Recently, ECB President Christine Lagarde shocked markets with surprisingly hawkish talk at her monetary policy press conference.
Lagarde didn’t make any sudden moves in policy or anything. The ECB has yet to end any of its bond-buying and internal debt-transfer alphabet soup projects, and won’t until Q3 at the earliest.
Markets were not prepared by her previously that she would set such a hawkish tone. Say what you want about FOMC communications policy, at least under Jerome Powell, they tell you what they are going to do and then do it.
But Lagarde needed to do something dramatic because capital markets were moving quickly against her.
Traders stopped trying to disbelieve the illusion of Fed hawkishness and finally accepted what Powell was saying. For better or worse (and that debate was lively in this podcast I did with Peter Boockvar last week) the Fed will raise rates in March.
This isn’t an article about whether the Fed is making a policy error or not. This article isn’t even really about Christine Lagarde and the ECB. The actions of these two figures are downstream of the rapid changes occurring in the geopolitical landscape.
Those changes forced Lagarde to jawbone the euro higher and stave off a collapse in credit spreads.
So bear with me as I link the new gas deal between Russia and China to the the splits within the Anglo/Euro political hierarchy. Because once I’m done I hope you’ll see the inflection point we now find ourselves in the geopolitical Great Powers game.
So, back to Lagarde.
Central to Eurasia
I’ve talked in recent weeks about what I think the real story is behind the US/UK push for war over the breakaway Ukrainian republics known as the Donbass.
In short, it is a manufactured crisis to engineer the independence of the European Union from the US/UK traditional forces which have pushed the world to its current state. Biden will get to look tough staring down the Russians with sanctions threats and the Germans will finally get their shiny, new natural gas pipeline which will solidify their political control over the EU.
Despite ham-fisted propaganda and diplo-speak to the contrary, NATO is an aggressive alliance designed to further Anglo/European hegemony over Eurasia. The policy is informed by the writings of Halford Mackinder more than 100 years ago.
He who controls the world island of Eurasia controls the world. If you can’t control it, stop anyone else from doing so. That simple maxim drives so many people within Western foreign policy and military circles.
It’s an idea dying a little more with each generation but since Davos refuses to let the next generations take control in the U.S. and Europe, the policy persists with whatever energy a bunch of octogenarians can muster.
However, while Mackinder still dominates Western thinking about Russia and China, over the past couple of decades there has been a subtle but very real shift in the internal power balance of between Europe and the US, to the US’s disadvantage.
Europe wants to control Western foreign policy, supplanting the US/UK axis which has dominated since WWI or earlier.
This is at the heart of my theory of Davos — Old European money wants to take back control of Western economic and foreign policy from the Yanks and the Colonies after two centuries of subordination.
And what has become clear to me is that, post-Trump/post-Brexit, there are sincere faults within the cozy relationship between these two culturally very different tribes — the Anglosphere of the US/UK and the traditional European colonial powers.
As the USSR fell, when Russia was weak, it was easy for them to be united in common cause: Destroy the USSR, strip the resultant Russian Federation of its assets, take over the country from within, centralize control over Europe in Brussels, elevate the post-WWII Institutions to enforce a New World Order.
This is the essence of the Bill Browder story and all of the subsequent NATO expansion eastward.
Out with Brzezinski, in with Putin
This dynamic shifted when Putin came to power, but was really felt for real when Russia intervened in Syria in 2013, stopping Obama’s invasion plans, after the Tories refused David Cameron to follow Obama. Putin used diplomacy to pull things back from the brink.
Russia’s reward for this was the Maidan uprising in late 2013/14 and the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, which led to the current situation: The Donbass in limbo, Crimea now a part of Russia and the West fuming mad over having been stymied as Putin successfully played for time.
He planted a flag of defiance then and began making a stand. He’d make that stand stick in October 2015 when Russian armed forces began supporting Syrian Arab Army forces retaking territory from US-backed ISIS and Al-Qaeda forces.
At the same time, Russia built an edifice of relationships (with China, with India, with Turkey, etc.) which chipped away at the relationship between the US/UK and Europe. It exposed the fault lines between them using Europe’s growing dependence on energy imports and its ideological desire to raise itself above the US/UK and replace them; feeling their new Empire, the EUSSR, was inevitable.
Putin and Xi have exploited this European hubris and British/American ‘contrariness’ to deepen the divides between them, quite successfully over the years.
