The Secret Reason Trump Is So Cozy With Saudi Arabia

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

As a candidate, Donald Trump used uncommonly harsh language to criticize Saudi Arabia—the world’s largest oil exporter.

He called the Saudi regime the world’s biggest funder of terrorism.

He also said the Saudi government uses “our petro dollars—our very own money—to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people, while the Saudis rely on us to protect them!”

At another point, Trump said, “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi [Arabia].”

Trump also criticized Hillary Clinton for taking Saudi money for the Clinton Foundation. (They were its biggest “donors.”) He even challenged her to return the money.

He also famously got into a Twitter spat with a prominent member of the Saudi royal family, Alwaleed bin Talal.

As a candidate, Trump blasted the Saudis countless other times.

But, after he took office, Trump did a complete 180. He stopped criticizing the Saudis. In fact, he’s now singing their praises.

It’s bizarre… as if someone put a severed horse head in his bed.

Mere months after criticizing the Saudis, he was on Air Force One headed to Saudi Arabia to do the sword dance with his new friends.

It was his first foreign trip as president.

President Trump with King Salman

Trump’s about face was astounding. But his newly adopted deference to the Saudis is no different than Obama’s, Baby Bush’s, or any previous president’s.

President Obama with King Abdullah

President G.W. Bush with King Abdullah

Today, I’ll tell you why Trump made such an abrupt turnaround.

I’ll also explain why the Saudis get special treatment from the US Deep State.

“As Good As Gold” - From Bretton Woods to the Petrodollar

It’s been rightly said that he who holds the gold makes the rules.

After World War 2, the US had the largest gold reserves in the world, by far. Along with winning the war, this let the US reconstruct the global monetary system around the dollar.

The new system, created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, tied the currencies of virtually every country in the world to the US dollar through a fixed exchange rate. It also tied the US dollar to gold at a fixed rate of $35 an ounce.

The dollar was said to be “as good as gold.”

The Bretton Woods system made the US dollar the world’s premier reserve currency. It effectively forced other countries to store dollars for international trade, or to exchange with the US government for gold.

However, this pseudo gold standard was doomed to fail.

Not surprisingly, runaway spending on warfare and welfare caused the US government to print more dollars than it could back with gold at the promised price.

By the late 1960s, the number of dollars circulating had drastically increased relative to the amount of gold backing them. This encouraged foreign countries to exchange their dollars for gold, draining the US gold supply. It dropped from 574 million ounces at the end of World War 2 to around 261 million ounces in 1971.

To plug the drain, President Nixon “temporarily” suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold in 1971. This ended the Bretton Woods system and severed the dollar’s last tie to gold.

The “temporary” suspension is still in effect today.

This is why the Fed can print as much paper money as it pleases.

The death of the Bretton Woods system had profound geopolitical consequences. Most critically, it eliminated the main reason foreign countries stored large amounts of US dollars and used the US dollar for international trade.

At this point, oil-producing countries began to demand payment in gold instead of rapidly depreciating dollars.

It was clear the US would have to create a new monetary system to stabilize to the dollar.

So, the US government concocted a new scheme—the petrodollar system. It gave foreign countries another compelling reason to hold and use the dollar.

The new arrangement preserved the dollar’s special status as the world’s top reserve currency.

For President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was a geopolitical and financial masterstroke.

From 1972 to 1974, the US government made a series of agreements with Saudi Arabia that created the petrodollar system.

The US handpicked Saudi Arabia because of the kingdom’s vast petroleum reserves and its dominant position in OPEC—and because the Saudi royal family was (and is) easily corruptible.

In essence, the petrodollar system was an agreement that the US would guarantee the House of Saud’s survival.

In exchange, Saudi Arabia would:

1. 
   

   Use its dominant position in OPEC to ensure that all oil transactions would only happen in US dollars.

   
   


2. 
   

   Recycle the many billions of US dollars from oil revenue into American weapons manufacturers and infrastructure companies—and critically, into US Treasuries. This let the US issue more debt and finance previously unimaginable budget deficits. By 1977, at least 20% of all Treasuries held abroad were in Saudi hands.

   
   


3. 
   

   Guarantee the price of oil within limits acceptable to the US and prevent another oil embargo.

   
   

Oil is the largest and most strategic commodity market in the world.

As you can see in the chart below, it dwarfs all other major commodity markets combined.

Every country needs oil. And if foreign countries need US dollars to buy oil, they have a very compelling reason to hold large dollar reserves.

Think about it… If Italy wants to buy oil from Kuwait, it has to purchase US dollars on the foreign exchange market to pay for the oil first.

This creates a huge artificial market for US dollars.

In part, this is what differentiates the US dollar from a purely local currency, like the Mexican peso.

The dollar is just a middleman. But it’s used in countless transactions amounting to trillions of dollars that have nothing to do with US products or services.

Since the oil market is so enormous, it acts as a benchmark for international trade. If foreign countries are already using dollars for oil, it’s just easier to use the dollar for other international trade.

In addition to nearly all oil sales, the US dollar is used for about 80% of all international transactions.

This gives the US unmatched geopolitical leverage.

The US can sanction or exclude virtually any country from the US dollar-based financial system at the flip of a switch. By extension, it can also cut off any country from the vast majority of international trade.

The petrodollar system is why people and businesses everywhere in the world take US dollars. Other countries have had little choice over this.

Today, the biggest US exports are dollars and government debt. The US government can create unlimited quantities of both… from nothing.

It requires no effort to create US dollars, which can then be exchanged for real things like French wine, Italian cars, electronics from Korea, or Chinese manufactured goods.

Ultimately, the petrodollar boosts the US dollar’s purchasing power. It entices foreigners to soak up many of the new currency units the Fed creates.

The system helps create a deeper, more liquid market for the dollar and US Treasuries.

It also helps the US keep interest rates artificially low. This allows the US government to finance enormous and permanent deficits. Otherwise, this would be impossible without destroying the currency through money printing and inflation.

The petrodollar allows the US to finance the world’s largest military, which is bigger than the next seven largest militaries combined.

The petrodollar has also allowed the US to spend astronomical amounts of money on welfare and other benefits for over half of its population. It gives Americans a much higher standard of living than they would have otherwise.

In short, the petrodollar is the ultimate enabler of big government.

The US government could never have become as powerful without it.

It’s hard to overstate how much the petrodollar system benefits the US. It’s the bedrock of the US financial system.

And it’s the reason the US political elite pamper the Saudis.

Bretton Woods lasted 27 years. So far, the petrodollar has lasted over 40 years.

I think we’re on the cusp of another paradigm shift in the international financial system. It will be at least as fundamental as the end of Bretton Woods in 1971.

For decades, the petrodollar system has allowed the US government and many Americans to live way beyond their means.

The US takes this unique position for granted. But it will disappear once the petrodollar system breaks down.

When that happens, I expect severe inflation.

This will likely be the tipping point…

Afterward, the US government will be desperate enough to implement capital controls, people controls, nationalization of retirement savings, and other forms of wealth confiscation.

I urge you to prepare for the economic and sociopolitical fallout while you still can. Expect bigger government, less freedom, shrinking prosperity… and possibly worse.

It probably won’t happen tomorrow. But it’s clear where this trend is headed.

One day soon, Americans may wake up to a new reality.

Once the petrodollar system kicks the bucket and the dollar loses its status as the world’s premier reserve currency, you will have few, if any, options.

The sad truth is, most people have no idea how bad things could get, let alone how to prepare…

Yet there are straightforward steps you can start taking today to protect your savings and yourself from the financial and sociopolitical effects of the collapse of the petrodollar.

We recently released a special Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

Is Korea Just A Smokescreen?

Authored by Bryan McBride via Mises Canada,

Is Korea just a smokescreen?

In my last article (Sticking the arson charge on a couple of patsies) I questioned why North Korea’s nuclear program was attracting such attention from the United States. North Korea is a very poor and backwards country whose bellicosity reflects the regime’s need for an external enemy like the United States to galvanize domestic support. Attacking America and its allies in the region is the last thing North Korea’s leaders would want to do as such an attack would guarantee an American response that would be sure to destroy their lives, their government and the lives of millions of innocent Korean civilians.

However, this month I was made aware of another possible reason for the attention being paid to North Korea and its nuclear program.

What if the escalating tensions over Korea are just a smokescreen intended to legitimize an American military buildup in the region aimed at intimidating China?

In 2011, former U.S. President Barack Obama announced a change in U.S. foreign policy that was termed a ‘Pivot to Asia.’ The official thinking was that as China and the emerging countries of South-East Asia gained in economic importance, it made sense to devote more military and diplomatic attention to the region while reducing the attention paid to Europe and the Middle East.

Of course, observers also saw the pivot as a response to the rising economic, political and military power of a resurgent China. Just as the U.S. sought to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War with a string of encircling alliances and economic agreements, so America today seeks to keep China in check through military alliances with East Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Chinese leaders acutely resent continued American dominance in a region they consider their own backyard. However, they are not reckless and do not seek to engage in a potentially catastrophic military confrontation. Instead, they have spent the past few years establishing institutions and agreements which, taken together, will displace the U.S. dollar from the centre of the global financial system. Empire is expensive. Just as the British were forced to decolonize in the 1960s once the pound lost its reserve currency status in the years following World War II, so too will the demise of the dollar force American retreat from global (and, most importantly for the Chinese, East Asian) hegemony.

At this point, it is worthwhile to recall how the U.S. dollar became (and remains) the world’s reserve currency in the first place. At the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, it was agreed that all currencies would have a fixed exchange rate with the U.S. dollar, which itself would have a fixed value in terms of gold. From 1945 until 1971, foreign central banks were allowed to exchange their accumulated dollars for gold at a price of $35/ounce. As the U.S. dollar was literally ‘as good as gold,’ commodities were priced in dollars and foreign governments found it desirable to accumulate and hold dollars in order to purchase imports.

