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Sim City

About 30 years ago, an enjoyable computer game appeared on the market that allowed you to run a city exactly the way you wanted it, allocating zones as residential or industrial, then building infrastructure such as power stations, roads and railways. As I recall, the success in the game was measured by the growth of your cityscape and the amount of taxes collected. It was called SimCity.

Now, amusing as it was, fast forward 30 years and it becomes clear that either someone played that game and decided that the real world could be structured the same way, or, the whole point of the game was to condition a certain type of thinking in people that things being decided by higher powers was good and that taxes were good. I can’t agree with either of those last two prepositions and as a result, I gave up on the game pretty quickly. I even felt some strange guilt as I flattened a developed residential zone and thought about those imaginary SIMulated citizens, the lives they’d built and the dreams they had, which I’d just crushed with my belief that I somehow knew better.

Looking back, it’s clear that the game could be viewed as some kind of psychology test for world improvers. I’d bet, for example, that most politicans were fans. Take Justin “trendy” Trudeau, for example. Yes, please, take him. Every time I see him now, I see a child who probably played SimCity incessantly, never stopping and maybe even having discussions with his Dad (Fidel, or Pierre, take your pick) to analyse where he’d gone wrong so he could be a better world improver when he grew up. For sure, to be a politician now means that you really do not see the people you are supposed to represent as valid human beings, just commodities that can be swept off the table or electronically deleted to suit your higher purposes. Take Richard Holden, ConSelfServative MP for Northwest Durham and his recent Facebook tirade that people refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are idiots. Part of me senses he knows he may not be needing their votes ever again in a future general election, so his true colours about not even seeing them as valid people is revealed. Either because they won’t be able to vote, or an election will not be happening.

So, how might a real-life Sim City work? Well, you’d certainly need a lot of technology to make it happen, wouldn’t you? A reliable, high-speed internet network that could monitor the success or failure of each zone and the infrastructure you were building. Like 5G, perhaps? Only a conspiracy theorist would think that though, because of course the 5G infrastructure investment has continued unabated during a time people were supposed to be in lockdown and it’s all so we can have faster internet to call the overworked NHS or watch Netflix*, isn’t it? Secondly, what measurements of real-life success would you use…happiness..probably no…financial, probably yes. So if we measure every life in those terms, it fits entirely with the elimination of low-economic activity generating pensioners and not really caring about how people are doing as long as the tax revenues are up. Depression could go through the roof and be seen as positive for economic activity, as long as those SIMs are buying their meds and still paying their taxes.

This leads to the third question – how do you get those SIMs to undertake what you want to do without protest, or at least too much protest and still continue to have them as productive citizens – productive on your terms where you get to take a cut of their productivity through taxes, anyway? As I get older, I become more and more aware the SIM city-style planning that was carried out on my own doorstep in the 1940s to the present day. Let’s begin by looking at World War 2, for example, and ask if someone looked at a map and thought it rather inefficient that much of Europe overlapped with unworkable borders, where whole regions were comprised of villages and towns where one might be 90%, say, German, then the next, say, 90% Polish. These people co-existed side-by-side and traded and often intermarried, but the barriers of language, culture and patriotism might lead a high level world improver to wonder how you could, well, improve things. Of course, you couldn’t take the map, draw your preferred line, then get these people to move, so it’d take something serious like a war with mass death and displacement to make it happen. Which is what did happen, along with the destruction of huge residential areas, now converted back to wilderness or industrial zones.

You may or not agree with me, but in the 1950s, Durham County council drew a categorised list of every town and village in the County as being A, B, C or D, with D meaning the village was not have any money spent on it and that the residents would be encouraged, by neglect and closure of key facilities, to move. Sim City planning at it’s finest, since the residents themselves were never told this was going on until people found out many, many years later. My grandparents own village was categorised as D. It still exists now, as it got swallowed up by urbanisation and has become quite a desirable place to live. If anything, this shows the failure of centralised planning compared to a free market.

Then we have city centre planning in Newcastle in the 60s and 70s. I sat in the car with my Dad in the 1970s and drove past rows and rows of empty Victorian terraced houses in Scotswood, Newcastle, scheduled for demolition following compulsory purchase and removal of the residents. Many of whom had lived there for generations. Again, human emotion, attachment and community means nothing to the average, yet very dangerous, central planner. Just cold hard credits. The real legacy of these central planners was not just the destruction of the communities, but the building of horrific tower blocks of low, low quality, followed by the exposed corruption of central planners like T. Dan Smith and the demolition of many of these blocks in subsequent years. Incidentally, the young me watched a cartoon called Mary, Mungo and Midge about living in one of these tower blocks that were being built at breakneck speed across the country, that I’d now see as brainwashing for children of what a better centrally-planned future is going to be.

So, what about the future, how might you control your SIMs? I think we all got a little insight into it about 6 weeks ago, without even realising it. Picture the scene I am about to describe as akin to as something from a James Bond film. The evil arch-villain sits on a swivel armchair in front of a large screen with a major public event taking place. He demonstrates his power at the press of a button and the result is available for all the others attending the video conference to see. The arch-villain (let’s call him Swabia, for no reason in particular), then swivels on his chair to face the other video conference attendees, stroking the cat on his knee and says confidently, in guttural English – “…well, gentlemen, you have now seen the power of our new technology, are you not impressed?”. The other attendees are impressed and shocked at the power of what they just saw and then the bidding, or negotiations for the coming power divide begin.