But now let’s look seriously at Ukraine. Europe wants out of the conflict. The Anglos are desperate for it. France’s Macron and Germany’s Scholz have tried to defuse the situation. Biden and the Brits have done nothing but enflame it with insanely hysterical propaganda.
They’ve even gone so far as to telegraph a false flag event to get the war they want while Russia steadfastly denies it has expansionist designs on Ukraine. Russia doesn’t want Ukraine. It’s now an albatross, economically, politically and socially.
Russia already has what is truly valuable about Ukraine — the coal deposits and industry of the Donbass and the ports of Crimea. The rest of the country is a failed state courtesy of western meddling where everyone, including the EU, bear a lot of responsibility.
But if, as I’ve posited for over a year now, the Biden White House is controlled by Davos who absolutely do not want war with Russia. Why would he, of all people, be ginning up the biggest geopolitical standoff between nuclear-armed powers since 1962?
The conventional wisdom citing incompetence doesn’t cover it.
It’s too convenient an explanation. Biden is a fall guy. He’s a puppet. Even those that run his White House are order-takers, not order-makers. This strategy doesn’t achieve anything if Biden is forced to back down, other than humiliation of the US.
So, if incompetence isn’t a good answer (which it isn’t, since it doesn’t fit the incentives of the people involved), we get more mileage out of it being a deliberate policy with a very definite goal. A game-changing goal. Big goals require big operations after all.
And the biggest geopolitical event since the Russians put missiles in Cuba meets that standard.
To me it looks like the best outcome for Davos is exactly this. Biden and the UK back down over Ukraine but get to save face in the process. Speaker Nancy Pelosi came out today and said exactly this, stopping Russia through threats Putin couldn’t handle.
It means that this whole crisis was engineered. To what end? To finally allow Germany and France to take control of European foreign policy for the first time since the end of World War II. To do that you have to create a situation where the US, as the dominant member of NATO, is revealed to be a paper tiger when confronted by an immovable opponent, in this case Russia.
Sure Pelosi and Biden will sell it as “Oooh, Biden so strong! Vote for us this fall.” But that’s just talk.
The longer this standoff went the worse the US and UK look in the eyes of the world. Don’t think for a second that wasn’t the whole point of this whole pointless exercise. It’s not a bug, but a feature.
The US and UK lose a tremendous amount of status, Biden gets a domestic policy “win,” and Europe gets its independence.
The Road Signs
So, when it comes to this Anglo/Euro split, it also means tying events in Ukraine back to monetary policy and Lagarde’s finding religion in rate hikes:
- JP Morgan refused European banks’ collateral all throughout 2019 after Powell cut rates to stave off a market crash in January 2019, which set off the 2019 Repo Crisis in SOFR in September.
- The Coronapocalypse was timed perfectly with Martin Armstrong’s ECM and the expectation of the Fed’s ‘goodwill’ for intervening after that event ran out, March 2020.
- It was touched off over the OPEC+ meeting where Putin refused to cut production sending oil into the mother of all tailspins.
- US banks are even more hostile today to European banks than they were in 2019.
- I’ve received personal notes from European and American patrons that COVID relief loans cannot be repaid even though the people never spent the money, i.e. inflating assets of the banks.
The banking system in March 2020 was on the verge of collapse. Something had to be done. And COVID-19 was a perfect excuse to run a massive money printing operation to force the Fed back to the zero-bound.
Then Lagarde, just hours after the Bank of England (!!) raises rates a 2nd time, comes out hard in her rhetoric, sending the euro flying alongside euro-bond yields. But it was this tweet from Zerohedge that made me stand up and take notice:
As Rorschach would say, hrm.
Nothing Lagarde said was particularly noteworthy. The policy statement was nearly identical to January’s. But the euro spiked on the news and J.P. Morgan gets crushed in the currency space? Yeah, and there’s no coincidence there.

So with that in mind, let’s take this Anglo/Euro split thesis as real and widening.
Here are just some of the recent headlines which connect a bunch of dots:
- Russia and China add to their energy cooperation, 10 more bcm/yr and will settle in euros, not dollars.
- Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is nominated for the Board of Governors of Gazprom, an upgrade over being on the board at Nordstream 2
- Macron meets with Putin and both France and Germany sabotage the UN Security Council meeting called by the US/UK to isolate Russia, as explained nicely by The Duran.