However, by the late 1960s the system was coming under stress. The value of the U.S. dollars in circulation abroad was far greater than the value of the 8000 tons of gold held by the U.S. Treasury in Fort Knox, Kentucky. In order to stop foreign governments stripping the U.S. of its gold reserves, in 1971 U.S. President Richard Nixon ‘temporarily suspended’ the convertibility of dollars for gold. Predictably, while a dollar bought 1/35th of an ounce of gold in 1971, by 1980 it only bought 1/850th of an ounce.

To try to arrest the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar Richard Nixon, in one of the last acts of his presidency, sent newly-appointed Treasury Secretary William Simon to Saudi Arabia in 1974. The agreement he came away with reinforced the dollar’s position as the global reserve currency by replacing gold convertibility with oil convertibility. In exchange for agreeing to price and sell oil in dollars and to lend their newly-acquired oil wealth to the U.S. by purchasing U.S. government Treasury bonds, the U.S. agreed to provide military aid and equipment to the Saudis.

To this day, oil continues to be priced and sold in dollars. As everyone therefore needs U.S. dollars (often referred to as petro-dollars) in order to purchase crucial energy imports, the dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency.

However, China has recently established two complementary markets aimed at removing this crucial pillar of dollar support. First, in April 2016 the Shanghai Gold Exchange launched a yuan-denominated gold price fix in order to become a price maker in a market historically dominated by London and New York. Uniquely, though, while in London and New York traders deal mainly in paper contracts for gold which are very rarely exercised, the Shanghai market is primarily a spot market whose participants purchase physical gold, usually in the form of one kilogram bars.

Second, within the last two months China has announced its intention to offer a crude oil futures contract denominated in yuan before the end of the year. This contract will establish a benchmark price for oil in yuan to compete with the dollar-denominated oil prices set in New York. To make the yuan-denominated contracts more attractive to oil exporters, the Chinese are emphasizing the convertibility of yuan for gold at the Shanghai Gold Exchange. As the economist and lawyer Jim Rickards put it recently:

“China, Russia and Iran are coordinating a new international monetary order that does not involve U.S. dollars. It has several parts, which together spell dollar doom. The first part is that China will buy oil from Russia and Iran in exchange for yuan.

 

“The yuan is not a major reserve currency, so it’s not an especially attractive asset for Russia or Iran to hold. China solves that problem by offering to convert yuan into gold on a spot basis on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

 

“This marks the beginning of the end of the petro-dollar system that Henry Kissinger worked out with Saudi Arabia in 1974, after Nixon abandoned gold.”

Chinese yuan with the gold-convertibility of the pre-1971 U.S. dollar should prove an attractive alternative to the dollar for major oil exporters. Just this past month Saudi Arabia, the country at the centre of the petro-dollar arrangement, agreed to purchase S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia. By making this purchase, the Saudis are signaling that they no longer feel obliged to rely on America for their arms as laid out in the 1974 petro-dollar agreement. Might this historic first signal a repudiation of their commitment to price their oil in dollars as well?

If so, the end of the dollar is at hand, and with it the beginning of the end of the American empire. Weaker countries like Iraq and Libya which tried to price their oil exports in, respectively, euros and gold-backed dinars were invaded and bombed by the U.S. in order to maintain dollar supremacy. Given this history, the threat to American power posed by a yuan-denominated global oil market may also be met with force.

This being the case, it is reasonable to question whether the American air and naval units being moved to Asia are in fact being sent to protect American allies from North Korean missiles.

Looking at the bigger picture, it seems more likely that the entire Korean issue is a smokescreen designed to provide cover for a military buildup intended to intimidate or even force China to abandon its challenge to the U.S. dollar. However, China is not Iraq or Libya. It is a major nuclear power. Trying to enforce continued dollar dominance in East Asia could very well end in catastrophe for America, East Asia and the entire world.

Rickards Warns "Cracks In The Dollar Are Getting Larger"

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Many readers are familiar with the original petrodollar deal the U.S made with Saudi Arabia.

It was set up by Henry Kissinger and Saudi princes in 1974 to prop up the U.S. dollar. At the time, confidence in the dollar was on shaky ground because President Nixon had ended gold convertibility of dollars in 1971.

Saudi Arabia was receiving dollars for their oil shipments, but they could no longer convert the dollars to gold at a guaranteed price directly with the U.S. Treasury. The Saudis were secretly dumping dollars and buying gold on the London market. This was putting pressure on the bullion banks receiving the dollar.

Confidence in the dollar began to crack. Henry Kissinger and Treasury Secretary William Simon worked out a plan. If the Saudis would price oil in dollars, U.S. banks would hold the dollar deposits for the Saudis.

These dollars would be “recycled” to developing economy borrowers, who in turn would buy manufactured goods from the U.S. and Europe. This would help the global economy and help the U.S. maintain price stability. The Saudis would get more customers and a stable dollar, and the U.S. would force the world to accept dollars because everyone would need the dollars to buy oil.

Behind this “deal” was a not so subtle threat to invade Saudi Arabia and take the oil by force.

I personally discussed these invasion plans in the White House with Kissinger’s deputy, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, at the time. The petrodollar plan worked brilliantly and the invasion never happened.

Now, 43 years later, the wheels are coming off. The world is losing confidence in the dollar again. China just announced that any oil-exporter that accepts yuan for oil can convert the oil to gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and hedge the hard currency value of the gold on the Shanghai Futures Exchange.

The deal has several parts, which together spell dollar doom.

The first part is that China will buy oil from Russia and Iran in exchange for yuan.

The yuan is not a major reserve currency, so it’s not an especially attractive asset for Russia or Iran to hold. China solves that problem by offering to convert yuan into gold on a spot basis on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

This straight-through processing of oil-to-yuan-to-gold eliminates the role of the dollar.

Russia was the first country to agree to accept yuan. The rest of the BRICS nations (Brazil, India and South Africa) endorsed China’s plan at the BRICS summit in China earlier this month.

Now Venezuela has also now signed on to the plan. Russia is #2 and Venezuela is #7 on the list of the ten largest oil exporters in the world. Others will follow quickly. What can we take away from this?

This marks the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system that Henry Kissinger worked out with Saudi Arabia in 1974, after Nixon abandoned gold.

Of course, leading reserve currencies do die — but not necessarily overnight. The process can persist over many years.

For example, the U.S. dollar replaced the UK pound sterling as the leading reserve currency in the 20^th century. That process was completed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, but it began thirty years earlier in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.

That’s when gold began to flow from the UK to New York to pay for badly needed war materials and agricultural exports.

The UK also took massive loans from New York bankers organized by Jack Morgan, head of the Morgan bank at the time. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a long, slow decline in sterling as it devalued against gold in 1931, and devalued again against the dollar in 1936.

The dollar is losing its leading reserve currency status now, but there’s no single announcement or crucial event, just a long, slow process of marginalization. I mentioned that Russia and Venezuela are now pricing oil in yuan instead of dollars. But Russia has taken its “de-dollarization” plans one step further.

Russia has now banned dollar payments at its seaports. Although these seaport facilities are mostly state-owned, many payments, like those for fuel and tariffs, were still conducted in dollars. Not anymore.

This is just one of many stories from around the world showing how the dollar is being pushed out of international trade and payments to be replaced by yuan, rubles, euros or gold in this case.

I believe gold is ultimately heading to $10,000 an ounce, or higher.

Now, people often ask me, “How can you say gold prices will rise to $10,000 without knowing developments in the world economy, or even what actions will be taken by the Federal Reserve?”

It’s not made up. I don’t throw it out there to get headlines, et cetera.

It’s the implied non-deflationary price of gold. Everyone says you can’t have a gold standard, because there’s not enough gold. There’s always enough gold, you just have to get the price right.

I’m not saying that we will have a gold standard. I’m saying if you have anything like a gold standard, it will be critical to get the price right.

The analytical question is, you can have a gold standard if you get the price right; what is the non-deflationary price? What price would gold have to be in order to support global trade and commerce, and bank balance sheets, without reducing the money supply?

The answer is, $10,000 an ounce.

I use a 40% backing of the M1 money supply. Some people argue for 100% backing. Historically, it’s been as low as 20%, so 40% is my number. If you take the global M1 of the major economies, times 40%, and divide that by the amount of official gold in the world, the answer is approximately $10,000 an ounce.

There’s no mystery here. It’s not a made-up number. The math is eighth grade math, it’s not calculus.

That’s where I get the $10,000 figure. It is also worth noting that you don’t have to have a gold standard, but if you do, this will be the price.

The now impending question is, are we going to have a gold standard?

That’s a function of collapse of confidence in central bank money, which is already being seen. It’s happened three times before, in 1914, 1939 and 1971. Let us not forget that in 1977, the United States issued treasury bonds denominated in Swiss francs, because no other country wanted dollars.

The United States treasury then borrowed in Swiss francs, because people didn’t want dollars, at least at an interest rate that the treasury was willing to pay.

That’s how bad things were, and this type of crisis happens every 30 or 40 years. Again, we can look to history and see what happened in 1998. Wall Street bailed out a hedge fund to save the world. What happened in 2008? The central banks bailed out Wall Street to save the world.

What’s going to happen in 2018?

We don’t know for sure.

But eventually a tipping point will be reached where the dollar collapse suddenly accelerates as happened to sterling in 1931. Investors should acquire gold and other hard assets before that happens.

America's Weapons: "The Dollar And The Drone"

Authored by Brian Maher via DailyReckoning.com,

It was said that “the guinea and the gallows” were the true instruments of British imperial power.

The guinea represented the coined wealth of Great Britain.

The gallows represented its… constabulary zeal in policing restless natives.

This is the 21st century of course… a time of enlightenment.

Today’s instruments of imperial power are no longer the guinea and the gallows.

No. Today’s instruments of imperial power are “the dollar and the drone.”

The dollar and the drone are America’s weapons.

Like the 19th-century pound (which replaced the guinea), today’s dollar is the world’s reserve currency.

Like the 19th-century pound, the dollar finances some two-thirds of global trade.

And the gallows?