What event am I talking about? Well, the collapse of Christian Eriksen in the Euro 21 opening game in Copenhagen. It was unlike anything I have ever seen in my 40 years of watching football matches and especially not for a world superstar, primed to sporting readiness for this tournament. What’s interesting is that tweets did come out saying Eriksen had had his COVID-19 “vaccine” in May. Danish media were all quick to dismiss this, without actually saying at any point that he had not had the injection. This probably says a lot about the quality of media and journalism, no desire to track down the truth, or if the truth has been tracked down, pass it onto their readers. Subsequently, doctors have no idea what happened to Eriksen that night, he’s now fine, but they’ve fitted a pacemaker anyway (perhaps he should’ve said no to that) and it’s debatable whether he’ll ever play top level football again. Now, imagine if you had the power to exterminate SIMs who were past their use-by date, say, the old ones, or make people ill in residential areas that you wished to convert to industrial or run a new piece of infrastructure like a road or railway line through – on this basis it’s a very useful technology to have. SimCity is no longer a game, but becomes real-life.

Come to think of it, the city of the future may also be a Simp City, given the decline in testosterone and increase in oestrogen levels in men recorded these past years. Something to talk about another day.

As an aside, I cancelled Netflix about 6 years ago and I’m never going back. Not only is it a lot of mind-programming, I cannot tolerate TV series of more than, say, 6 episodes and no defined end. I haven’t even watched BBC since Christmas 2020.

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Happy 50th Birthday

We are shortly coming up to a major event in history. A fiftieth birthday party. No, not mine, which was back in April, but the current world petrodollar system will celebrate fifty years of life on 15th August.

I doubt there’ll be fireworks, unless of course the USA chooses it as a day to invade someone, or Israel fires off a few more rockets into Palestine. After all, it’s not really something the powers that shouldn’t be even want you to know about, so any celebrations will likely be behind closed boardroom and palace doors, unseen. For of course, to some, it is a day of celebration – the theft or wealth transfer from millions of citizens trustingly placing their savings in the bank, little realising their money was now back completely by air and the full faith and trust of their government. For what that’s worth.

The other reason not to openly celebrate is that, well, behind the facade the world financial system is splintering and no-one can possibly construct the full jigsaw from all the pieces. Hidden as they are amongst the latest Covidian cult propaganda messages. You most certainly won’t get to hear most of this on the News at 10 on the BBC. Here’s some of the most recent snippets I have been able to glean – and I am sure there are many, many more.

  1. The European Union is introducing a new payments system SEPA. It’s been around for some years but I only recently got offered it by a financial institution for the first time the other day. Sounds like a future competitor to the hegemony enjoyed by the USA with SWIFT system and yes, I checked and the UK is on the list of participating nations. Suggesting once more that true Brexit never happened despite the promises and the numerous handbags-at-dawn type of tired news stories we are often subjected to. At the very least, it seems the Corporation of London, experts in perennial survivalism, is hedging it’s bets.
  2. Some central and South American nations, such as El Salvador and Guatemala announced that Bitcoin would become legal tender.
  3. India just announced that no new Mastercards could be issued in the country. Pretty momentous for a country which has a growing middle class and large IT sector.
  4. Indonesia has said that another cryptocurrency – Kinesis would be accepted as legal tender. This really catches my eye, as Kinesis claims to be backed by physical Gold and Silver. Something I wrote many years ago could be the thing to encourage acceptance and trust of a new currency. Is it really finally coming?
  5. Meanwhile, mainstream media plants occasional stories on how the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are thinking about their own Central Bank Digital currencies (CBCDs). Yeah right, I’m sure that the planning and systems are much, much more advanced than that, while their promises that it would exist “alongside” the current system rings hollow. Think of Corona Health Passports – given the complexity of I.T. systems design and development, it’s ridiculous to believe that the systems were not developed long ago, to be ready for the coming crisis. Classic Problem, Reaction, Solution.
  6. Then there’s China, who are planning their own CBCD with a reach right along the new Silk Road, while simultaneously building up huge Gold and Silver reserves, by buying all precious metals mined in China, rather than seeing it exported. Indeed, it is illegal to export gold and silver from China right now. Rumour has it that this CBCD may go public at the Winter Olympics in 2022.

So what do you do? Right now it’s hard to see the winners and losers, but my guess is that Gold wins again, as it always has in known history. So, for better or worse, perhaps it’s time to put a small amount into Kinesis (Sounds a bit like Kina, doesn’t it?), while also digging a hole in the garden to conceal a few final reserve coins. If it all goes wrong then at least you may puzzle the archaeologists who find your stash a thousand years from now.

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Buy in Haste, Repent at Leisure

One of the most oft-quoted, yet rarely adhered to pieces of advice must that History never repeats, but it rhymes. It’s a most interesting fact of life that we could learn the most about things by looking at what has happened in the past. Yet it seems we never do, and I include myself in that. Let’s start though by looking at a story :-

A major incident occurred, something that made world stock markets fall by over one-third in days. Governments, businesses and people panicked. In the aftermath, the law pertaining to buying property was changed and this resulted in a boom where people desperately tried to register their property transactions before a given deadline to take advantage of a tax saving.

Sounds like the Corona crash of 2020, followed by the UK government decision to temporarily abolish stamp duty on property transactions to get the economy moving, doesn’t it? Except it’s not. I’m actually referring to the 1987 stock market crash and the decision to limit and reduce MIRAS (Mortgage Interest Relief at Source) on mortgage repayments for property transactions made before a certain date, that got people in a property buying frenzy as the 1980s drew to a close. To take it further, that tax saving that people thought they were getting made them completely forget that they were overpaying in a frenzy in the present and that they just needed to be on the ladder at any price, before the ladder got pulled up forever on the deadline date.