- AP reporter going after the State Dept. Spox for refusing to give ‘proof’ of a “Russian false flag” event, which went viral last week. Who ordered that bit of truth into the open?
- The Biden Admin two-stepping on the ‘imminent invasion’ rhetoric while limiting all threats of sanctions contingent upon Russia ‘invading Ukraine.’
- The UK pulling all of its troops out of Ukraine, after putting them there as tripwires for a NATO intervention.
- Thanks to the Canadian Truckers most of Europe is lifting COVID restrictions, but it’s only in places that will drive ‘growth’ numbers.
- Now they are being lifted all across the US as the Dems fear a complete wipeout in November.
- Italy is further ground under the German bootheel, thanks to Draghi.
- Undisclosed “breakthroughs” after nearly a year of no movement in JCPOA discussions in Vienna.
- Biden lifted sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program last week. Europe needs Russia and China to be happy and get access to cheap Iranian gas/oil.
- Biden let’s it slip that the real goal of the Ukraine operation is to “diminish Russia’s standing” worldwide during this weekend’s phone call with Putin, echoing Pelosi’s statements on the Sunday talk show circuit.
- Germany refusing to go along with NATO’s troop buildup across Eastern Europe.
All of these things point to the split being not only real, but engineered. Macron tried working the peace angle to get himself re-elected in April/May. Boris Johnson in the UK is under pressure to resign over PartyGate, which is nonsensical.
The lame attempt to get Putin to throw the first punch in Ukraine has failed. The US just sent its premier fighters, F-22s to Abu Dhabi, not Berlin. All talk of a war has been nothing more than theater to create the opportunity for the Europeans to stand tall and look like the peacemakers.
The impetus for the final resolution here was Putin calling French President Emmanuel Macron out last week. He told Macron there will be no splitting hairs over NATO’s actions. Action by one member, according to Putin, is an action by all of them. So, if you don’t want a war that engulfs all of Europe, then you better get your American and British colleagues to realize this.
Mackinder’s End
It has been a bare knuckles fight to the finish between the US/UK Neocons and the EU Globalists here. And to those who are confused by Russia and China settling energy deals in euros, it is easy to work through.
Neither wants a disorderly collapse of the EU, just like Russia really doesn’t want a disorderly collapse of the US. This is a carrot to Lagarde and Schwab to deal with their own messes and leave them owing both Russia and China a favor. Also, remember, that Russia is looking to cleave Germany fully from the Anglosphere and what better way to do that then build up reserves in Germany’s currency to hold over them in the future if they get uppity again.
The Biden administration and the EU have backed off of all talks of the worst sanctions, i.e. SWIFT expulsion, which Europe never wanted despite some tough talk from Green ankle-biters. Those threats were always a bluff, as the boomerang effect would have been devastating for Europe.
Putin smartly hedged his bets with the duplicitous Europeans by cutting a deal with Hungary which is the model for more gas deals with smaller, peripheral buffer countries. Because once the US/UK fail to stop Nordstream 2, in light of their failure with Ukraine, new pipeline deals into Eastern and Southern Europe can commence.
Think now about Iran’s massive field in the Caspian and you can see where this is headed.
It’s a very different board now. The only thing keeping it from playing out as I’ve laid out here is the Brits pulling a false flag in the Donbass and forcing Russia to respond militarily.
And if that were a serious threat now the Brits wouldn’t be pulling all of their troops out and the EU wouldn’t be offering the UK the leadership role in Europe’s new security architecture. Oh, by the way, this means NATO is also on the outs.
This tells me that the Ukraine crisis is already over, that Biden and the US have been properly humiliated. If the UK wants to survive it should side with the winners of the conflict, the EU.
Which brings me all the way back to Lagarde and the ECB. Hers was a Hobson’s Choice to go hawkish. Europe’s victory over the US/UK may wind up being a Pyrrhic one. While they still have allies in the Biden administration, those allies have almost no real power to affect US policy now. I asked the question at the end of January, “Who’s Afraid of Jerome Powell?“
The answer, Christine Lagarde is.
That was great Tom. Thanks for the update. I would assume that Russian intelligence network is as good as ever? Putin seems to know exactly what is going on?