Britain hanged its foreign trouble. America explodes its own in drone attacks.

Here is civilization; here is progress.

The sun eventually sank on the British Empire… the gallows came down… and the pound lost its global reserve status.

The U.S. will have its drones. But is its other weapon, the dollar, close to losing global reserve status?

Recent developments may tell…

The global oil trade has centered on the dollar since 1974, when Saudi Arabia agreed to enthrone the dollar as currency of the oil market.

If it was oil you wanted… it was dollars you needed.

But now China — world’s top oil importer — is preparing to create an oil market that bypasses the dollar entirely.

The plan would let China buy oil from Russia and Iran with its own currency, the yuan.

But the yuan is not a major reserve currency like the dollar.

Under this plan, Russia and Iran would be able to swap yuan for an asset far more desirable than Chinese scraps of paper — gold itself.

Perhaps that explains why China’s been hoarding so much gold in recent years?

Jim Rickards says this system marks the beginning of the end for the petrodollar:

China, Russia and Iran are coordinating a new international monetary order that does not involve U.S. dollars. It has several parts, which together spell dollar doom. The first part is that China will buy oil from Russia and Iran in exchange for yuan.

 

The yuan is not a major reserve currency, so it’s not an especially attractive asset for Russia or Iran to hold. China solves that problem by offering to convert yuan into gold on a spot basis on the Shanghai Gold Exchange…

 

This marks the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system that Henry Kissinger worked out with Saudi Arabia in 1974, after Nixon abandoned gold.

But it’s not only China, Russia and Iran that are out to dethrone King Dollar.

They’re joined by the rest of the “BRICS” nations — Brazil, India, South Africa.

Together they represent 25% of global economic output.

At last week’s annual BRICS summit in China, members announced full-throated support for China’s plan.

The message, clear as gin: The dollar’s days of “exorbitant privilege” must end.

And yesterday brought news that could further accelerate China’s de-dollarization plans…

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced the U.S. would consider locking China out of the international dollar system if Beijing doesn’t cooperate with new sanctions against North Korea:

If China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system. And that’s quite meaningful.

“Meaningful” might be one word for it. “Menacing” would be another.

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a network that facilitates trillions of dollars in international money transfers each year.

It is the oil that lubricates the machinery of the international financial system — or as Jim Rickards styles it, “the oxygen supply that keeps the global financial system alive.”

And to cut off China’s oxygen?

“That is why China buys gold,” Jim Rickards tweeted this morning from London.

Our colleague Dave Gonigam of The 5 Min. Forecast half-jestingly wonders, “Is the Trump administration trying to kill off the U.S. dollar’s status as the globe’s reserve currency?”

Of course, the dollar will not lose reserve status tomorrow, next week, next year.

But the direction of travel seems clear enough.

Jim:

In 2000, dollar assets were about 70% of global reserves. Today, the comparable figure is about 62%. If this trend continues, one could easily see the dollar fall below 50% in the not-too-distant future.

How does one go bankrupt?

Slowly at first, said Hemingway — then all at once.

That’s how the dollar will likely lose its reserve status… slowly at first… then all at once…

Pepe Escobar: Why Jihadism Won't Be Allowed To Die

Authored by Pepe Escobar via SputnikNews.com,

A serious working hypothesis is being discussed for a while now among independent geopolitical analysts. Here it is, in a nutshell.

Daesh may be dying – but the world is still encumbered with its walking corpse.

Plan B of Daesh’s masters may have been to indoctrinate repeated waves of misguided youth across the EU and “seduce” them into D.I. Y. jihadi terror, creating fear and insecurity in Europe. I’ve just been to Barcelona — and that’s not happening. No Fear.

Daesh can also manipulate its brand name to stake a claim into what we may call the New War Belt in Southwest Asia. That’s also not happening, because the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – with the addition of Turkey, and with China in a “leading from behind” role, are all working together.

The unfinished war across “Syraq” coupled with spasms of jihadism in Europe could certainly still metastasize into a massive Eurasian cancer, spreading like a plague from Afghanistan to Germany and vice-versa, and from the South China Sea to Brussels via Pakistan and vice-versa.

What would happen under this cataclysmic scenario is the complete derailment of the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); its integration with the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEC); and a massive security threat to the domestic stability of the Russia-China strategic partnership, with uncontrollable bellicose scenarios developing very close to their borders.

It’s no secret which elements and institutions would very much cherish internal political chaos in both Russia and China.

Charlie gets stronger

Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski may be dead, but geopolitics is still encumbered with his corpse. Brzezinski’s life obsession is that no peer competitor to the US should be allowed to emerge. Imagine as he lay dying contemplating the ongoing, ultimate nightmare; a Russia-China pan-Eurasian alliance.

The less disastrous scenario in this case would be to seduce either Moscow or Beijing into becoming a US partner, based on which one would pose a lesser “threat” in the future. Brzezinski focused on Russia as the immediate threat and China as the long game threat.

Thus the obsession of the US deep state and the Clinton machine in demonizing all things Russia – like an infantile neo-McCarthyism on steroids. Inevitably, what this geopolitical back hole has precipitated is China’s even more rapid advance on all fronts.

Not to mention that the Russia-China strategic partnership kept getting stronger every day – an eerie echo of Capt. Willard’s line in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; “Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker, every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger”.

And yet Charlie is not squatting; he’s conquering via trade and investment. And he’s not in the bush; he’s all over the Eurasian plains.

A basket of Hobbesian flare-ups

The other American dalang, Henry Kissinger, is still alive, at 94. Advising President Trump before the January inauguration, and posing as the supreme gray eminence on China matters, he suggested Russia should be courted.

But then came the clincher. Clearly identifying that the Russia-China-Iran alliance holds the key to Eurasia integration, Kissinger revealed his true colors; it’s the weakest link – Iran – that should be neutralized.

Thus his recent proclamation/warning about an “Iranian radical empire” developing/stretching from Tehran to Beirut as the “vacuum” left by Daesh is filled by the Persians.

And here we have Kissinger once again as the unreconstructed Cold Warrior that he is; exit Communism, enter Khomeinism as the supreme “evil.” And may the Lord bask in praise of the Wahhabi matrix of jihadism enablers; the House of Saud.

The Kissingerian recipe sounds like music to the US deep state; Daesh should not be routed, it should be “realigned” as a tool against Iran.

Who cares that the notion of an “Iranian radical empire” per se does not even qualify as a joke? Lebanon is multicultural. Syria will continue to be ruled by the secular Baath Party. Iraq rejects Khomeinism – with tremendously influential Ayatollah Sistani privileging the parliamentary system.

The “4+1” – backed by China — have forged a serious alliance in the fire of the Syrian war. None of this will change by a Kissinger decree. As for “filling the vacuum”, the alternative is Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria. “But wait!” — say the neocons/neoliberalcons of the War Party. “We like that!”]

And that brings us full circle to the initial working hypothesis. Daesh won’t be allowed to die – as much as the geopolitical re-engineering of what Dr. Zbig used to call the “Eurasian Balkans” refuses to die.

ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K – that regroup in Afghanistan – can be so handy to wreak havoc in the intersection of Central Asia and South Asia, so close to key BRI development corridors.

Moscow and Beijing though, know exactly what’s goin’ on. The phony Caliphate was useful in an attempt to break off BRI across “Syraq”, as much as Maidan in Ukraine was useful to break off the EAEU.

Other war fronts will follow – from the Philippines to Venezuela, all bent on disrupting regional integration projects under a Divide and Rule strategy of US satraps manipulated into Hobbesian asymmetrical flare-ups.

Sixteen years after 9/11, the name of the game is not GWOT (Global War on Terror) anymore; is how, under the cover of GWOT, to disturb geostrategic expansion by the people who matter; “peer competitors” Russia and China.

Deep State and the Path From Fantasy to Meme to Fact (sic)

Horror Vacui. Nature abhors a vacuum. So do humans. Where there is a lack of knowledge, or a lack of answers, humans will make up stuff to fill the void. That might be comforting, but it can be dangerous. It is how superstitions are created, and it also can be the genesis for everything from racism to social division, strife, and violence. It is the sort of thing that gets "witches" burned at the stake.

This place, which is to say the Comments Section, never ceases to amaze! Similar to other Open Comment sites, it tends to gather a specific type of person and then structures itself into a uniform community, with nary a dissonant voice. Years ago Tyler told me that less than 1% of the readership wrote comments. That was back when the site was primarily financial. I don’t know what the percent is today, but I would guess the demo has changed, and many who once came for financial insight now just visit occasionally for a few laughs. So long as there are clicks and eyeballs, it’s all good. The cash register still rings.

I wonder if the vocal membership ever stops to ask themselves why they think what they think, and what has convinced them to believe the most outlandish things? Do they really know what they think they know, or do they just assume a set of beliefs that has some odd internal psychological agenda, but about which they really know absolutely nothing?

Never have so many been so wrong about that which they are so sure. Yes, I’m talking to you with your endless conspiracies and your chemtrails and your Deep State and your debilitating fear of your own shadows---you know, because those shadows just might be CIA-generated ninja assassin 2D holograms armed with mini-HAARP neural disrupters!

I appreciate some of the folks here are batshit crazy---way too many---and that explains their bizarre world view. Sadly, nothing can be done about them. We’ll forever have them with us. I do believe Tyler gets a good chuckle out of the nonsense you guys produce, and he is expert at pushing your panic buttons. Kudos to him for capturing the moonbat demographic and monetizing it. Other folks, however, who may be sane, but who are viewing all sorts of events from outside of the arena, still become cocksure in their views merely because they had a pre-existing belief and searched the internet until they found something that corroborated it. They call that becoming ‘awake’, or ‘taking the red pill’, but to call a spade a spade, it is simply confirmation bias. One belief then becomes the base against which subsequent events are assessed and analyzed. “This one feels like a false flag” is a function of them assuming all of the previous events they believe were false flags actually were, which of course they were not. Foundations get built on quicksand. That is truly an odd thing, seemingly the result of that aforementioned vacuum, plus a sense of personal victimhood and self-esteem issues. It drives people to manufacture answers, and even bad answers are good enough. There isn’t any quality control, because the mental infrastructure that spews out thoughts is flawed.