Here, I can add my own piece of history to this, in buying my first house in Brighton in 1995. I actually met people who had been involved in that party and were living with the hangover every day. One, my manager at the time, had bought a property with a friend in 1988 in Eastbourne and they were stuck letting it out at a loss every month, hoping the price would get back to a point that they could cash out and take the loss. He also added that they weren’t really friends any more, to add to the pain. Another told me that he had sold his house in a nearby small town, Lancing and taken a loss, but he was now buying a house in Worthing. This guy helpfully also gave me some hope by telling me he felt that the crash was over and that now was a great time to actually be buying a house, if you had the opportunity to, as so many were bogged down by their recent mistakes. He was right. Looking back, the older me has no idea how someone aged 24, living on their own and earning an average salary for the time could possibly afford a three-bedroomed 1920s house with a garage. Yet that’s what I got. Let’s add in that the mortgage rate was 5.99%, fixed for 3 years and that was considered reasonably cheap, for the variable rate was about 8-9% and it had been even higher just a few years previously. When I moved into that house, purchased for under £55,000, a neighbour told me that some nearby had sold for £100,000 before the punch bowl got taken away.

In economic terms, a tide that rises high due to certain factors can also recede in line with those factors changing. Now, I’m not saying that property prices in the UK are going to fall, but I have a strong feeling that they are going to move back into some kind of long-term trendline that correlates better with average incomes, population movements and average household expediture. Back in those days of 8% mortgage rates, the general guide was that a repayment mortgage took up one-third of household income and I believe that is coming again, along with more of the free household income needing to be spent on essentials like food in a time of scarcity and rising prices, rather than frivolities like the next Ryanair trip to Malaga. There are two more factors to take account of – the massive Brexodus of cheap Eastern European labour deciding that they miss the family back home, so perhaps now is the time to take the accumulated savings back to their homelands and invest in a better life there, along with the possible death of millions of old people and the freeing up of their economic resources. Of course, in that scenario, labour shortages are also likely to mean salaries having a large and sudden rise, so the imbalances could just as easily be solved by huge average income rises in a very short space of time. That certainly did not happen in the 1990s, as the UK struggled with trying to keep the value of the Pound to the decreed band with the ERM (European Exchange Rate Mechanism). It was only upon surrendering that with a massive wealth transfer from average British citizens to George Soros, that the economy was seen to be moving up again. Years later I see it for what it really was – smoke and mirrors of an inflationary nature.

As a footnote, I dreamt about Eastbourne a couple of months ago and that helped this memory resurface. Ah how I loved that town. Whereas Brighton was rowdy, crowded and cosmopolitan, Eastbourne felt genteel, quiet and still with traces of the pre-war seaside glamour of the 1930s that the Art Deco railway posters bring to mind. It had a fantastic restored Art Deco tea room right on the seafront, where the maitre’d ensured everything was conducted in line with the era, and, if I was lucky with the timing, someone would play suitable tunes on a piano in the background while you partook of tea and scones. For a few moments you could imagine you were in an Agatha Christie Poirot story, and that when you asked for the bill, it would come back to you priced in shillings and pence. Afterwards, I’d take a walk back along the promenade to the pier, then up to the town centre and visit the fine old Art Deco department store buildings of the Co-op and Debenhams, both now defunct.

Yes, change always happens and more change is coming. Not least when we think again of the World Economic Forum’s Welcome to 2030 : You will own nothing and you WILL be happy. Perhaps then, the question of whether we buy or not is irrelevant, only survival will matter?

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Water

One subject I omitted coverage of in the book to a great extent is the title of this post, Water. The essential of human life, for we could go a while without food and just maybe, nibble on some leaves, but we could not go without water for very long. Even humans in the state of hubris mentioned in the previous post know water is essential. The French, with their rich language and cultural Celtic history that’s still under there somewhere, awaiting a revival, even refer to it as L’Eau, quite literally, the life.

Yet, it is clearly taken for granted right now.

We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s there, quite literally, on tap for most of us whenever we need it and need it we do, for our daily showers, pots of tea/coffee and even chucking 1,000 litres of the stuff into a pool in the garden for the summer. What traditionally happens in markets is that as abundant commodities get cheaper, their abundance becomes relied upon and factored into modern life with increasing usage and reliance. It’s much the same with oil, where it’s used for heating, transport, packaging and even pharmaceuticals, among many things. Even corn, is apparently so abundant that the excess can be used to make Ethanol for adding to petrol, in an effort to appear “green”. I have no idea what’s green really about producing a foodstuff with artificial fertilisers, often produced from Natural Gas, then expending energy to convert that foodstuff into a fuel that can be added into petrol, but no matter, apparently this is somehow good for the planet. To the extent that the UK is about to introduce a new fuel with a higher percentage of Ethanol that may even damage car engines. It’s for the good of the environment though, right?

On this environmental note, did you know that manufacturing one car consumes a water footprint of approximately 500,000 litres of clean water? Think about that the next time that you’re told your water consumption is responsible for the destruction of the planet. Next, refer to the relatively recent James Bond film, A Quantum of Solace, in which water was the commodity targeted by the bad guys in order to take control of the world. Quantum, interesting word choice for another post on another day…Now you’ve done that, and realised that perhaps yet again the goldfish bowl entertainment presented to you years before is predictive programming, it may be time to think about potential water shortages. After all, little could re-engineer society quicker than a world where water was a resource to be fought over.