It is nice to see tyrants all over the world come tumbling down. Gradually, then suddenly, “We the Peeps” are starting to get back our freedom, and with it peace, property rights, morality (maybe I am hoping for too much here), and an end to global tyranny. Maybe I am being too “biblical” but I learned early in my life that in the end, good defeats evil. Thanks, bitcoin and freedom.
Brilliant as usual!
I don’t really agree with this analysis. I think two significant goals of the world’s legacy superpower are retaking Crimea and corraling Germany by behaving completely batshit crazy.
Crimea is obviously Russia’s only warm water port and is critical to the Middle East equation. It is no accident that the German Admiral alluded to it. The weaponized batshit crazy thing is just a way to marshall Europe back into line. After all Germany in particular is also at the centre of the tug-of-war.
The Anglosphere leaders seem to have morphed into crisis actors.
Behaving in a wild unpredictable way does work in some scenarios, but not this time. Lavrov gazing at Truss with seven depths of bewilderment, priceless. The Russians shrug, the Germans can’t parse it, and the French have already concluded that Nato is brain-dead.
All sound and fury signifying nothing..
“If the UK wants to survive it should side with the winners of the conflict, the EU.”
If ‘side’ means rejoin, I’d say ‘no’. Brits don’t want it; their leaders do. Britain should simply trade with Russia, or Germany will have an even more competitive advantage over them in the production of manufactured goods.
Eurasian integration could be mainly economics/trade. It needn’t be about ‘control’.
The two Alexes had a video today that briefly suggested old Russian S300s belonging to Ukraine have been moved to the Russian border. While posing no threat to Russian military aircraft, they could be used to take down a Russian civilian plane, assuming the info is correct. That would bring some kind of Russian reaction.
Thank you for the insightful analysis. I always assumed that Davos was composed of mainly new money players and with that came the neo-Marxist mindset. This mindset seeks to destroy traditional cultures and atomize populations by mainly racial criteria. If old European monied elites are involved then the neo-Marxism is just a convenient veneer covering over a traditional power seeking agenda.
Hi Tom, I don’t have many original thoughts so what the heck i’ll throw this out. Wondering if you could consider and comment. I’ve been following the vaccine injuries/deaths and studies from around the globe on blood clotting, dna effects, etc. I was a chemist back in the day so this stuff interests me. Its slowly leaking out, but the suppression has been powerful. Since the democrats will get killed in Nov, could Biden use the vaccine injuries to his benefit and unite the entire country? Maybe come out at the March 14th turning point and announce he has been deceived? Claim Trump as the culprit. Hell, it may unite the entire country against big pharma. Then Universal Healthcare is the big push in Nov… Just trying to use some of your game theory! Then the rest of big pharma is developing new drugs to treat the spike protein. They need something big to at least split congress and stifle Durham, etc. I can see them eating their own (moderna, fauci, etc) to become heros.
Rick,
It’s certainly a game plan they could try and execute. I don’t think it will be at all successful since it’s an admission that they have lied to us about the reasons why they’ve destroyed so many people’s lives.
Moreover, it’s a strategy that only speaks to the 15-20% of the people still fully in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome and PTSD over COVID. It’s a strategy to win bigger in the places where they are already winning, and it would be a losing strategy in places where they NEED TO WIN.
It’s like in CCG deckbuilding when you assess a card’s usefulness. There are some cards that are only good when your main strategy has already won you the game. Playing that card only makes you “Win More…” and a counter to a strategy you are weak to would be a better fit.
Hi Tom, i commented on patreon but wasnt sure if it would get to you. I don’t have too many original thoughts so i wanted you to consider and provide feedback if worthy! I’m an old chemist so the vaccine data and research on injuries/death interest me. Its a slow leak due to the massive suppression, but at ground level here in TN we’ve got Funeral directors putting articles in newspapers, etc. Since the Dems will get killed in November… they need something huge to at least keep the House. What if they use March 14th Turning POint and have Biden announce that he has been given data that the vaccines are harming people. He claims he was mislead, and then they attack Trump, Pfizer, Moderna. CNN, MSNBC have fired everyone and now will go to just the facts/science. They make Trump look horrible, fragment the Trump supporters, bring many americans together demonizing Pfizer and the rich Pharma clan. Then from March to November they strategize how to bring in Universal Healthcare. They will be able to show alot of injuries, and then once the band wagon starts everyone will claim injuries. At that point we need to provide healthcare to everyone. Would love for you to use some game theory on this!!! Feel free to shred it!!! I bought long dated out of the money Pfizer puts and they have been going up… wondering if Obama/Gates/and Fauci have been buying too!!!