This wonderful---and often not so wonderful---internet thing has replaced the old neighborhood coffee shop or greasy spoon diner, the place where like-minded people gather to reinforce each other’s beliefs and to find comfort in belonging. It has never been so easy for an individual to find an echo chamber, to feel they are independent free thinkers by becoming part of a flock. Yes, that is a contradiction, but the point is that vacuum filling, and finding a way to salve the pain of victimhood, is the goal. The internet delivers in a way, and to a degree, no coffee shop ever could.

This site is very much that echo chamber, a kind of cyber neighborhood coffee shop. Folks gather, memes are introduced, gnawed on, embraced, and ‘corroborated’ by posting LINKS to websites that ‘make sense’ (but where the original author likely knows absolutely nothing). Soon a sort of circularity or tail-chasing occurs, where LINKS stumble upon themselves so many times, that something someone somewhere pulled straight from his or her backside becomes gospel.

Once the meme morphs into gospel status, believers congratulate themselves on their sophistication and for ‘figuring it out’. Anyone who doubts is either a ‘paid troll’, woefully naïve, or something worse. It doesn’t matter whether the common song in the echo chamber is melodious or not, only that it fills the vacuum and offers solace to the victims of whatever the injustice from which they believe they suffer. Nobody can really imagine what the world would be if all the dragons were slayed, partly because it is far too complicated, and mostly because the majority of the concepts are wrong from the get-go. In any event, it really is all about the journey, not the destination.

There are countless examples of this process, though I will only mention one. Some of the unmentioned have resulted in needless violence born from pure stupidity (Dylann Roof, Edgar Madison Welch), while some have just served to generate lots of self-inflicted pain in the form of anger and bitterness (just scroll any comment section on this site for proof). One wonders if anger and bitterness do not become a need or an addiction. Certainly plenty of people go out of their way to fuel it and nurse it.

My personal favorite fantasy-turned-fact is the term, or entity, “Deep State”. What the hell do people think that means? That there is some constant cadre of self-appointed folks who run the country or the world? THAT is woefully naïve. Painfully naïve, even childish. It is a silly belief fed by a combination of Hollywood, pulp fiction, ignorance, and insanity, and it is about as real as Star Wars or Men in Black (I know, I know---some here will tell me those are actually documentaries---and they can prove it with LINKS).

The good news is that nobody is as clever as he or she would have to be to be able to pull off any of what so many sad souls believe to be true. A world of 210 countries and 7.3 billion individuals simply has too many variables. The bad news is that despite that lack of omnipotent beings, leaders and power brokers are, in a relative sense, still way above the conspiracy junkies.

So here is a quick overview of the actual State, and while it might be deep, lumbering and somewhat opaque, nefarious it is not:

There are three branches of government, as most learned in grammar school Civics Class. No news there. They check and balance each other. They also try to defend their turf, battling each other. Each branch has some turnover---political appointments or elected officials at the highest level, deaths or retirements, and tens of thousands of GS-employees, who spend careers working under many Administrations.

Most appointments last a maximum of eight years, but generally less. (Under Trump, it can be as little as a week---The Mooch).

Legislators can last longer than someone in the Executive Branch, though there are many one or two term Congresspeople.

Judges can hang around a long time, but there are so many courts at various levels that they have their own intramural competition, which explains why there is an appeals process.

Bureaucrats can linger for 20+ years, but most are just that: bureaucrats. They take a paycheck, do some work, and either go shopping on the weekend or binge watch something on Netflix. They worry about their kids’ grades, or try to remember what time they have to pick up little Noah or Amelia from soccer practice.

The elected officials and the appointees are the ones who push policy, not the bureaucrats, because it is the temporary players whose ego is at play, and who think they have all the answers.

Inside the Beltway, in is in, and out is out. One day a person is a Senior Official with access to the deepest intelligence, policy and military secrets of the nation. The next day, the same person is sitting in his or her pajamas on the couch watching the morning shows, completely out of the loop. Once Administrations change, former officials have a limited shelf life---perhaps six months---where they can be guests on panel shows or the Sunday Talk Shows, though a few land a corner office with an IB or hedge fund who wildly overpays and comes to feel Buyer’s Remorse (aka, they get Eric Cantor’d). After that, they become Jeopardy answers---unless they are really engaging guests on TV or write a best seller. The ones who last longest spend their final years as ‘Photo Ops’ or ‘Selfie Targets’. Lots of people want a picture to frame for their office standing, for example, with Henry Kissinger or James Baker. Bill Clinton has now officially entered Selfie Target status, and Hillary will, too, as soon as she comes to terms with her self-inflicted defeat (this writer has his share of such photos…somewhere, in some closet or box).

Outside of actual government officials, there are business leaders and lobbyists who tend to have longer term influence than political appointees, but even their influence is limited both by the tenure of their position as well as the changing landscape of American business. Competition and technological advancement bring new faces to the fore and old faces fade away. For example, one day Harold Geneen (“Not ‘J’ as in ‘Jesus’, but ‘G’ as in ‘God’”) gives way to Lee Iococca, who gives way to Jack Welch, who gives way to Jamie Dimon, who gives way to Mark Zuckerberg. Influence, or ‘Power’ is rather fleeting.

Even fortunes tend to dissipate with time, as neer-do-well kids eat up the corpus, or inflation makes yesterday’s fortune chump change compared to the newest next best thing. Thirty years ago the Bass Brothers were at the top of the Forbes 400. Remember them? Today, the combined Bass fortune is not even a fifth of Jeff Bezos’ wealth. Paul Ryan might tell his secretary to tell a Bass that ‘I’ll call him back”, but he’ll take Jeff Bezos’ call immediately That’s how it works. How about one of the internet’s bigly baddest Bogeymen, the Rockefellers? ZIRP and risk aversion killed that fortune’s clout. No matter how large the fortune, Bezos and Zuckerberg sped past it like Usain Bolt in an Olympic final. How much clout does the Rockefeller Foundation have compared to the Washington Post or Facebook?

The only thing constant in the halls of power is change. Deep State is a wading pool, with a leak, in the middle of a desert. Power lasts only slightly longer than a Higgs Boson.

If Steve Bannon learned anything during his seven months in Trumpistan, it is likely that he learned Deep State is a silly myth. If he still believed in it, he wouldn’t be going to a relatively small internet media site funded by a single man’s fortune. If Deep State was a reality, a David as small as Breitbart wouldn’t dare trying to stand up to the Deep State Goliath. Of course Bannon might still use the term if he thinks doing so will work to his advantage, just as he plays Pied Piper to the more virulent elements of Alt-Right, when in point of fact he considers them clowns.

Reality is likely disappointing to many. Things like Deep State or Secret Cabals provide excuses to people who fail to succeed. For others, such beliefs are just entertainment, and do no harm so long as they are not taken too seriously. For the former group, however, the ones who use such beliefs as excuses, it can be debilitating and lead to a kind of bitterness that never goes away. Every time I visit this website now, and scroll through comments, I see that bitterness. It is wasteful. It foments anger or rage that can’t be doing a body much good. It is also purely self-inflicted.

Henry Kissinger just Made a Stunning Admission about ISIS and Iran

By: Darius Shahtahmasebi, theantimedia.org | 

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man who dares not travel in many parts of the globe due to fears of arrest, just made one of the most stunning admissions of his career to date.

In an article for CapX, a British online news website founded by the Centre for Policy Studies, Kissinger warned against defeating ISIS because doing so could lead to an “Iranian radical empire.” He warned:

“In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be regarded as your friend no longer applies. In the contemporary Middle East, the enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy. The Middle East affects the world by the volatility of its ideologies as much as by its specific actions.”

Unsurprisingly, Kissinger, a documented war criminal, displayed a complete disregard for international law while expressing his major concerns. Kissinger said:

“The outside world’s war with Isis can serve as an illustration. Most non-Isis powers — including Shia Iran and the leading Sunni states — agree on the need to destroy it. But which entity is supposed to inherit its territory? A coalition of Sunnis? Or a sphere of influence dominated by Iran?”

Considering the majority of the territory belongs to Syria (and/or Iraq), perhaps it should not even be a question of who should inherit the land after ISIS’ downfall. If there are concerns that Syria will become an Iranian client state, perhaps the U.S. should have considered that before they targeted Syria for regime change in a short-sighted attempt to undermine Iran in the first place. It is only because the U.S. carried out this strategy – and continues to carry out this strategy – that Iran has emerged as a significant benefactor in the Syrian conflict. Nevertheless, Kissinger cautioned:

“The answer is elusive because Russia and the NATO countries support opposing factions. If the Isis territory is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Shia forces trained and directed by it, the result could be a territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut, which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire.”

To the 94-year-old, there is nothing more threatening than a dominant Iran, even when compared to the violent global jihad phenomenon that is ISIS. Contrary to popular neoconservative-propagated belief, Iran is widely regarded as one of the most stable countries in the region. It is also one of the most heavily engaged entities fighting ISIS, a terror group the Trump and Obama administrations had previously made the number one enemy.

Objectively speaking, despite its abundant flaws, Iran is a natural ally in the fight against ISIS and radical jihad. However, as the truth comes to light from official statements of the ruling elite, in the eyes of the powers-that-be, ISIS has become a natural ally of the United States in its bid to undermine the Iranian government.

---

Contributed by Darius Shahtahmasebi of theantimedia.org.

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Kissinger’s Deplorable Worldview

credit: Reuters/Ria Novosti

Unlike America, its rogue NATO allies and Israel, seeking dominance by naked aggression and conquest, Russia, China and Iran foster cooperative relations among all nations, abhorring war, supporting world peace and stability.

Not according to Henry K, still making mischief at age 94, a sinister architect of new world order harshness, guilty of horrendous high crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.