Which leads me onto recent press.

In a variety of locations, reservoirs are being drained. Official reasons given include cleaning, or simply to top up river levels. That’s certainly the reason given for the emptying of Tunstall reservoir, near the place of my birth in Northern England :-

No description available.

To the locals, that one doesn’t make any sense. The river in question, The Wear, has not been short of water lately and in fact overflowed a short while ago. It got me thinking, where else in the world this may be happening and a few internet searches helped confirm this is not an isolated phenomenon.

California, for example. Farmers here are mystified, since some of them will be unable to grow their planned crops this year at all because of this.

Colorado is also indulging in the same activities.

In Northern Italy, the story is presented as the exciting uncovering of a lost village.

In London, canals are drained as a clean-up operation. Might be a valid reason, or may not.

So, enjoy your water while you can. Nothing could displace the existing way of life quicker than to leave people without drinking water. Food -well yes, but you can survive a few days. Water – it all falls apart quickly. If it was possible to wager on how this goes, I’d put my money on that it’ll be water shortages caused by a dry summer, which was of course caused by….(dramatic pause)…Global Warming! Then it’s only one small step further to an extreme solution of locking people down into their homes and enforcing rationed usage of key resources. Perhaps even the curtailment of meat (those pesky cows and their methane are destroying our planet, of course), alongside water, electricity and even the stopping of retailing certain items in shops and online. Forcing people to stay in their homes would once have been seen as untenable, but after the flock has accepted it for the past year, they are very likely to do as they are told again. It’s for the good of the planet, right? I’d even take this a step further and say that the surveillance society now has the technology to actually monitor that you are sticking to the enforced climate lockdown, something that they have been lacking since The Crown implementation of 2020. Magnetised beings and a 5g network feels like something with great tracking potential, if you’re into that. Perhaps the Eriksen experiment was a public test run.

If this sounds like the life you want, then great. I don’t, but we’re both on this planet, trapped in what feels like a dystopian video game. Good luck with your quest, only the bad news is that this is not actually a video game, where, if it goes badly you can just press reset and start again. No, this is it and the choices we make now may be the difference between life and death.

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Lydia

I sense a wave of emotion throughout the world. A fear of death on the personal level, mixed with a perverse almost universal belief that somehow the world as it is now is permanent, the much superior version of everything that ever went before. A world that is destined to last forever.

It really isn’t worth even trying to argue with people who feel that way. As individual humans, we should accept death as the end of birth, as opposed to stagnation. I’m pretty sure Queen even did a song on this universal question of “Who Wants to Live Forever”. Yet, people right now are in a state of paralysis about death and have convinced themselves, with the help of mainstream media, that living forever is a desirable state of affairs and more so, that it is somehow attainable. More on the uploading of the contents of the human mind to digital media another day, perhaps, but clearly these people never absorbed true message of the film Death Becomes Her, which now reads like a foreboding warning of what happens when you sell your soul, as opposed to the clever comedy it seemed back in 1992. Meanwhile, it helps increase the pathos when their 80-year-old relative, confined to a wheelchair and suffering from all kinds of ailments, gets taken away by the dreaded Covid Lurgy…or so the doctor put on the death certificate, anyway. So young, taken away before their time. How many times have you heard or read those words this past year? I’d put that along with died after a sudden illness as one of the most popular phrases of 2021, behind you’re on mute and other such online meeting frivolities.

On the universal level, meanwhile, everyone is convinced that the way of life we have arisen to now is somehow better and superior in every way to that which went before and that we can somehow beat the celestial forces, good and bad, that have bound us for millenia.

We can’t.

I wonder how the Lydians felt a few thousand years ago, as they wandered around their cities and provinces, gazing upon their achievements of civilisation, which included the first ever recorded coinage – cast in gold and silver, of course, and the first ever known fixed shops anywhere in the world, ever. Life must’ve seemed wonderful, an achievement of civilisation that could never end. Yet, let’s just take a look at Lydia now…

File:Tripolis on the Meander, Lydia, Turkey (19492900512).jpg
Lydia – The birthplace of coinage

I’ve wandered around quite a few of these ancient Mediterranean sites, once teeming cities and towns, of sizes comparable or greater than what we live in today. It’s a sight to behold and yet few historians ever ask the real question – how did it happen? Another example of how history is written by the victors, since it seems a valid assumption that the people living through the apocalyptii (okay the real plural is apocalypses, but it feels real) never found the time to put pen to paper, chisel to stone or ink to papyrii to record these happenings. Too busy fighting over the scraps for their survival. It’s another small step to then think that none of those people could ever have imagined that some day their cities would become this, yet they do and it can happen in record time.

I am reminded of the Greek word Hubris – the excessive pride that occurs just before a major fall. You can see it everywhere, once you open your eyes beyond the mobile phone screen in front of you. Meanwhile, I’ll just go have a listen to this…

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Pension Crisis?

For my entire adult life, I have repeatedly had it hammered into me that the country I am from is facing a massive crisis due to huge pension liabilities building up in developed nations. From a time when it took 10 working people to fund one pensioner, we are now down below 2 working people per pensioner in some Western nations.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: US and Canada ...