Rick,
I think this is another version of your first comment. I have to approve all comments here on the blog before they are published, so if you don’t see it go up immediately, it isn’t because it didn’t take… it’s because I haven’t approved it yet.
See my reply to your first comment.
Very interesting analysis, Tom. I do hope you are correct in most of it. Pelosi’s remarks about how powerful our threatened sanctions are and causing the Russian retreat were so predictable,and face saving. However there are still a couple of wildcards out there, and one is the ukronazis doing something extreme against the Donbass. Putin would need to respond somehow or completely lose face in Russia. I guess we will see if any of the diminished western powers still have any control over that bunch of idiots.
Yes, if the Ukronazis attack the Donbass Putin will respond but as long as he doesn’t go beyond the borders of the Donbass I don’t think anything other than ‘harsh language’ results from NATO, at this point.
They’ve all made this clear to the Ukrainians.
What is more likely is that Putin keeps the pressure on to get Kiev to implement Minsk and at some point will declare, after the US/UK back out completely and NATO shuts up, that he’s willing to issue the statement that he’s open to the Donbass joining Russia.
The Duma is proffering legislation to that effect now. Putin responded that he wants to see all reasonable avenues to implement Minsk exhausted before that occurs.
https://www.rt.com/russia/549454-putin-recognize-donbass-independence/
Grateful for your posts Tom, thank you for making the time to write these.
Has anyone noted that Armstrongeconomics.com is off line?
It’s up for me
I think the Davos crowd has many more cards to play. They not only own governments, they control the narrative in the media and big pharma, along with everything else. Twitter is in the midst of another purge. Not a single “Normie” friend of mine has woken up; they’re still as clueless as ever. I’d put that TDS syndrome closer to 35%. Look at how Trudeau has started to close the bank accounts of his perceived enemies. That cyber pandemic is coming. They need these vaccine passports implemented, and you know they’re going to do everything they can do get this. We ain’t seen nothing yet….
Masterful Tom. You nailed the UKR drama as a proxy for pulling GER to US/UK or to RUS before anyone else did.
And I love your willingness to tell the harsh truth that it is the US/CIA, (along with the Saudis and the Mossad) who have been the multi-billion dollar boosters of al-Qaeda in Syria (principally Mohammad al-Jolani, founder of the Syrian branch of al Qaeda -including al-Sham and al-Nusra, on which the CIA spends one of every 15 bucks it gets from idiot American sheeple taxpayers who thought we were going to the region after 9-11 to fight AGAINST those scumbags LOL). If Joe Sixpack knew what the CIA was really all about he’d kill every last motherf*cker at Langley yesterday.
Nordstream 2 is a done deal. Good.
And, hopefully, the US-Saudi-Isreali-al-Qaeda alliance will get crushed in Syria once and for all. I know that surviving christians hiding in Damascus from US-backed al-Qaeda jihadists would breathe a sigh of relief.
But, now its all about Powell [$USD] vs. Lagarde [$EURO]. I know you love political trivia but its all about macro-economics now, as we head into the deflationary death ride from an insanely evil and suicidal everything bubble created by all central banks. Now its about consequences. Dollar vs Euro. Dueling banjos in a Deliverance-wild tit-for-tat duo.
The dollar index is about to look like an EKG chart like in March 2020. You don’t unwind a ponzi and a reserve currency without some fricking wild swings.
I am betting the early rounds go to Powell. And on this one I will be rooting for the US because 1) I think – as you seem to- that Powell is ironically the cleanest dirty shirt of all the central banksters, if for no othe reason than intellectual vanity.
He will (i pray) pull a mini-Volcker. Not a real one because all men now are soyboys compared to that generation. But…..2) it will be enough to shock and hurt all the right people:. The trillionaire class of gluttonous, self-entitled FED welfare queens, the millennial dweebs who bought shares of NFT farts in a bottle, and the country clubbers who voted to give welfare to the trillionaires just to pump their own McMansion house values and then blamed ‘free markets’ for the Nazi gov-corp monopoly system they voted into power.
The lower 85 percenters who have been f*cked by this Nazi economic model for a generation won’t give a rat’s ass about the S&P carnage and what little they earn will (at least for a joyous moment) have more purchasing power.
