Two Roads Diverged in a Digital Wood

The fact Facebook continues to exist and earn billions of dollars is proof we’re an apathetic, demoralized society which enjoys being abused.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) January 30, 2019

 

By now it’s no longer restricted to individual companies or even to the internet sector. It has spread across a wide range of products, services, and economic sectors, including insurance, retail, healthcare, finance, entertainment, education, transportation, and more, birthing whole new ecosystems of suppliers, producers, customers, market-makers, and market players. Nearly every product or service that begins with the word “smart” or “personalised”, every internet-enabled device, every “digital assistant”, is simply a supply-chain interface for the unobstructed flow of behavioural data on its way to predicting our futures in a surveillance economy.

– From the must read piece: ‘The Goal Is to Automate Us’: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

A lot of my content over the past couple of years has focused on the momentous geopolitical changes I see on the horizon, and this macro perspective reaches two significant conclusions. First, that the planet is moving away from a unipolar world dominated almost entirely by the U.S. toward a more multi-polar world. Second, that this fundamental shift in geopolitical landscape, coupled with what appears to be a forthcoming reckoning with the largest global debt bubble in human history, will lead to a once in a generation reset of the world economy and the global financial system that keeps it functioning.

US sanctions: SWIFT network suspends Iran banks

 

The SWIFT banking network, the backbone for international monetary transfers, said Monday it has suspended several Iranian banks from its service, after the United States reimposed nuclear sanctions on Tehran.

“In keeping with our mission of supporting the resilience and integrity of the global financial system as a global and neutral service provider, SWIFT is suspending certain Iranian banks’ access to the messaging system,” it said.

The Tectonic Plates of Geopolitics Are Starting to Shift

The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world’s countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion.

These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures.

In addition, thousands of individuals from scores of countries are included in the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals who are effectively blocked from the U.S.-dominated global financial system. Many of those designated are either part of or closely linked to their countries’ leadership…

But in recent months it seems that America’s unwavering commitment to fight all of the world’s scourges has brought all those governments and the wealthy individuals who support them to a critical mass, joining forces to create a parallel financial system which would be out of reach of America’s long arm. Should they succeed, the impact on America’s global posture would be transformational.

– From the recent article: The Anti-Dollar Awakening Could Be Ruder and Sooner Than Most Economists Predict

The peak of American empire has already come and gone, a reality not yet widely appreciated due to the continued dominance of the global financial system by the U.S. dollar, still the world’s preeminent reserve currency. U.S. leaders have always used the USD as a weapon, but it’s only in recent years that geopolitical rivals and long-standing allies alike have started to come to an increasingly vocal understanding that the unipolar role played by the U.S. in the world’s centralized financial system is well past its expiration date.

De-Dollarization Continues: China, Iran To Eliminate Greenback From Bilateral Trade

 

The more Washington lashes out in anger at those who will not bow to the unipolar world order, the more the rest of the world fights back. As the launch of its Yuan/Gold-settled oil futures looms, China is escalating its de-dollarization scheme further by seeking a bilateral rial-yuan agreement with Iran.

As a reminder, nothing lasts forever…

Money Under Fire

 

A reminder of the great wealth transfer underway

Today we welcome a cohort of new readers visiting PeakProsperity.com for the first time. This article is to give them our best grounding in the massive wealth transfer underway.

Our hope is that our longtime readers will likely benefit from a revisitation of the fundamentals, as well.

One serious predicament we face is that the current leaders in the halls of monetary and political power do not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation. The mind-boggling part about it is that the situation is easy to understand.

Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever.

Europe Hopes for Clinton Win for More Deals With Iran

Europe Hopes for Clinton Win for More Deals With Iran

 

After a year of disappointment, European businesses are hoping a victory for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. election next week may help break the logjam that has prevented large-scale Western investments in Iran since the opening of its economy.

• While no one in Europe is predicting a flurry of new deals should Clinton defeat her Republican rival Donald Trump on Nov. 8
• A win for the Democrat would remove some of the political clouds hanging over last year’s nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
• Business groups say this could help fuel a more aggressive push into the Iranian market in 2017, especially in the second half of the year, if a Clinton victory is followed by the re-election of moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani next May.

World Is Out of Weapons

Satyajit Das has written an excellent article in Bloomberg which clearly details the risks facing the global financial and monetary system and how central bankers are out of monetary ammunition and weapons.

Excerpt:

“No one likes to admit defeat. But global policymakers, who continue to insist that there’s more they can do to revive growth and inflation, are starting to sound like Monty Python’s Black Knight (click link to see video), the limbless and mortally wounded warrior who threatens to bleed on his victorious opponent. The truth is that governments and central banks have very few weapons left — and have probably lost any chance they once had of averting a prolonged stagnation.