Symbolizing imperial ruthlessness, his rap sheet includes involvement in endless wars of aggression and state-sponsored terror. Just societies long ago would have imprisoned him.

In an article last week for CapX online, titled “Chaos and order in a changing world,” he claimed Atlanticism must be “redefine(d)” at a time of “fraught juncture,” focusing first on citing a nonexistent Russian threat.

He called Putin’s geopolitical worldview “a recurrence of 1930s European nationalist authoritarianism” – ignoring his advocacy for world peace and multi-world polarity, polar opposite how America operates.

Should Russia be pressured or punished “until it accepts Western views” and dominance, Kissinger asked? No nation has a legal, moral or ethical right to force its will on others, the way America operates, he failed to explain.

He claimed nonexistent “Russian military pressure,” requiring America to build greater capability to counter it, instead of advocating world peace and stability, along with an end to US aggressive wars, responsible for millions of lost lives post-9/11 alone.

Kissinger expressed concern about China’s growing political and economic strength and influence, momentum heading it toward surpassing America in the years ahead, becoming the world’s largest economy, threatening the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a key source of US strength.

China is “growing (in) power and strategic vision,” said Kissinger, what President Xi Jinping calls fulfilling “the Chinese dream,” at the expense of America’s hegemonic ambitions, Kissinger fears.

The Middle East is threatened by the “turmoil of dissolution,” he said, ignoring Washington’s responsibility for endless wars of aggression, ravaging the region.

Citing the need to destroy ISIS, he said nothing about likeminded terrorist groups, the Islamic State and others created and supported by Washington, using them to advance its imperium, along with NATO as an extension of its military might.

Kissinger knows it as well as anyone, but remained silent. What entity will replace ISIS when it’s eliminated or greatly weakened, he asked, disgracefully bashing Iran, claiming it could become a “radical empire,” despite nothing in its modern history suggesting it.

Does Russia want ISIS defeated or “is it driven by nostalgia for historic quests for strategic domination,” he shamefully asked?

Throughout its post-Soviet history, it never attacked or threatened another country.

America does it repeatedly, forcing its will on others worldwide, wanting all sovereign independent states eliminated – a geopolitical goal Kissinger deplorably supports.

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While My Qatar Gently Weeps

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

Menopause, I"m told, is horrible.

Men don"t know too much about it, and thankfully I"ve not been exposed to it... yet. One minute you"re hand in hand on the beach with your sweet adoring wife and the next she"s a sobbing wreck who wants to stab you in the thigh with a pair of knitting needles.

This is probably just how Qatar feels right now.

Sure, they"ve never been "mates" with their neighbours but they"ve always tolerated each other. Only months ago, they had joined with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Hand in hand, they had come together with the shared vision of bombing Yemen back into the sand. Happy days! Today, knitting needles.

Two questions:

1. What is actually going on?


2. Should we care?

The two are related. We can only know if we should care if we actually know what"s going on.

To answer the first question, let"s begin with the second.

Consider that the most expensive, complicated, and unpopular wars are those that Western powers (which really means the US these days) wage directly. Outright wars... Washington has found... are unpopular.

And I"m not referring only to women with hairy armpits and unshaven men running around, waving silly placards chanting and throwing chairs through McDonald"s windows every time they feel triggered. After Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump faces a populace sick of "their boys" coming home without their legs.

Here"s what happens: the US military, after offloading a few billion dollars worth of hardware, flattening designated cities... I mean, "strategic targets" (remember shock and awe?) must ultimately commit ground troops to "secure the peace". Puppets need installing and that"s impossible to do without security, and security means ground troops.

And this is where the fun starts.

The average terrorist looks exactly like everybody else in the country. US ground troops, however, stand out like a sore thumb. Brave young Billy Joe Swanson, armed with pimples, testosterone, and enough hardware to take out New Zealand, doesn"t actually know why he"s there, but he"s there because he was recruited from a low socio economic area where his prospects were late shift at Taco Bell or the excitement of "fighting for freedom".

Young, uneducated, and not being the sharpest tool in the shed, Billy chose the latter and now, in a country and culture he knows absolutely nothing about, is faced with unknown and mostly unidentifiable attackers who will cut him down in an instant. Billy, together with his friends, feels increasingly isolated, frustrated, frightened, and angry. We"re here to help, he thinks. WTF is wrong with these people?

When Billy has to push what"s left of his best friends organs back into the gaping hole an IED left in his side, he quickly comes to hate the locals. They"re all terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. You can tell by the language used by Billy and his fellow soldiers where they are in the world - narcos, gooks, chinks, flops, commies, ragheads.

The countries change but the results do not. Billy and his friends hate them, and this means that more innocents are killed. This turns the country increasingly against the invaders.

The locals, now presiding over rubble, grow increasingly intolerant of arrogant, heavy handed Billy and the "liberating forces". Whatever synergy and initial euphoria may have existed rapidly disappears. The gap -- a result of cultural, religious, and value systems -- widens with each viewing the other as more alien than ever.

Remember Abu Ghraib?

The lines between acceptable and outrageous blur in war. All wars, all militaries. None are immune. It"s how it is.

Western media continue to speak of "precision strikes" and, when things inevitably go wrong, "isolated incidents".  Locals speak of genocide and murder.

For Washington it becomes an embarrassment. The world"s most sophisticated military with B1s, drones, guided missiles, satellites, helicopter gunships, and bunker busting bombs still, many years later, are struggling to win against sandal-wearing goat herders with AKs and RPGs.

Just like Musk figured with Tesla, it"s far easier to simply outsource all the parts to someone else and get someone to fund the whole thing. Enter proxy wars and the US puppet dictatorship of Saudi Arabia.

Trump likely figured this out. Ground troops in yet another Middle Eastern backwater will be as popular as herpes. So why going there?

Trump to his military advisors on Saudi Arabia: "Isn"t it time these guys started working for us?"

The real issue here isn"t Qatar.

They are merely a pawn in this. The target here is Iran, and now that Chairman Trump just gave the Saudis a "we"ve got your back" pledge, it"s time to move things forward.

This is likely to be as messy as ever. Why? Because it"s all been tried before. Direct wars, as discussed, have their problems. Proxy wars, on the other hand, aren"t all peaches and cream either.

The folks in the 5-sided building in Virginia may have higher IQs than Billy but they"re still as dumb as "isht".

Here"s what happens with proxy wars.

US forces "train" local forces to stand up and fight for whatever the US thinks they should be fighting for. All too often it involves killing the citizens of their own country.

Pray tell, why US-trained forces in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan never seem to work?

Let me put it this way. It"d be like the Russians invading the United Kingdom and having Ivan force Peter in Yorkshire to fight Luke in Devon. Only government could fail to see this for what it is: a terrible idea. This won"t stop it from happening. You can"t fix stupid.

What Now?

Iran, a country that hasn"t invaded another in 200 years, is a terrible danger to the US, and Qatar supports them. We know this because the MSM tells us it"s so.

As that thug Henry Kissinger stated:

"It is not a matter what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true."

Sadly, he is correct. That this narrative is being championed now by none other than biggest sponsor of terrorism makes it all the more laughable.

Washington have decided Iran is the enemy and that"s really what matters, which begs the question. Was Trump"s Middle Eastern visit used to drum up support for an offensive on Iran? An easy sell to the Saudis who like Iran in the same way Jews like bacon.

Given the speed with which the Saudis and 6 other Middle Eastern countries cut ties with Qatar, I think it"s safe to say there is a far broader plan in the works.

As ZeroHedge pointed out yesterday it"s about energy and the money and power that comes with it. Surprise:

"The real reason behind the diplomatic fallout may be far simpler, and once again has to do with a long-running and controversial topic, namely Qatar"s regional natural gas dominance.

Recall that many have speculated (with evidence going back as far back as 2012) that one of the reasons for the long-running Syria proxy war was nothing more complex than competing gas pipelines, with Qatar eager to pass its own pipeline, connecting Europe to its vast natural gas deposits, however as that would put Gazprom"s monopoly of European LNG supply in jeopardy, Russia had been firmly, and violently, against this strategy from the beginning and explains Putin"s firm support of the Assad regime and the Kremlin"s desire to prevent the replacement of the Syrian government with a puppet regime."

With nearly 30% of global LNG supply, Qatar has more natural gas than Michael Moore after a bowl of cauliflower. And what"s more, it has the lowest extraction rates in the world. It"s how they got to be the richest country in the world on a per capita basis.

What to Expect?

Remember Libya?

Well, it"s no coincidence that the amount of terrorist attacks in Europe have increased ever since the US-led "coalition" shoved a flag pole up Gaddafi"s bum.

Any conflict in the Middle East is likely to increase the surge of refugees into Europe, and you can read my article on this very topic "7 steps to the easiest short in recent history" for a rundown. That particular theme will only increase the already fragile political and social fabric of Europe.

While it"s currently a low probability, should the powder keg that is the Middle East really blow, expect a US-led "coalition" to first provide "support" and finally to put boots on the ground. Then we go from passive to active and Billy gets to "integrate" once more with the natives. We"ve seen it all before.

Who wins? Who loses?

• It"s hard to see how any disruption to the supplier of 1/3rd of the natural gas market wouldn"t move prices.


• Any escalation leading to war won"t help already ballooning deficits, and yet the treasury will almost certainly need to sell more of those. Wars don"t come cheap.

Something else to consider is that this move by Middle Eastern countries led by the Saudis -- designed no doubt to contain Qatar ahead of a more aggressive stance towards Iran -- could backfire spectacularly, pushing Qatar closer to both Turkey and Iran. Qatar has money... lots of it.. and Turkey and Iran have decent military capabilities and regional ambitions.

Cast your vote here and also see what others think will happen

- Chris

"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." — Søren Kierkegaard

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The True Legacy Of David Rockefeller

Via MintPressNews.com,

While often remembered for his philanthropy, the last surviving grandson of America’s first billionaire died today, leaving behind a dark legacy indicative of how American nobility often shape policy from behind the scenes.