If Powell does even a bit of that, then the US dollar index is going to surprise to the upside big time.
Yes, but Heartland Theory + Media Control + Pet Central Bankers x The Internet = Global Governance/Technogulag.
I’m just looking at the current crop of world leaders and watching how aggressively they are pursuing the Davosian Great Reset playbook by imposing tyranny in their countries. It helps to categorise them:
Venal (Expensive) – Those That Must Be Bribed
Perverts (Cheap) – Those That Can Be Blackmailed
Dupes (Free) – Those That Can Be Tricked into Believing
Puppets (Helpful) – Those That Are Too Dumb To Even Understand
Familiars (Trustworthy) – Those That Expect To Benefit
Davosians (Elite) – Those That Understand The End Game
OT question Tom. I saw this story via Zerohedge and I’ve always wondered if the writers/publications of the stories appearing there get a cut of the revenue?
No. I get the exposure having given them the right to republish the work. That’s all I get directly from them. They ‘scrape’ the articles they like and ignore the ones they don’t. I have no business arrangement with them past my paying them for a Premium Sub every month.
I have zero issue with this arrangement. I’m happy to have the platform.
Now that you know that, this is why every article ends with a call to action for Patreon and crypto donations.
The EU is not the winner out of this.
Not sure the US is either — unless one is confused and thinks Washington DC weapons makers == USA. That’s who might “win” (aka profit from) a new cold war, now that the 20 year “temporary” war in Afghanistan ended
The UK isn’t going to side with the EU, even if the EU wasn’t bankrupt. France is far more dependent on weapons sales than the UK, and France (actually Paris not France) isn’t going to win either.
Weapons makers in and around Washington DC will profit. The US military will lose under woke leaders. Deaths among military personelle has no impact on weapons makers profits, so who cares about them?
Lagarde and the ECB are just a distraction, nothing more. Germany needs cheap Russian gas to keep Europe in the game at all.
France & Germany have shown in abundance that they aren’t done punishing the UK … this is no doubt not lost on the UK. The City of London will push the government into closer ties with the US while they relegate the financial centres of the EU to the dustbin of history.
Canada is now a dictatorship run by a woke megalomaniac. Canada has so many economic problems its hard to count, but their government is obsessed with political power.
Australia just held a failed “tennis match” who’s outcome was decided by politics not tennis ability. The sissies of Aussi-land pee’d their pants and accepted their lowered status without argument never mind a fight.
England is run by a guy who can’t figure out how to work a comb — and he locks down his country while holding champagne parties in the garden for himself. The people of England apparently are OK with this.
The largest collection of nuclear weapons in the world is controlled by a guy with dementia. The same nuclear power is now the largest debtor the world has ever known. It runs perennial spending deficits. Washington DC is run by weapons manufacturers hell bent on creating a new cold war in Ukraine to replace their Afghanistan profit center. The government’s attention is split between covering up past crimes (CIA spying on Trump) and committing new ones (pretending some idiots in silly costumes on 1/6 somehow represent a regime threat).
Germany is powerless (literally and figuratively) to say anything about Gazprom, which controls all of Germany. The Soros puppet regume in Berlin doesn’t decide anything.
France is run by a weenie that is slightly less repulsive than Trudeau, but only because Macron’s past behavior has somewhat neutered him.
The Fed and ECB’s power stems from the host governments which are, to be gentle, F’d up beyond all recognition.
Slight misunderstanding about Boris Johnson I’d say.
He’s a cynic who knows his bumbling persona plays well with his base, and who resisted the Davosian puppets in his government when they told him to keep the place shut down.
And now he’s paying for that – one petty scandal after another (most of which are of no interest to most Brits) being fed by the Davosians to their pet journalists until the pressure becomes unbearable and their Manchurian Candidate Rishi Sunak (whose father-in-law hosted Davos back in the early days) can take his place, like a British version of Obama and Macron (diverse, fey, female handler etc)
Most of BoJo’s actions amount to diplomatic minutia. The average person doesn’t understand it, and frankly doesn’t care.
But when BoJo sends his nazi SS troopers out with drones to arrest a person walking in a remote location miles from any other human… At the same time, BoJo is drinking champagne at #10 unmasked and acting like he is above it all.
The Queen can’t pull off that kind of arrogance and she is the Queen.