Barack Obama may have finally destroyed America’s #1 advantage

 

In July 1944, just weeks after the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to determine the future of the global financial system.

The vision was simple: America would be the center of the universe, and every other nation would revolve around the US.

This arrangement ultimately led to the US dollar being the world’s dominant reserve currency which still remains today.

EXCLUSIVE: Global Banking System Infiltrated by Chinese State Hackers

Economic warfare via economic espionage is exactly what this is, without a doubt. As the article states, these are shots being fired at America and the Western financial system. The goal, a means to an end, is to create a lack of confidence in the system and eventually provide an alternative to the United States-dominated world.

 

A screenshot, provided to Epoch Times by an insider, shows the security certificate of a Mexico-owned bank money transfer network in New Jersey being exfiltrated. Hackers can use the certificate to send communications through the company’s networks, which its recipients would automatically validate.

 

 

Hackers employed by the Chinese state are making a profit selling access to breached banks to organized crime groups

A group of cybercriminals has breached and mapped the global banking system, and in a series of attacks has so far stolen $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh. Experts believe the attacks were done using fraudulent messages on a money transfer network connected to the banking system.

Investigations into the ongoing attacks are still underway, and related attacks on other banks are still being uncovered. Some experts are pinning the attack on hackers from North Korea, since the tools they used share similarities to the November 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

According to an insider with direct knowledge of the recent attacks, however, the culprit behind the digital bank robberies is much larger. The insider requested to remain anonymous due to security concerns, and was able to provide evidence to support his claims.

The China Syndrome: The Coming Global Financial Meltdown

The 1979 film The China Syndrome took its name from the darkly humorous notion that a nuclear reactor meltdown in the U.S. would burn straight through the Earth to China. (wikipedia: The China Syndrome)

In today’s world, the financial meltdown in China has burned straight through the global financial system to the U.S. financial markets. The mainstream financial media is delighted to promote the many links between the U.S. and Chinese economies when the two economies are feeding each other’s expansion in a tightly coupled virtuous cycle.

The Next Financial Crisis is Unfolding Now

Money Morning Members should know two things. First: the 2008 financial crisis was caused by a housing bubble, centered in the U.S., that radiated out through the rest of the world and almost destroyed the global financial system.

Second: The next financial crisis – which is starting to unfold as we speak – was caused by a commodities bubble centered in China that radiated out through the rest of the world and will cause enormous financial damage, threatening the global financial system.

Both crises were aided and abetted by central banks printing massive amounts of debt that can never be repaid. That leaves the world with three choices for how to deal with that debt – currency depreciation (which is why you should buy gold), inflation, and default.

China boosts gold reserves for 5th straight month

Taking advantage of the low price of gold, in November China boosted its gold holdings for the fifth consecutive month, the fastest growth rate since June, the central bank reported Tuesday.

However, November’s $87 billion decline in total foreign exchange reserves was the country’s biggest drop since August’s record-high decline of $93.9 billion.

IMF Warns Next Financial Crash Is Only a Matter of Time

With interest rates at a 5,000-year low, are we really surprised that a crash is coming?

The International Monetary Fund (imf) is warning that a financial crisis is practically guaranteed, and it’s just a matter of time before it strikes. The organization’s newly released Global Financial Stability report is sobering reading. The flaws in the global financial system have not been fixed, it says.

It highlights soaring global debt, particularly in emerging markets. The implication is that we could see a repeat of the 1997 currency crisis also known as the “Asian Flu,” which saw massive currency devaluations, contractions in global trade, economic turmoil, and social instability.

But conditions are much more dangerous today than back then. Virtually the whole world is teetering on recession, the West and Russia are back in Cold War mode, the Middle East is engaged in actual war in Syria, and the world is more interconnected than ever—potentially making the transmission of financial diseases much quicker.

Three obvious signs the entire system is changing

I remember watching Ronald Regan on TV when he told Mikhail Gorbachev, and the entire world to ‘tear down this wall’ from West Berlin.And within a few years it happened. The Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the United States as the victor in the Cold War.

US geopolitical, economic, financial, and military power was completely unchallenged. And it would remain that way for years.

Now it’s a completely different story. The entire system is changing.

Next financial crash is coming – and before we’ve fixed flaws from last one

In case you missed it last week:

 

The next financial crisis is coming, it’s a just a matter of time – and we haven’t finished fixing the flaws in the global system that were so brutally exposed by the last one.

That is the message from the International Monetary Fund’s latest Global Financial Stability report, which will make sobering reading for the finance ministers and central bankers gathered in Lima, Peru, for its annual meeting.