These liabilities take many forms. For example, people in all of these countries were encouraged (read : forced) to pay into government schemes that promised to fund their old age and that promised land of loads of time to spend gardening, seeing the grandchildren, or going on cruises when you ceased working. Except…well, the governments took the money but in the case of the UK, for some reason forget to actually start up the fund to invest the money into. I would suspect other countries did the same, but you can update me via email on that below. No matter, the ledger entry liability where the government (through future taxpayers) must pay those pensions to the retirees and also fund their other welfare and healthcare needs still exists. When it comes to ledger entries and simple accounting, there’s no doubt that pensioners are a liability, IF we measure life in such simplistic terms. Fortunately, any non-sociopathic human doesn’t. for the sociopaths, it’s worth noting that 48-49 is the peak age for economic activity in human life – after that the trajectory is forever downwards.

What’s not often mentioned, however is how much capital these pensioners themselves saved up themselves to pay for their retirement. A huge percentage of world equity markets and the cash lying dormant in bank accounts, awaiting circulation, is owned by these very people being lamented for their inconsideration of daring to stay alive beyond their economic sell-by date. Yes, those very people who spent every month of their 30-40 year working lives, investing their excess capital above living expenses into funds, naively believing it’ll some day provide for their retirement. I can understand the level of trust then, but it’s harder to share now. However, another byproduct of this is that these are the very people who have dramatically high levels of trust in the existing system and that government will look after them. Therein lies another key factor of the recipe described at the end, for, you may have noticed a common denominator by now that all of these liabilities are extinguished, if only you can get the people themselves to die off. More on that later.

As an early example of the legalised wealth transfer from these retirees (hell, I will be one myself quite soon, if all goes to plan*), in 2012, the United Kingdom took ownership of the Royal Mail Pension scheme. Now, as you can probably imagine, this pension scheme has had many, many years to accumulate capital and invest it and so it did. By 2012, these assets had grown to £30bn, a huge sum. No matter, with the prevailing calculations in place, this pension fund was deemed to be in deficit compared to it’s liabilities. It’s probably worth pointing out at this point that it’s nice to be able to gently nudge a pension fund into being deficient on it’s liabilities, when you implement laws that force it to invest a fixed percentage of it’s assets in government bonds paying 0.1%, instead of being able to freely invest in dividend-paying safe stocks, or even hold the ultimate safe haven asset, Gold, and watch that appreciate. Well, okay, maybe appreciate in fiat currency, since Gold can only ever stand still priced in itself. The government solution to this was to offer the Royal Mail an opportunity for the government to take the assets, all £30bn of them, and in return offer nothing, but to pay the future unfunded liabilities of those pensioners who once worked for Royal Mail. As an early example of taking something now, in return for an unfunded future promise, it was wonderful. expect more of this to occur in future.

On a similar vein, I almost called this post “Last Coal Miner standing”, for there is one huge pension fund out there with assets way in excess of liabilities and which defaults back to the government once the last recipient expires. The Coal Miners’ Pension Fund. For the main reasons that coal miners, due to the nature of the work, tend not to live as long in retirement, as I know to our historic familial cost and that coal mining is a supposedly a declining industry (demand is still huge though, but you can engineer a decline, can’t you?).

The Coal miner’s pension fund actually did something dramatically clever way back in the 1980s. Identifying that investment trusts often trade way below the net value of their assets (NAV), they spotted Globe investment trust, the UK’s biggest at this time, was trading on a huge 30%+ discount to NAV and decided the best and cheapest way to increase the assets of the fund was to buy this trust and incorporate it into the fund. A wonderful move, whoever did it deserves the highest praise and I bet it was someone who sat outside the city circle, who genuinely had the best interests of the pension fund members in mind. Fast forward 40 years and sadly, the government doubtless has their eyes on this fund big-time and I am concerned how long that huge pool of money, paid in by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of men, will remain out of the clutches of the elite. See this kind of thing as the asset side of the equation, that they prefer not to tell you about, when they tell you about pensioners, with all their knowledge and wisdom, being liabilities. The same goes for firefighters, teachers and whoever else out there spent their working life trusting some pension to cater for them in retirement. You may well be disappointed.

Of course, it’s completely disgusting and represents theft on the most massive scale. So, that raises the question – what’s the best way to deal with it? Well, in an ideal world you might…nope, it’s pointless, that ideal world does not exist at all. The solution, I fear is somewhat simpler.

  1. Spend years convincing old people they are a liability and that they are dinosaurs who unnecessarily consume resources and contribute to global warming through CO2.
  2. Try to engineer an age divide, where the old are presented to the young as the people who stole your assets and who, by virtue of the happier times in which they lived, are somehow responsible for you not having a job and struggling in life.
  3. Introduce a new virus, then tell those trusting old people who still believe the state will provide that their best protection is an injection, as insurance against never feeling the full symptoms of this virus. Yes, that truly is all it promises – that you won’t get the symptoms quite so bad.

Things not to tell them include :- that the injection is experimental until 2023 and that you are part of the human experimental pool, or that the leading French Nobel prize winning virus expert believes you may well have just reduced your life expectancy to two years.

Pension crisis solved and best of all, the pensioners themselves agreed to it.

*It won’t, whatever else happens in life, the “plan”, as I imagined it, will not occur. You will own nothing and you will be happy. Or else.

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The Most Valuable Real Estate in the World?

In the prior post I described how it is expected Singapore has an important role to play as a potential new Switzerland in the New Financial World Order. It makes sense, an important banking centre smack bang in the middle of the power struggle, an oasis of neutrality and peace amidst the turmoil around. When playing the geopolitics game, we don’t really want everything destroyed, do we? It’s also interesting to think that this new banking centre doesn’t need to be as physically big as Switzerland. Thanks to the internet, much of the back office work can be outsourced to other regions, along with the need for clandestine visits by shady characters needing to transfer money who can now just get it sent to an account anywhere in the world within the blink of an eye. Singapore must have a good internet infrastructure. For example, the number of visits to this website by “Huawei clouds, Singapore” have bumped up dramatically this past month.