The average person does understand that this unkempt public servant is not the Queen. He is an hypocritical employee. As long as normal people get locked up for taking a walk outside, the public servant needs to be held to the same standards. LOCK HIM UP!!!! No one with any self worth is going to take orders from this hair mop ever again.
Lockdown for thee, champagne for me.
Trudeau and Macron both got beat up and their lunch money stolen every day. Their defensive over-reaction and petty tyrannical edicts illustrate how impotent they are. Their need to belittle others says a lot more about their own insecurity than it does about anything else.
We will see if Canadians have a backbone. We recently learned that Aussies are spineless. The French kind of had a bit of reputation for surrender already.
Good article.
Also, Grand strategy paper between China and Russia at the beginning of the Olympics is the beginning of the end of any illusion of unipolar world. EU woke up to this fact that they have no future outside of the Eurasia integration. Hullabaloo about Russia invasion and resultant sanctions of Ukraine is the last ditch effort to save transAtlantic alliance. AUKUS at the expense of France and to a lesser extent of Germany was the wake up call not to burn bridges with SCO and EEU which are road maps for BRI in my opinion. Without Russian gas, debt burdened EU economy is toast.
Correction: Sanctions on Russia, not Ukraine
Instead of creating a cult of personality around this Lagarde lady, lets talk about whether the Euro bond market has reached an inflection point.
Germany is currently paying the bills. There is all sorts of diplomatic fraud going on to suggest or imply that other EU countries are paying “their share” (which apparently is zero or negative). But one needs to be seriously numerically inept not to notice that Germany is floating the boat.
Germany needs low cost energy and access to highly skilled workers to remain an economic force. Thanks to eco-terrorism in government, Germany’s energy costs are now 100% determined in Moscow. Moscow does what it best for Moscow, not necessarily for Brussels. Only a fool would expect this to be any other way — and certainly NATO/EU whatever has tilted the playing field in their own favor whenever they could. Of course Russia will do the same.
Germany’s education system is faltering. Sure there is historical momentum, but a massive surge of illegal immigrants has created “no go” zones in cities all over Germany — places the Polizei are too scared to go, much less enforce German laws. Dingbat Merkel assured the public that there are no such things, which is as close as one ever gets to confirmation.
Illegal immigrants do not have traditional German work values, they don’t pay taxes (but they expect to be given welfare). They teach religious extremism, not industrial skills.
Germany is struggling to prop up the EU at the moment. Time is not on Germany’s side even if Russia remains benevolent on energy costs. Germany’s work force is being dumbed down.
Euro bonds with less than five years maturity are questionable. Beyond five years? They are guaranteed to default.
The actions or inactions of the ECB will not change this truism even a little bit.
The world needs to be in fear of the USA… or at least the US government.
The guy with the nuclear launch codes has dementia. Sorry about that.
The same guy now says he “senses” that the Ruskies are due to attack Ukraine, and it could happen at any moment. Do not confuse this with the “imminent” attack last Friday or the “within days” assurance from a couple weeks ago. Also, don’t get it confused with all the other death at any moment crap the Biden regime has been peddling for months.
Whenever something bad happens and they need a distraction — the Russians are coming, or else they are already here. Underneath your bed, in your closet, and in your head.
Finally, please do not ask why the right half of Biden’s face seems to be moving separate from the left half. He did not have a mini-stroke. It just looks that way.
For now, just know that Dementia Joe “senses” the evil in his sippie cup. The Russians are up to no good, and the cartoon face on the side of his sippie cup is telling Joe to look out.
Since inflation can no longer be politically ignored, any chance there are those looking to take care of it by raising the price of oil instead of allowing Powell to raise rates? Seems there are quite a few powerful interests both within and outside the US that do not want higher US rates
Ummm, have you checked the price of oil recently?
Raising the price of oil “INSTEAD” or did you mean IN ADDITION TO raising rates?
PS — massive debtors who run perennial spending deficits don’t get to control interest rates. That was the problem for the US in the 1970s, and its the problem today.
Uncle Sam will get spending under control…. or else rates *AND* oil prices (and many other things) will keep going up.
MMT is a stupid idea, and Zimbabwe thought of it long before the academics / marxists
MMT?
To paraphrase Bastiat……..
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a monetary theory that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
Just thinking that sustained oil above $100 could be recession inducing on its own turning 6 rate hikes into 2. On the flip side $80 a barrel may allow the now predicted 6 hikes to take place turning a strong dollar into a black hole for capital.
