over several millennia after a tremendous struggle, a civilization-building process. These values are conspicuous by their absence in the Third World and among the wokes in the West—and there is a reason why the wokes have an affinity for the Third World cultures. They are the same.
What happens when society has no values? Does it become free, where people can do whatever they intend to do with their personal lives? Unfortunately, having a civilization requires certain boundaries and fences and a moral code of conduct, where people’s animalistic desires are fenced in to at least ensure that the liberties of others are not violated. A civilization requires social opprobrium for certain acts, even for what does not seem to hurt others.
We have reason to celebrate, according to the Associated Press.
The Federal Reserve System is at its most diverse ever!
…So the problem with the Federal Reserve isn’t that it interferes with the market economy by manipulating interest rates. The problem isn’t that its interventions cause the business cycle. The problem isn’t its bailouts, or the moral hazard introduced by the very existence of a paper-money producer like the Fed (since major market actors know there is no physical constraint on money creation and therefore on the Fed’s ability to bail them out if it came to that, they behave more recklessly than they would otherwise).
No, the problem is that not enough female, black, and “openly gay” people have been participating in these awful things.
If you are paying too much attention to the hyenas, you will depress yourself. It is good to know what they are up to, but that’s it. They have no actual bearing on your life. Am I being clear? Klaus Schwab does not matter. Tony Fauci does not matter. The bravest and most discerning among us see those people and their ideas for what they are and have not fallen for them.
A third group of people actually do determine the trajectory of history. They are the lions. A lion can be asleep or awake. A lion, once awake, naturally exudes freedom in the world around himself. He does not need to be led. He does not need to be told what to do. He just needs to be roused from his sleep. Naturally, as he goes about his day, the world around him becomes more free. That is the only group of individuals who deserve anyone’s attention. Sheep and hyenas get in line when the lion in wakes up.
Stevo, I went to the grocery store. . . you look around and it is all so depressing.
These morons are still wearing masks!?
The CDC has literally said this is all nonsense and these idiots are still wearing masks.
-The Gadfly Majestic
—-
That is from one of the bravest, most heroic freedom fighters I know. If one man will be left standing, fighting the great lie on his own, that is the man who I am sure will keep standing.
Should that depress you that even he is whining about the reality of the situation? I hope not.
What it says to me is that we all need someone to turn to from time to time.
What Did I Say To My Dear & Brave Friend?
I spoke to him a truth that has been true for all human history. It is a truth that frequent readers will recognize, but which cannot be spoken too often.
A First, Hard To Ignore Group Of People
In all periods of history, you have folks looking to take advantage of others. They are a small group, can have significant panache and influence, but ultimately do not determine the trajectory of history. They are hyena-like in their approach. The Klaus Schwabs and Tony Faucis, the Bill Gates and Joe Bidens, are hyena archetypes and giving them too much attention promises to leave you discouraged and distracted.
A Second, Hard To Ignore Group Of People
In all periods of history, you have a second group of people. They also do not determine the trajectory of history. They are sheep-like and make up the overwhelming majority of society in all periods of history. If you think otherwise, you are missing that important reality. If you believe salvation is to be found in the masses, that is historically disproven. The majority will not ride to the rescue. The majority will often be filled with individuals doing the exact wrong thing, simply doing his best to follow the most leader-like person around him.
The person masked at the grocery store, your triple vaxxed sister-in-law who has had her third stroke since April, your triple masked neighbor, your boss who puts on the mask below his nose when expecting an important visit, the police officer or doctor or bureaucrat who is just doing his job. These are all sheeplike people. Giving them too much attention promises to leave you discouraged and distracted.
A Third Group Of People, The Ones You Ignore At Your Own Peril
A third group of people actually do determine the trajectory of history. They are the lions. A lion can be asleep or awake. A lion, once awake, naturally exudes freedom in the world around himself. He does not need to be led. He does not need to be told what to do. He just needs to be roused from his sleep. Naturally, as he goes about his day, the world around him becomes more free. That is the only group of individuals who deserve anyone’s attention. Sheep and hyenas get in line when the lion in wakes up.
In this psychological battle we are in the midst of, it is so important for the enemy to keep your attention on the sheep and hyenas, because keeping your attention there will distract and discourage you. The lions, however, are the only one who deserve your attention.
So, Knowing That, What Do We Do?
If you are paying too much attention to the hyenas, you will depress yourself. It is good to know what they are up to, but that’s it. They have no actual bearing on your life. Am I being clear? Klaus Schwab does not matter. Tony Fauci does not matter. The bravest and most discerning among us see those people and their ideas for what they are and have not fallen for them.
Over the past week, shocked Europeans – mostly in the UK and Ireland – have been posting viral photos of shockingly high energy bills amid the ongoing (and worsening) energy crisis.
Several of the posts were from small business owners who getting absolutely crushed right now, and won’t be able to remain operational much longer.
One such owner is Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland – and was charged nearly €10,000 (US$10,021) for just over two months of energy usage.
Geraldine Dolan, of Poppy Fields Cafe, Athlone, with an electricity bill for just under ten thousand euro for two months. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill / The Irish Times
As the Irish Times reports, “The cost of electricity to the Poppyfields cafe for 73 days from early June until the end of August came in at €9,024.70 an increase of 250 per cent in just 12 months. There doesn’t include the €812.22 in VAT, which brought her total bill to €9,836.92.”
“How in the name of God is this possible,” tweeted Dolan.
UK pensioners are also facing a “terrifying” winter, as elderly Britons are about to get hit with an 80% rise in energy bills in October.
Elderly Britons are set to welcome a boost of around £1,000 to their state pension payments next year thanks to the return of the triple lock, however the cost of living crisis will still leave them significantly poorer.
However, the price cap for energy bills will rise by 80 per cent to £3,549 in October, and it is predicted to rise over £6,600 next year according to Cornwall Insight.
Higher energy bills often hurt pensioners significantly more than the rest of the population because they spend a greater amount of their income on heating their home. -Daily Mail
According to Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, “‘It’s a truly frightening prospect and one that most could not have prepared for, and never expected to face at this point in their lives,” adding “I think a lot of older people will be utterly bewildered that it has come to this and will also feel badly let down, and I can’t say I blame them.”
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter researcher ‘Crab Man’ (@crabcrawler1), who compiles deep dives on a wide variety of topics (and is absolutely worth a follow), has put together a lengthy thread of similar cases – and put it in the context of the current European energy backdrop. The situation is dire, to say the least.
MCViewPoint 