No one person encapsulates the enduring legacy of the “robber barons” of the Industrial Age quite like David Rockefeller. Rockefeller, who died this week at the age of 101, was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon who became America’s first billionaire and the patriarch of what would become one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in American history. David Rockefeller, an undeniable product of American nobility, lived his entire life in the echelons of U.S. society, becoming symbolic of the elite who often direct public policy to a much greater extent than many realize, albeit often from the shadows.

Rockefeller made it clear that he preferred to operate out of public view despite his great influence in American – and international – politics. Due to his birthright, Rockefeller served as an advisor to every president since Eisenhower, but when offered powerful positions such as Federal Reserve chairman and Secretary of the Treasury – he declined, preferring “a private role.”

As evidenced by the numerous obituaries bemoaning the loss of the last of the Rockefeller’s grandsons, he was largely successful in hiding his most significant wrongdoings from public view, as evidenced by his characterization as a generous philanthropist and influential banker.

But as is often the case, Rockefeller’s true legacy is much more mired in controversy than major publications seem willing to admit. In addition to having the ear of every U.S. president for the better part of the last 70 or so years, Rockefeller – once again operating “behind the scenes” – was instrumental in shaping the more cringe-worthy aspects of U.S. policy during that time, as well as being a major force in establishing banking policies that led to debt crises in the developing world.

Rockefeller – as the head of Chase Manhattan Bank from 1969 to 1981 – worked with government and multinational corporations throughout the world to create a “global order” unequivocally dominated by the 1 percent, of which his family was a part. As the New York Times noted back in the 1970s, Rockefeller became embroiled in controversy when his constant trips overseas caused the bank to become less profitable, as he prioritized the bank’s influence on foreign politics over its actual business dealings.

During his time as Chase CEO, Rockefeller helped lay the foundation for repressive, racist and fascist regimes around the world, as well as architecture for global inequality. In addition, Rockefeller helped to bring the debt crisis of the 1980s into existence, in part by direct action through Chase Bank and also indirectly through his former employee-turned-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. Two years before the debt crisis erupted, Rockefeller, Volcker and other top bankers met at the International Monetary Conference in 1980s to argue for the establishment of a “safety net” for major banks – like Chase – that were embroiled in bad loans given largely to countries in the developing world.

David Rockefeller, center, then chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank International Advisory Committee, receives the 1983 International Leadership Award presented by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, left, and Ralph A. Pfeiffer, Jr. on, Dec. 9, 1983. (AP/Ron Frehm)

After the crisis brought financial ruin to Latin America and other developing areas throughout the world, Rockefeller – along with other bankers – created austerity programs to “solve” the debt crisis during subsequent IMC meetings, provoking inequality that still persists to this day. However, thanks to the “safety net” conveniently established years prior, Chase avoided the economic consequences for its criminal actions.

In addition, Rockefeller supported the bloody and ruthless dictatorships of the Shah of Iran and Augusto Pinochet of Chile while also supporting Israeli apartheid. Rockefeller then went on to found the influential Trilateral Commission while also serving as a major force on the Council on Foreign Relations that he, along with his close friend Henry Kissinger, would come to dominate.

Both of these organizations have come under fire for using their powerful influence to bring about a “one-world government” ruled by a powerful, ultra-wealthy elite – an accusation to which David Rockefeller confirmed as true in his autobiography. Far from the generous philanthropist he is made to be, David Rockefeller deserves to be remembered for his true legacy – one of elitism, fascism and economic enslavement.

Ben Hunt's Mailbag - Life In Trumpland

Via Ben Hunt of Salient Partners" Epsilon Theory blog,

The best part about this job, other than being recognized in random bars by 50-year old financial advisors who are always good to buy me a drink (hey, you take your celebrity where you can), is the correspondence with readers. I began writing Epsilon Theory 3+ years ago from a pretty dark place, and it’s still where I end up a lot of the time. But from the outset I started getting emails from really smart people, truth-seekers all, making their way in this world of mendacity and inauthenticity without succumbing to it, and it’s given me — if not an optimism — then at least the occasional absence of despair about the world my daughters will inherit.

I try to respond to all the notes I receive, but what usually happens is that the really good ones — the ones that require more than a flip answer — end up being marked unread and shunted to the “need response” folder on Outlook, only to die a lingering death of inattention over the following weeks. Ultimately I just mark the entire folder as read and let them pass on to the Great Archive in the sky, as it’s the only way I can live with the guilt. So to all of those Jacobs and Williams of the world … I am truly sorry.

As a partial repentance, if not solution, I’m going to make a regular habit of what I always found to be the most enjoyable part of Bill Simmons’ Sports Guy blog — the reader Mailbag. Geez, I miss the old Bill Simmons. Like Simmons of old, I’ll try to keep it entertaining rather than pedantic, and to that end I’ll sprinkle in some of the haters, as I find them occasionally fun when they’re not threatening rape or murder (Bill Simmons never had to deal with the Zerohedge commentariat). As it happens, I got more than the usual quota of great emails from my most recent note “The Evolution of Competition,” my take on the political and social polarization running rampant in Trumpworld. So without further ado …

I forwarded your note to my better half and she thought it was really good, BUT…

from your note: “…If you cooperate in a game of Chicken — i.e., you’re driving your tractor straight on at Kevin Bacon’s pick-up truck and you veer off from the looming crash…”

She needs you to rethink some things, and after she explained the facts to me, I thought it might be important for you (although I’m sure you have already heard from many of your 40-something-female-readers-who-have-watched-Footloose-multiple times!)

1. They were BOTH on tractors.


2. And this is the bender for your game analysis. Kevin Bacon tried and FAILED to jump off his tractor. He was FOILED by his shoe lace and thus WON the game of chicken BY ACCIDENT. Very interesting.

I’m gonna need some follow up from you on this one Ben, as she is leaning on me pretty hard to let you know that you’re not done with this Footloose incident!!

– John

A lot of games of Chicken are won by accidental (or intentional) incompetence. For example, if I see that Kevin Bacon is stuck on his tractor and can’t possibly jump off even if he wanted to, then my only rational choice … the only way to avoid MY death in a crash … is to jump off my tractor. By limiting his competence and degrees of freedom, Kevin Bacon paradoxically becomes more powerful in a game of Chicken.

A variation on this theme is to convince your opponent that you’re not necessarily powerless to decide otherwise, but that you’re so mentally incompetent that you really don’t care if you live or die. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon famously played this “madman” strategy (in the form of being crazy enough to launch nukes even if it drew China and USSR into war) to get the North Vietnamese government to attend peace talks in Paris.

 Good piece. Decency and ability to stay above the fray is almost non-existent at this point. Not to be nerdy but I keep replaying the Star Wars quote “So this is how liberty dies – with thunderous applause” (About the only good thing that came from those terrible prequels.).

– Victoria

That’s a good quote! As for the quality of the prequels … I mean, obviously you’re right. I can’t remember any of the Episode 1-3 quotes because I hear everything in a Jar-Jar Binks accent. And the acting … well, let’s be generous and call it Godfather 3 Sofia Coppola-esque. But isn’t it time for a bit of perspective on the entire canon? In meme terms, I think “Star Wars” is the functional equivalent of “Ronald Reagan”, in that both have evolved into expressions of almost pure nostalgia. Fun fact: the word “nostalgia” derives from the Greek nostos (return home) and algos (pain). There’s a wincing quality to so much about the Star Wars movies and the Reagan Administration, but it’s completely trumped by some sort of warm fuzzy emotional balm. I’d like to figure out how to bottle that.

 Nice job. Were you pro Gaga or anti Gaga? Your readers deserve to know!

– Ian

I was anti-Gaga in the ET note “American Hustle” for what I saw as pretty profound inauthenticity around the U.S. election. But how about that SuperBowl™ performance, huh? I thought that was great. Seriously. And with game theoretic implications, too …

During the halftime show of the Super Bowl on FOX, after Lady Gaga’s performance, they went back to the studio and had someone ready to report on what the reaction to the halftime show was on social media. My immediate reaction – 1) How could I possibly trust FOX to give me an accurate take on the social media reaction to the halftime show that they just broadcast? 2) I don’t care. 3) Doesn’t anyone who does care (and is therefore already monitoring social media for themselves) already know?

– Jay

Actually, I thought Fox was pretty brilliant in their coverage of Lady Gaga’s halftime show. They assumed that we were incapable of determining for ourselves whether or not it was a good performance until we were told by others (Missionaries in game theory terms) whether or not it was a good show. And they’re absolutely right. A classic example of The Common Knowledge Game in action.

 I am a pretty competitive person/athlete and always lost at Chicken versus my brother. I am still trying to repair the Chicken self-image.

– Kim

Me, too, and to my younger brother, to boot. Although I would bet he would say the same thing about me. It’s amazing how these social competitions in a Chicken format stick with us for a lifetime.

 Spot on. I’m doing daily battle with my family and best friends back home, and getting nowhere.

– Drew

It’s the “back home” aspect of all this that’s particularly difficult on our social lives, I think. Geography has simultaneously become irrelevant with modern communication technology and the only thing that matters with the balkanization of economic opportunity.

 This guy is just butt hurt that Trump won. He is a delusional asshole. He thinks that what his side did was about is cooperation.

His idea of cooperation is me giving him half of my money and my wife giving him a *** while my kids wash his car.

In exchange he will offer my family some constructive criticism on how we can become better human beings.

Suddenly when I grab him by the back of his neck and throw him out of my house he finds my behavior objectionable.

What a douche.

– BarkingCat

Ah, the haters. I included this note because I think there’s an important point here. The meaning of Trump to BarkingCat is personal empowerment. Trump changes the story that this guy tells himself about himself, which is the most important story that we have!