Certainly, Singapore is already playing up to it’s future role as a global chessboard grand master, with comments like this by their president, expressing concern at the possibility of a military confrontation between China and USA. If such a confrontation occurs, expect the losing side to fight it with one hand tied behind their back, in the style of the latter days of Nazi Germany, where troop concentrations and movements were telegraphed to the Russians by an unknown spy high up within the Reichs Chancellery. Nothing can be left to chance in order to get the correct result, can it?

The real test for Singapore comes soon, when the World Economic Forum comes to town in August 17-20, 2021. I suppose then, we may expect some kind of relative tranquility next few months, before the next stages of the agenda are laid out and taken away in bite-sized chunks by each representative back to their respective countries to digest and implement. As interesting as it might be to be a fly on the wall, who with any compassion could bear to witness the spectacle of a bunch of sociopaths uncaringly carving up the world as if it was a birthday cake, dividing the planned spoils with no regard for the people and places whose lives might be destroyed by their actions?

As always, there are other threats to the global plans. Things can never be 100% certain and when you look closely at that map of Asia, especially the region where Singapore has such an important role, you see a threat.

That narrow Singapore strait where one-third of the world’s shipping must travel through right now to head West to India, the Middle East, Africa and Europe could be under threat from a future development. Yes, if only someone had the foresight to consider building a canal across the part of Thailand that goes south as a narrow peninsular to Malaysia and Singapore. Actually, they already did and what’s more, it’s a bit of contentious situation, as this story laying out the potential for conflict if China did fancy getting involved in such an undertaking implies. That Foreign Policy, a reknowned non-neutral news source comes out with a story like this to stir the embers should also really get you thinking.

It wouldn’t be the first time this area has been important militarily. In 1941, Japan amassed it’s taskforce on the Thai side of the border with Malaya, ready for invasion. The British General even asked London for permission to carry out a pre-emptive strike, knowing the issues they would face defensively, once the task force breached the border and began advancing south through Malaya. Someone in London said no. The rest, including the surrender of 100,000 allied troops in Singapore some weeks later, while the heavy artillery faced uselessly the other way out to the sea, is history.

Of course the on-ground realities are different to how a global map shows it. There are always people living there. People who might be fond of the lives they live and not really be keen on moving. Certainly the building of the Panama canal was no picnic – especially not for the people who died building it and the locals dispossessed by building of it. This area also happens to be quite a large tourist-earning centre for Thailand. If only there was a way to play the long game and encourage the locals to move on, so you could start buying up the land ready for this ambitous long-term project. Hell, engineer the right circumstances and you might even be able to buy the land up quite cheaply compared to it’s true value.

Which got me thinking of Christmas 2004…

There are also some other interesting videos out there showing how it looks now and the abandoned properties. However, the one that really caught my eye is a 1946 experiment to create a Tsunami using a nuclear bomb.

Certainly if that was possible in 1946, the question must be asked, what was possible by 2004? Some people are even asking similar questions about the Fukushima Nuclear reactor incident.

So, taking this into consideration, how’s the Thai tourist industry doing right now? After all, if it’s doing well, there’ll be few sellers, but if things are bad there might be a lot of forced sellers. COVID-19 wasn’t a good tourist season, was it? Well, as of May 2021, if you want to visit you’ll need to quarantine for 14 days, which I can’t imagine does anything to get tourism going again and some locals may well be temped to move or see their assets as liabilities…

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The New World Financial Centre

The British Empire and Sir Stanford Raffles in particular were a very shrewd lot. They identified a seemingly irrelevant island with a population of about 150 people as a piece of prime real estate back in 1817. What’s happened since is well-known of course, as the city of Singapore has developed into a major international trade and financial hub, with all the wealth and status that goes alongside that.

This place had always been on my to do list, so when a work trip in 2018 presented me with the opportunity for a one day stopover, I took it with both hands. While I didn’t actually sit down for a Singapore Sling, I did take a wander around the Raffles hotel complex and see the art deco railway station, where bullet damage from the 1941 Japanese invasion was still visible in some of the outer walls, before it probably disappears as the city modernises even further and obliterates the British symbols. The railway itself has already been moved to the North of the island and the future of the station seemed uncertain then, but ghosts were visible everywhere, as I peered through the locked gate into the past, surrounded by modern skyscrapers. I also saw the 1920s post office building, now a hotel, the main square in front of the Town hall where hundreds of thousands were executed by the Japanese and one of the world’s most expensive pieces of undeveloped real estate, The Singapore Cricket Club. I can only wonder how much longer that last piece of Imperial history will last. The battle of Singapore itself in 1941 has always fascinated me. For obvious reasons, it does not feature large in British history when World War 2 is mentioned, but will probably forever be Britain’s biggest military defeat, with a loss of 100,000 military personnel into Japanese captivity and subsequent death, along with the loss of two Battleships – The Prince of Wales and The Repulse.

I’d love to revisit some day on less of an intense schedule, but I sense my days of travel are numbered and I’ve used most of those numbers up. No matter, at least I can say I saw some of the world before all prison doors were locked with a resounding thud.