I would also add that the Fed very much controls short term rates thru fed funds, IOER, REPO and therefore strongly influences 3,6 month LIBOR and Eurodollar futures. My curiosity is in the push and pull between the Fed and the Eurodollar system mostly run in London.
Well here we stand on the brink of the globalist crisis event in Ukraine – American imbecile leaders and their duped handlers in the MIC both victims of globalist manipulation, and about to play their gormless part in this tragedy.
The Americans/Brits will start it – a series of small confusing cyber and kinetic events are underway, designed to build a casus belli for Putin. Then once they have done enough, and jawboned enough about how Putin is about to attack, they will attack their own forces in a classic false flag, in order to escalate the crisis. Even if Putin stoically stands by, the globalist stooges will run both ends of the escalating conflict, until they have manufactured the pre-conditions for the big one – a cyberattack on global financial systems that the IMF have already wargamed and that will be blamed on Russia.
And then the duped masses will beg for the Davosians to save them.
P.S – I notice that Biden is due to tell us about an executive order for regulating (i.e outlawing) private crypto next week. And Diem is now in the possession of a private bank (Silvergate) under globalist control, able to issue the stablecoin as a global currency. I think the Davosians are ready for launch. The Great Reset is standing by.
Of course the Davosian preference is for Putin to capitulate and take his seat at the global governance table, and then this can all go away and be called a triumph of globalist diplomacy.
“Join us, or be blamed for the false flag we will use to trigger the crisis that causes the world to beg for our Great Reset”
And none of that is what is going to happen. Oh, they are trying to MAKE IT HAPPEN, but it’s not actually going to happen.
Putin has the means to say nyet to all of this, forcing it, along with the mass protests, into complete disarray.
Yes understood – I hope you’re right.
The question is what will falsify our theories – how will you and I know we have been wrong?
For me, it will be seeing an actual conflict with Russian forces undeniably involved, OR watching this all fizzle out and the Brits/Americans humiliated.
For you, it would presumably be Putin dragged to the table and agreeing to Davosian terms, or seeing a false flag creating a crisis to which the Great Reset is proposed as the answer, while Putin is made a global pariah?
You can’t ‘falsify a theory’ when you purposefully are withheld critical information to support them one way or the other.
In effect, Ivor, this is what I’ve been trying to explain to you for a year now. You’ll always be chasing answers which will never come. You’ll always look for the smoking gun when it’s been melted down and made into a chain link fence.
It’s about games theory, and proportionality of counter-moves to moves made and assessing them within the incentive structure of the people actually having to implement this shit.
Trudeau and Arden are hanging on by a thread now. But, these people will double down on tyranny until they are removed bodily from office kicking and screaming.
But, they will because you can see it building to that point. It’ll remain peaceful until it doesn’t and then heaven help Davos.
Putin is doing the same thing in Ukraine, forcing them into errors left and right and waiting for the optimal moment to counter. When he does it will be decisive.
“You’ll always look for the smoking gun when it’s been melted down and made into a chain link fence.”
That’s a good line – hopefully I’ll have the good grace to admit I’ve been wrong once “hasn’t happened” becomes “didn’t happen”
Of course if Trudeau is replaced by Carney, that’s another Davosian in place, right?
What decisive counter are you expecting from Putin? Please tell me he’ll drop George Soros down a lift shaft.
Yikes.
Putin is NOT standing stoically by, and his peacekeeping operation in Eastern Ukraine is already allowing the globalists to fake actions in the West of the country, so the Russian action can be portrayed as an invasion.
And now that these limited operations are able to be characterised as an invasion, Russia can be provoked with more sanctions, and even if he fails to respond further the Davosians can escalate for him.
CyberTonkin.
Or do you see this playing out differently?
What a post! You have a very interesting take on what’s really going on in the region and if there’s truth to it, I’d say that the realistic approach would be to hope the better power in an emerging multipolar world gains influence…that power is IMO the EU. Russia and the CSTO dominating things would be detrimental to the West. The neocons in America would worse, send us spiraling on a collision course to nuclear destruction unchecked. Seems like a diplomatic but not pro-Putin continental European power would be the best outcome
So, everything has changed in two weeks. Putin threw the first punch, and Germany will start arming itself again. And it seems it’s EU who is eager to jump
into the mud pool.