In the mind’s eye of BarkingCat, he is now the powerful one, able to grab me by the scruff of my neck and physically throw me out of his house. It doesn’t matter that, in reality, the Takers and the Powerful are now more in control of his house and his real-world life than ever before. I mean, if you think we lived in a world of, by, and for the 1% before (and we did), you ain’t seen nothing yet. But the real-world impact of Trump isn’t what drives behavior. In politics as in markets, it’s always the story that drives our behavior, particularly the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

You know where I see this phenomenon a lot? In SEC college football. Some of the most virulent (and I mean that word in its clinical sense) fans of Alabama football have zero connection to the University of Alabama other than that they live in the same state as Nick Saban. But, like BarkingCat, they derive enormous personal empowerment and psychic benefit from a totemic connection to a powerful man. Roll Tide!

The premise is that all cooperation habits we’ve developed, our ways of getting along, are breaking down to be replaced purely with competition. If the premise were right, the rest of his argument might well follow. But the premise is wrong.

Trump found a NEW COALITION. He often speaks of the LOVE at his events. Trumpsters may compete in business, but basically we like each other and won’t tend to be all that cut-throat, most of us anyway. (Trump himself is more cut-throat than most of us. Look at how he’s dumped Giuliani and Christie now that he’s done with them. But that’s beside the point.) Within this new coalition, we are able to slough off some of the strange bedfellows we were put with before, to treat them in a more arms-length way. We have an alternative to the old coalitions the social engineers had cornered us into.

– Artichoke

Coalitions are constantly reconfiguring themselves on the basis of shared interests. There are millions of people who have always despised the right but lo, in the past few months the right has popped up as the counterculture. It’s now anti war and pro labour. It’s all about free speech and diversity of thought. The left is now the establishment and is making a big effort to crack down on the counter culture that it brands as racist and attacks with violent thugs.

Amazing really, the right is now about peace love and togetherness and the left is angry decisive and hatefilled.

I don’t hate my colleagues for having opposed Trump, but I dare not say I supported him or they would hate and ostracise me. That’s why Trump is always speaking about love. Because hate is on the other side.

Strange days. Everything is the opposite of what it’s supposed to be. People need to understand this.

– Beijing Expat

I gotta say, this was the most unexpected thread in the comments and email I received, this notion that there’s all this Love with a capital L embedded in Trump-the-man and Trump-the-movement.

I think what’s going on here is an expression of the same emotions that you see in oral histories of any protest movement. Why do people go march in the streets and stop traffic and maybe break some windows (literally or figuratively)? Because it’s FUN. There’s an enormous sense of camaraderie and excitement derived from sticking it to the Man, whether you’re in Berkeley, California in 1968 or Mobile, Alabama in 2016.

Just don’t confuse tribal attachment with Love. Because your tribal leaders, whether you’re on the left, the right, or wherever, will eventually sell you down the river. Every single time.  

I think he was trying not to offend and that’s why he could never fully approach his point. He just took swats and glancing blows. I find it offensive.

– IndyPat

Blood alone turns the wheels of history.

– IndyPat

Two brief comments from a guy who believes that “blood alone turns the wheels of history” but is offended by my tone in an email.

You’re delusional. You need to read, “The Art Of The Deal,” and “The Art Of The Comeback” to get better informed about Trump. CNN and MSNBC are not good sources. For instance Trump fixed the Wollman Rink in NY City after the city gov’t had screwed it up for 6 years at a cost of $9M in tax payer money. Trump VOLUNTEERED to fix it. He did it under schedule (given 6 months) and budget (given $3M). I would call that a win-win. It is more than a win-win, it was a game changer that traditional accounting methods don’t credit Trump with the true impact. Traditional methods would say he saved a mere $0.6M (his cost was $2.4M) because traditional accounting does not include the $9M wasted by the gov’t not to mention the 6 years.

You no doubt see that somehow as a win-lose or a lose-lose. The Trump approach broke the status quo paradigm that just was not working and was very expensive. He brings that same game to the stifling U.S. gov’t bureaucracies and international agreements. I anticipate change in those areas that you can’t begin to comprehend and with your poor accounting practices of what counts as win and what counts as a lose you are way off base. Apparently you think it is a win-win to run the U.S. international policies through the Clinton Foundation where motives are clearly self-serving rather than out in the open via the State Dept.

The depth of your ignorance on the Trump business style is breathtaking. Your assumptions on how well the system was working pre-Trump is much like Mayor Koch who screwed up the Wollman Rink for 6 years. Koch thought things were just fine. And your assumptions on Trump being win-lose or lose-lose are equally naive.

– Anonymous

The Wollman Rink. Ed Koch. Hilarious. This guy “knows” Trump by reading Trump’s books, and thinks I’m ill-informed.

 I’ve been reading Epsilon Theory for a while now. I find your material thoughtful, often brilliant, always entertaining.

Recently you have put forth a few ideas that to me seem biased and confuse cause and effect.

I think that the idea that this country has up to now been playing a politically cooperative game is quite simply wrong. For the last two presidencies there has been virtually no cooperation between the two political parties. Neither party has any inclination nor any motivation to play a politically cooperative game. This is what must be changed and this is the challenge for America. But I digress.

I believe that there are two distinct and opposing views for the future direction of the country. Let’s call these agendas. One agenda is to move toward a “Great Society”, now probably more correctly termed a “Global Great Society”. The other agenda is to remain an autonomous country with the personal freedoms, rights, and responsibilities we have always expected as Americans.

Trump is not a great divider who somehow maneuvered his way to the presidency and is ushering in political non-cooperation. Trump is the effect, the pushback against one agenda by voters with a different agenda who have come to realize that this is indeed a non-cooperative political game. The election of Trump simply illustrates that voters have come to realize that we are already deeply entrenched in a non-cooperative political game.

– Bill

I get your point, but I disagree. Trump didn’t just stumble onto a non-cooperative political game in full bloom. He’s a remarkable political entrepreneur who recognized, accelerated, and transformed the zeitgeist. I mean, look at the Republican primary. This wasn’t some grand struggle between globalist Great Society oligarchs and hardscrabble defenders of liberty (and if it were, you’ll have a hard time convincing me that Trump is the latter rather than the former). Trump rolled the field of fellow Republicans because he played the game differently. His gameplay was always Defect and never Cooperate, which was totally new, totally effective, and totally irreversible. It’s like Napoleon (another remarkable political entrepreneur) and the levée en masse (mass conscription). Once Napoleon invented the draft and put a couple of hundred thousand troops on the battlefield, every other country had to follow suit, transforming the game of international conflict forever. One thing I’ve noticed among both Trump haters and Trump lovers: they usually don’t give him enough credit. He’s more than a symptom.

You should go back to writing about investments. Your biases continue to direct you.

The move from Cooperation to Competition (in this case) has proceeded from two conservative realizations:

1. That the veneer of cooperation maintained by liberals is false; that the Left has been competing all along. ‘Nice’, cooperative public television is about as even-handed as Pol Pot, and just as willing to dictate your life.


2. That there CANNOT be a balance in benefits arising from the arrangement of cooperation, because of fundamentally different values.

Trump is their big F U to the perceived hypocrisy of continuing to cooperate (even if they don’t like him).

Many Europeans are arriving at the same conclusion.

– Anonymous

What was the pro-Trump “conservative realization” in the Republican primary? That he was tougher on conservative shibboleths like public television or Planned Parenthood or Great Society programs than his competitors? Please. This notion that Donald Trump is somehow the great flowering of the conservative movement is just pure revisionist hokum.

I’ve enjoyed reading your column over the years but you are seriously disappointing me lately. I can understand your left leanings make it difficult to grasp how at least one half of your readers feel, but to put something in writing as vile as the statement “So, for example, if you voted for Clinton as an affirmation of a personal identity that rejects the racism and sexism you see in Trump, your natural assumption is going to be that anyone who voted for Trump similarly did so as an affirmation of a personal identity, but one that accepts racism and sexism.”, is totally uncalled for and extremely offensive not just to President Trump, but to all of us who supported a change from the Elite Class we’ve been forced to stomach for the past 20 years.

I’m sorry you’re not comfortable now. Welcome to my world for the past twenty years.

– John

You’ve totally missed my point. I wrote this note because I am so effin’ tired of being called a racist or a sexist because I don’t think that Donald Trump is evil incarnate. There are MILLIONS of people in this country who think that I am a bad human being because I don’t hate Trump. And by the same token, there are MILLIONS of people in this country who think that I am a bad human being because I don’t think that Hillary Clinton is evil incarnate, either. That’s why I wrote this note.

I didn’t vote for Trump (nor Clinton … left prez line blank) because I think he takes us from the frying pan into the fire. But I do understand that we’ve been in a frying pan for 24+ years.

I don’t see Hitler.

– Brendan

Neither do I. I think Trump is a narcissist and an ass, not a Fascist. Like most people in the financial services world, I deal with narcissists and asses every day … they’re not Hitler clones because the only thing they’re really true-believers about is their own self-aggrandizement. Steve Bannon? There’s more than a little Big Lie and Fascism in his self-avowed “economic nationalism”, but he can’t front the band, so he’s no Hitler. Elizabeth Warren? I dunno. More the Madame Defarge type, knitting by the guillotines. Mark Zuckerberg, though, now embarked on his ‘listening tour” through America? Bears watching. Yes, I went there. Big Brother tech plus smiley-face billionaires scare me that much.

There is an old saying that really applies these days. I believe it was from Benjamin Franklin or my mother. “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” Unfortunately people don’t let facts get in the way of the Truth.

– Anonymous

Agreed (although I thought it was MY mother).

Your note describes what happens to society, including the best educated, when philosophy disappears. And when 95 million+ people are boycotting the workforce.

Too much time on your hands? Then pay attention to Drudge, ZeroHedge, Huffington Post, etc. Or Ashley Judd, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell. Or Hannity. Supposedly smart, educated people react what’s going on as if they are watching pro wrestling.

No schooling in or acquaintance with philosophy? Then react to all these mindless, emotion-laden messages like a puppet on a string, unable to resist any impulse to react or comment. We should be dropping Meditations from helicopters.

– Orville

Helicopter Meditations instead of helicopter money? Yes, please.