At the time, I was not ignorant of the island’s position as a major trade route and centre of wealth. Goldmoney and Bullionvault have offered Singapore as a precious metals storage location for years. However, it’s only when you are actually there on the ground, staring up at the impressive skyscrapers that you really understand how the wealth and energy is migrating from the old world to the new.

It’s interesting how stories coincide once more and get you thinking on a particular route. A few weeks ago, I expressed the view that Bitcoin is a distraction, or a preparation for a release of a new monetary system to replace the Petrodollar that has existed since 1971, the year of my birth, the introduction of decimalisation to the UK, the closing of the Gold Convertibility window in the USA and the official founding of the World Economic Forum – more on the last one later. In my view, the coming of digital currencies is inevitable and they may not be nice, with features such as time limitation (spend it or lose it) and extra credits available only to those who follow the rules of society (get the jab or don’t eat meat?). However, for them to be truly accepted, they will need to engineer a collapse of the current system and when that system collapses, every monetary system change ever has had to promise some kind of gold backing to get the public onside.

Historically, the old world still rules the precious metals world, with familiar locations like New York, London and Switzerland being where most of that trade is transacted. As the old world declines further and the new world rises, an Asian powerhouse, one with independence, strong defences, good shipping links and a robust financial system to trade gold and silver is required. There’s no doubt on these metrics that Singapore ticks all the boxes.

What really triggered it was a story mentioning the huge new precious metals facilities being developed in Singapore. It’s not the first time media, including the BBC, have reported on this. Yes, it looks possible a new world currency backed by gold/silver is coming and it will all be stored in Singapore, perhaps with an offshoot for Europe in London. On this, Brexit suddenly makes more sense – a European nation outside EU control, a defendable island where the wealth can be stored as the mainland descends into destruction. The Corporation of London certainly has a pedigree line of survival and growth, regardless of the general situation in the country. You may laugh, but despite a recent short period of comparative peace, Europe has a long, long history of huge wars for resources and after a year of rewarding people for doing nothing, while the continent becomes ever-more dependent on a few producers to carry the mass on their shoulders cracks may appear and Atlas may yet shrug.

When you think about it, it’s interesting how Switzerland always managed to remain neutral during the many European wars of the last few centuries. It becomes clearer why when you are aware of the high levels of banking secrecy Switzerland has historically maintained regarding account holders and fund sources. Consider also how much plundered loot found its way to Switzerland during World War 2. Why, the World Economic Forum itself is even based in Switzerland and Klaus Schwab, it’s apparent founder, was born in Germany in 1938, just before World War 2 began. I’d be interested to learn more on his family history, and this article is something of a primer. Having conducted their meetings in Davos, Switzerland for the entire history of the organisation, they are now holding their first-ever meeting in Singapore in August, 2021.

On closer examination of the Asian map, Singapore is crucial to all trade heading from China, Japan and Korea etc to India then onwards to Europe. Ships can only sail through one narrow strait. The Evergreen in the Suez canal feels like the first visible supply disruption which will expose Europe to how reliant it has become on foreign imports of essentials. Perhaps when those containers do finally arrive, they will be loaded up with precious metals for the return trip as Europe is stripped bare?

Meanwhile, almost everyone in Europe wanders around like idiots, wearing masks and continuing to following “official advice”, not laws on all kinds of things that really are basic human rights, like seeing family and friends, or conducting mutally beneficial transactions with other human beings. Blithely unaware of the probable imminent end of their way of life. You know, that “way of life” that you have been told terrorists hated so much that it needed to be protected, yet was immediately signed away the moment you got told a new virus with a 99.6% survival rate hit?

What do I know really? If I was better at these things I wouldn’t be working in an office following the limitations of my school programming, but on the basis of these jigsaw pieces slotting together, perhaps we should be investing in Singapore. Especially banks if it is going to be the new Switzerland after the World Economic Forum meeting. Not to say there won’t be bumps along the way – one other thing about that map is the seeming inevitability of a conflict between the old world powers and the new. That same Asian map shows how China is totally hemmed in from the sea because the USA controls Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. If China could punch through and take Taiwan or part of the Phillipines, they could control the Pacific. A war is brewing. I note, for example, that the UK recently sent their aircraft carrier to the China sea. A war in which Singapore will remain an agreed neutral by all parties, just like Switzerland did during the last century, but a war in which the destruction and rewards to the victors may well be huge and end up on this small island nation.

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3 – and That’s The Magic Number

On the 3/3 a woman called Sarah, aged 33, was murdered by a man in London. A policeman, as it happens. I don’t claim the credit for spotting that one, but it does lead into some interesting coincidences, especially considering how the story has been used way beyond being a murder case that should be investigated with respect for everyone until…no, innocent until proven guilty and policing with logic instead of emotion seems to have gone by the wayside.

Amongst the media circus for everyone to invest their emotion in, there were even calls from some for a curfew for all men to be home by 18:00. That supposed believers in a free society think it’s okay that one incident like this should ride on the rights and livelihoods of 60 million-plus people is bizarre. However, it fits with the whole Corona regime that we are entering a Minority Report-style world where everyone is believed to be infected unless proven otherwise and now, everyone is believed to be guilty unless proven otherwise. Anyway, didn’t they miss the other big question it raises – who’s going to enforce this curfew if something so extreme was ever allowed to happen? The Police?

If there is anything to really be gained from this story, it’s surely that the police themselves cannot be trusted. I fear however, that even this will be used against humanity. All it needs is someone to say humans can’t be trusted to police each other…if only there was some way a computer, with it’s impeccable logic and lack of prejudice could do the job. Maybe a robocop or robodog? Let’s just forget for a moment that computer software is always programmed by humans, with huge margin for error. Robocop from the 1980s was rather prescient in seeing how it could go.