Once again another good piece. I have seen the same in myself, the question I’ve been thinking is how does it end? or what comes next? You used car crashes, good analogy. I hope society is not using Takata airbags.

– Anonymous

I’m totally stealing that line.

Well done on a tough topic. I am reminded a bit of the religious discussion, where you believe that anyone who doesn’t agree with you burns in hell forever. Somehow, we have to find a way to discuss “my truth” while recognizing “your truth”.

– Mick

Yes, there are clear parallels between what we’re experiencing as a society today and any religious schism. Not sure what the equivalent of the Peace of Westphalia will be for us, but that’s what it’s going to take for us to get out of this.

Started re-reading Virus of the Mind at 4:00 this am. Some dangerous “memes” are replicating themselves.

– Mike

Virus of the Mind is a 2011 collection of essays on memes, including (perhaps confusingly) the Richard Dawkins essay, “Viruses of the Mind,” that pretty much started the conversation. Required reading.

It seems to me that the Trump phenomena (there are many) are moving us towards the kind of crisis outcome that Neil Howe and William Strauss write about in The Fourth Turning. We only have to wait till the mid-20’s to see the rebuilding of the national and international organizations to allow the next flourishing. Sadly, the crisis usually culminates in a war – if it has to happen this time, let’s hope it is a small one with no big bangs!

– Neil

I get more questions and comments about The Fourth Turning than any other book. It’s also required reading, although I remain … not suspicious … but unconvinced that demographic and super-cyclical transitions are investable ideas in any meaningful way. Meaningful to me, anyway.

Something I wanted to share about Trump. He is the antithesis of orthodoxy. And this makes him dangerous given that all issues seem to be structured as binary choices between two different orthodoxies. Globalist v. Nationalist, Progressive v. Conservative, Anti-this v. Pro-that. It’s everywhere. But what I realized is that the Republican v. Democrat is not one of them. They are the same in fact.

– Sal

Spot on. I’ve written about this polarization and shift in political identification in a couple of notes. It’s not so much the growing distance between the median Democrat and the median Republican that’s worrisome for stable policy in a two-party system. It’s that voter self-identification is becoming more and more distinct from party self-identification, so that “Democrat” or “Republican” is no longer shorthand for a wide range of behaviors. The last time we saw this (and not just in the U.S.) was in the 1930s.

About 10 days ago, marveling and laughing at how everyone back home was going absolutely nuts, I had a Eureka moment. I realized that Trump viewed his Presidency as the biggest and most complicated turn-around in the history of the world. He is following the turn-around playbook exactly. Looking at what he does and how he does it, using this prism, everything falls into a logical pattern. It even becomes logically predictable.

– Anonymous

Interesting piece. I think you may be missing a subtlety with regards to Trump’s negotiating style. He tends to be a “hard out of the gate” negotiator. His process is to push the other side to the mental and emotional breaking point, then back off to assure a “deal” gets done. He has a certain intuitive ability to find out exactly how far he can push, then back off. He’s been operating this way for almost 50 yrs. in the most competitive real estate environment in the world – NYC. It’s not a game of chicken where he doesn’t care if the deal gets done, then he walks away leaving the other party so pissed-off that they refuse to ever do business with him again. If that were true, he would have pissed off everyone in NYC by now and would never get a deal done. His brash outward appearance is quite paradoxical when compared to his pragmatism. He is not a very ideological person. His ultimate goal in any transaction is to maximize efficiency. To make that omelet, you gotta break a few eggs

Now does that make him a likeable character? Hell no! I personally don’t like the guy, but I believe he is the right agent of change that was needed for the current context. In any complex dynamic system, change is only born out of extremes. We were at a point in time where the extreme of Globalism had run its course. As always happens, a counter-vailing force was introduced to send the persistence of Globalism into a bout of turbulence. Hopefully this leads to a new trend in the opposite direction, but that hasn’t materialized yet. We will deal with some anti-persistence (turbulence) for a while. That’s a good thing. Change (turbulence) is messy both intellectually and emotionally, but it’s a necessary pain we must transcend. As the turbulence subsides, a new trend will emerge and gain some of its own persistence. It’s a wild ride living on this rock hurtling 1,000 mph through space. Best bet is to hold on, and try to enjoy the ride/view.

– Mark

These are both smart emails. I put them together because they touch on the run-America-like-a-business meme. I get the appeal of that idea, and I think these readers are correct in that this is a big part of the story that Trump tells himself. I’m also sure that his negotiation style is very effective in business, particularly the NY real estate business (as Mark says, it’s straight out of a Roger Fisher “Getting to Yes” class). But I think it’s both an ineffective and highly damaging negotiation style when it comes to Madisonian political institutions, particularly when coupled with Big Brother tech and enormous concentrations of private wealth. That’s my big problem with Trump, and that’s what I mean when I say that he breaks us.

I suppose that the men we have elected as President are generally representative of our Zeitgeist. It may be at times that spirit is not very strong or clearly defined resulting in a sort of caretaker President. At other times, like now, it is pretty strong and sharply defined. Trump is a very real individual occupying the White House — and Mar a Lago, Trump Tower and whatnot. He also is the result of some sort of cumulative consensus about what matters, what should be done and how it should be done. This Zeitgeist concerns me more than the man because it amplifies him and possibly would continue on even if he doesn’t.

My fund of historic knowledge isn’t sufficient, but it is all I have. I’ve thought about how other so called developed nations that marched into totalitarianism moved back to more civil and pluralistic states. The only examples I’ve come up with where this happened peacefully are Spain and Portugal. And that took about six decades. Some might suggest Burma but I think that jury is still having lunch. Otherwise it seems that a comprehensive social collapse usually brought about by international or civil war has been required to exhaust the spirit of the totalitarian ghost and thoroughly discredit the ideas it promulgated. Germany, Italy and England (Cromwell) come to mind. Most of the others are still totalitarian.

I hope my paucity of historic information has obscured many shining examples of societies that awoke from their paranoid dreams of universal competition to remember the benefits of being nice and cooperative. I hope I’ve dramatically exaggerated the fix we are in. I hope…..

– Tom

I don’t think you’ve exaggerated the fix we’re in. Not at all. I think we’re more likely to see 21^st century totalitarianism delivered with a smiley-face than a jackboot, but only because the technology of persuasion is that good. And I also think that the ultimate winners in this struggle for control is less likely to be Trump and his apologists than whoever leads the Thermidorian Reaction against Trump.

I have increased my conversation-avoidance skills (something as a libertarian / monetarists / Classical economics-leaning guy I had to learn to do to live in NYC) since the Trump election. As you note, today, everything is a trip wire.

Many years ago, I realized (1) you very, very rarely change people’s minds even a little bit, (2) I don’t really care that much if I do and (3) even if I did, it would not have any impact on changing anything in the world. Hence, I try not to talk with anyone, but a very small number of people, about, to be honest, anything that means anything as – probably should have started here – I’m tired of arguing (see points 1 – 3 as to why).

Hence, my day to day, which was always a bit of topic avoidance, has been in full-on topic-avoidance mode since the election.

I fear my exhaustion is only going to increase.

– Anonymous

People are quick to take offense (where none was intended) at the slightest indication I am not on board with their political or economic leanings. Not nearly as much “give and take”, but more “take it or leave it”. I find myself having to explain that certain economic/investment principles I hold dear are not an endorsement of Trump (or any political stripe) and that because I happen to eschew identity politics doesn’t make me a lesser human, it just means I hold that certain unintended consequences happen when following certain paths of behavior. Hard to believe that such innocuous sounding phrases can be “trigger words” for those who are seeking redress for slights no matter how small or unintended.

I’ve been called many names by people who either refuse to have rational discussions or refuse to consider views that are alternative to their own. When I explain the situation we are currently in, nationally, in terms of economic consequences (game theory is generally too far out there for the average citizen) and how I am trying to make a buck (no different than under the previous six administrations) for myself and for clients, I’m treated with borderline loathing and disdain.

There is a feral quality to the angst experienced by those who lost in this election, something I’ve not experienced before. Trying to maintain a level head and an even-handed view of the world has become its own challenge. My response has been to start at home (getting things straight with my wife about what a Trump presidency does and does not mean, news media hysteria to the contrary), then work on our circle of friends, all well-educated but deeply biased to the blue side of the ledger, both socially and politically. The experience with our friends was interesting in that they know and like me, personally, but it took a three hour dinner party and some follow up, to finally get through to them that Tweets do not policy make and reactions to same do not make good bases for decisions, economic or otherwise.

Thanks for the lucid and erudite essays. They help more than you know.

– Anonymous

I’ve anonymized these two emails as best I can because they speak for me and, I think, lots of others out there.

The last two lines in your piece, “Know Thyself” and “Treat others as you would have them treat you” are the essential wisdoms from two traditions – Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism attempts to guide a person seeking a true understanding and relationship with themselves and Christianity seeks to guide people toward a true, healthy relationship with others.

A minister I heard last summer (he was an old Episcopalian who formally taught at Harvard Divinity) lamented that we, our culture, has sunk toward the “morbid pursuit of advantage”. Which I find to be such a brilliant phrase that I have frequently recalled it. That is the Competition Game in a nutshell. Morbid – because it is ultimately deadly. Deadly to the soul and deadly to the culture.

– Jon

The “morbid pursuit of advantage”. Yep, that’s our zeitgeist.

Thanks for this. It is exactly what I’ve been experiencing and have tried to formulate into words, and the words into actions.

Good lessons for us and our children, and sooner or later we will all be forced to hear it. Like it or not.

They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint. Isaiah 40. Keeps me focused on perseverance.

– DL

Words into actions. Perseverance. Sounds like a plan.

Thank you for taking the time to write this and share your thoughts. After having read it only once, I don’t know what to say, but I do know what I am going to do. I am going to share this with my 14 year old daughter. I am certain that it will foster a meaningful discussion and teach us both a few things.

– Natalie

As many readers know, I have four daughters. I write Epsilon Theory for them. And now for Natalie’s daughter, too. This is how we keep the darkness at bay. One daughter at a time.