Meanwhile, journalism seems keen to focus on the alleged perpetrator still receiving his salary while suspended from his job. Even helpfully repeating across the globe how he will still receive his at least £33,000 salary. Here, here and here. What a bizarre figure to concentrate on. Unless…..dipping into the world of freemasonry, Google tells me there are 33,000 lodges worldwide, with 33,000 members in many lodges. Continuing the search theme, other newsworthy stories further feed the conspiratorial fires. It’s amazing how many COVID-19 injections seem to be delivered in batches of 33,000. Utah, for example, a home of alternative religion and mystic rites certainly seems keen on the magic number. Gibraltar just completed it’s injection programme too, although this media source doesn’t seem to be in on the numerical importance. Then we have the shooting in Georgia, also successfully being used to whip up racial and gender division where there previously was none, with this story helpfully telling us that the alleged perpetrator came from Woodstock, Cherokee county with a population of…33,000.

Why am I bringing all of this up, do you ask? Returning to the world of finance, let’s finish with the biggest 33,000 financial sign going. Amongst all these 3’s the world’s biggest stock market, the DOW Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high last week. I don’t need to tell you what it was before you visit the link, do I? The Federal Reserve even helped out, the story tells us, with soothing words and promises of further stimuli to keep the party going, despite the reality of every economic indicator. I find myself wondering if words and actions may diverge soon. At least for a little while until other parts of the agenda are enacted.

I shall leave the final words to De La Soul, with their 90’s hit, although apparently that was a cover of Schoolhouse Rock / Bob Durrough in 1973. Meanwhile, we can all ponder what the 33,000 signifies to those in the know, along with asking the how and why of Wayne Couzens’ black left eye.

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Bitbubble

Last night was one of those nights where you wake up and things occur to you. I’ve had quite a few of those lately, but this one seemed especially illuminating. For a while now, we’ve had the word bubble planted in front of us by the media for quite a while to convince us stock markets, bond markets, commodity markets and biggest of all, cryptocurrencies are too high and may be about to crash.

Using reverse psychology, you should wonder if there really is a bubble. After all, a real bubble happens when everyone is too carried away by the emotion and success to recognise the bubble for what it is. In fact, bubbles don’t normally get identified until long after they pop. In hindsight, a graph usually makes it clear and everyone who once yelled loudly about their success now remains quiet and tries to forget the whole sorry episode.

Perhaps the one where you could say the graph seems to show a bubble, is Bitcoin. While I regret not being in on the Bitcoin boom, I’m still not convinced and find myself on the side of Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers, versus such other illuminaries as Doug Casey and Robert Kiyosaki. Yes, billions are being made and yes, we can agree fiat currencies are in massive decline. However, to me, the best medium to avoid that is the precious metals, with thousands of years of history to prove it, not electronic bits on a screen with no intrinsic value. Of course, the blockchain technology, decentralisation and ability to pay without banks are excellent, but it all runs on establishment hardware. Beginning with your smartphone, then the networks that pass your data across the world. As the establishment gets better at tracking, they will undoubtedly find ways to switch you off if they want to. There are certainly some fascinating debates out there to watch on the subject between these knowledgeable and successful people. Meanwhile, stories like this, about a German who won’t give the police his password and would rather sit in prison, remain amusing and stick two fingers up to the powers that be.

I am certainly an interested observer. Even the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, who supposed started up Bitcoin is an enigma. For some reason, his name reminds me of the government department, the NSA (National Security Agency) and it’s always seemed strange that organisations with a global reach and unlimited funds are unable to track down the person who started it all. As an adult, you know that sometimes the best way to keep a child or dog occupied is to throw them a ball and part of me has wondered lately if that’s exactly what’s happened here. Throwing a ball to keep people busy and distract them from the best investments, while you clean up on the cheap.

Take, for example, the recent purchase by Tesla of $1.5 Billion worth of Bitcoin. Why would they do that, you might wonder? Whatever reasons are given, I find myself doubting they are the full truth. Then, we hear that Apple may also buy Bitcoin. Both stories helpfully plugged on mainstream media, to ensure maximum public reach.

So why are they buying?

Last night was my own Eureka moment. On a yearly basis, there isn’t enough silver mined to meet demand. Only about 80%, with the rest met by recycling. Fair enough, excellent reuse, but for how long will there be enough scrap silver to go around, and, if a sniff of inflation came around, how many of those recyclers would be willing to sell their metal at the current prices? It led me to get thinking about the products of Tesla and Apple, and the amount of silver they consume yearly. In the case of Tesla, one electric car consumes 1 kilogram of silver. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if they make one million cars a year, then they will consume 5% of world silver demand. To put that in perspective, Ford alone produced 4 million cars last year. When it comes to Apple, I am grateful to this excellent infographic for explaining it all very clearly, albeit it from 2013. I can only guess that bigger iphones means even more metal in there.

Here’s my view – the public has been thrown a ball to play with. Indeed, it may continue to shoot up and entertain us all, the same way the Dutch went wild for Tulip bulbs in Amsterdam in the 1600s, and for a while, we may all feel ourselves rich or stupid for not participating. Indeed, some will walk away with fortunes. The majority probably won’t, however.

Meanwhile, the elite can stock up on the proven store of value and have a good laugh as many lose everything and are forced to succumb to The Great Reset.