Source: @EmaRosa98

Agenda 21 is also called Agenda 2030 because 2030 is a target milestone year for having enabled all the infrastructure and other core components upon which the control regime will operate. 2030 is seven years away. The Great Reset initiated by Trump in the “Covid” shutdown was no coincidence.

Much of the work needed is in place, especially the laws that give the oppressors the color of authority to enact the regime here in the U.S. Also in place are almost all of the technology platforms that enable the tracking mechanisms. Whether TPTB in the U.S. will one day acknowledge in public that everything is being tracked is another question.

One significant milestone that’s still pending is tracking all human economic activity through digital currency, although credit cards are already being used this way to some extent. This will likely be done under the auspicious of “carbon footprint” monitoring. Show me a man’s checkbook stubs or credit card receipts, and I’ll show you how to control him.

Here’s the video referenced in, We Will Be Sacrificed for Global Standardization of Systems. Excerpt:

• Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st Century) is the inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information, education and all human beings in the world
• This roadmap for global totalitarianism was agreed to by 179 nations, including the U.S., at the 1992 Sustainable Development conference in Brazil
• We’ve seen various facets of Agenda 21 being implemented throughout the last three years, under the cover of biosecurity and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset all further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21
• Agenda 21 is based on the ideology of “communitarianism,” which argues that “an individual’s rights should be balanced against rights of the community.” Community, however, in the mind of the globalists, is made up of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), corporations and government, which are to dictate what happens around the world. The people are not really part of the equation
• “Sustainable development” is NOT about recycling or making sure there’s enough food and resources for everyone. It’s about moving populations from rural and suburban areas into concentrated city centers where they and their use of resources can be monitored and controlled

Agenda 21 Is Globalization on Steroids

Koire was adamant that Agenda 21 (aka Agenda for the 21st Century) was the most crucial topic of our time, as it is:

“The inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information — and all human beings in the world.”

This roadmap for global control and domination — global totalitarianism — was agreed to by 179 nations at the 1992 Sustainable Development conference in Brazil. Were Koire alive today, at the end of 2022, there’s no doubt she would have warned us all that Agenda 21 was now in the final implementation stages.

We’ve seen various facets of Agenda 21 being implemented throughout the last three years, under the cover of biosecurity and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution⁷ (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset, officially introduced by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and then-Prince Charles in June 2020⁸ — these all exist to further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21.

If you youngsters are wondering where the government claims the authority to treat Americans (Jan 6 and others) as terrorists, it’s called the Patriot Act, which was enacted after 9/11. It was modeled after the East German Stasi. One day soon, using too much carbon will be an act of terror.

Prior here at TCJ: Is This On Purpose?

And see: Netherlands to close up to 3,000 farms to comply with EU rules

Source:

America: “We can no longer afford to feed our children peanut butter sammiches!”

White House:

President Biden’s National Security Strategy outlines how the United States will advance our vital interests and pursue a free, open, prosperous, and secure world. We will leverage all elements of our national power to outcompete our strategic competitors; tackle shared challenges; and shape the rules of the road.

The Strategy is rooted in our national interests: to protect the security of the American people, to expand economic opportunity, and to realize and defend the democratic values at the heart of the American way of life.

[…]

In the early years of this decisive decade, the terms of geopolitical competition will be set while the window of opportunity to deal with shared challenges will narrow. We cannot compete successfully to shape the international order unless we have an affirmative plan to tackle shared challenges, and we cannot do that unless we recognize how heightened competition affects cooperation and act accordingly.

The most pressing strategic challenge we face as we pursue a free, open, prosperous, and secure world are from powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy.

While this competition is underway, people all over the world are struggling to cope with the effects of shared challenges that cross borders—whether it is climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, or inflation. These shared challenges are not marginal issues that are secondary to geopolitics. They are at the very core of national and international security and must be treated as such.

• We are building the strongest and broadest coalition of nations to enhance our collective capacity to solve these challenges and deliver for the American people and those around the world.
• To preserve and increase international cooperation in an age of competition, we will pursue a dual-track approach. On one track, we will work with any country, including our competitors, willing to constructively address shared challenges within the rules-based international order and while working to strengthen international institutions. On the other track, we will deepen cooperation with democracies at the core of our coalition, creating a latticework of strong, resilient, and mutually reinforcing relationships that prove democracies can deliver for their people and the world.

It’s not necessary to actually read this circular word salad; we’re simply posting the rest to make a point.

The Biden-Harris Administration has broken down the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy because our strength at home and abroad are inextricably linked. The challenges of our age, from strategic competition to climate change, require us to make investments that sharpen our competitive edge and bolster our resilience.

• Our democracy is at the core of who we are and is a continuous work in progress. Our system of government enshrines the rule of law and strives to protect the equality and dignity of all individuals. As we strive to live up to our ideals, to reckon with and remedy our shortcomings, we will inspire others around the world to do the same.

• We are complementing the innovative power of the private sector with a modern industrial strategy that makes strategic public investments in our workforce, strategic sectors, and supply chains, especially in critical and emerging technologies.

• A powerful U.S. military helps advance and safeguard vital U.S. national interests by backstopping diplomacy, confronting aggression, deterring conflict, projecting strength, and protecting the American people and their economic interests. We are modernizing our military, pursuing advanced technologies, and investing in our defense workforce to best position America to defend our homeland, our allies, partners, and interests overseas, and our values across the globe.

The United States will continue to lead with strength and purpose, leveraging our national advantages and the power of our alliances and partnerships. We have a tradition of transforming both domestic and foreign challenges into opportunities to spur reform and rejuvenation at home. The idea that we should compete with major autocratic powers to shape the international order enjoys broad support that is bipartisan at home and deepening abroad.

• Our alliances and partnerships around the world are our most important strategic asset that we will deepen and modernize for the benefit of our national security.
• We place a premium on growing the connective tissue on technology, trade and security between our democratic allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe because we recognize that they are mutually reinforcing and the fates of the two regions are intertwined.
• We are charting new economic arrangements to deepen economic engagements with our partners and shaping the rules of the road to level the playing field and enable American workers and businesses—and those of partners and allies around the world—to thrive.
• As we deepen our partnerships around the world, we will look for more democracy, not less, to shape the future. We recognize that while autocracy is at its core brittle, democracy’s inherent capacity to transparently course-correct enables resilience and progress.

The United States is a global power with global interests; we are stronger in each region because of our engagement in the others. We are pursuing an affirmative agenda to advance peace and security and to promote prosperity in every region.

• As an Indo-Pacific power, the United States has a vital interest in realizing a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure, and resilient. We are ambitious because we know that we and our allies and partners hold a common vision for the region’s future.
• With a relationship rooted in shared democratic values, common interests, and historic ties, the transatlantic relationship is a vital platform on which many other elements of our foreign policy are built. To effectively pursue a common global agenda, we are broadening and deepening the transatlantic bond.
• The Western Hemisphere directly impacts the United States more than any other region so we will continue to revive and deepen those partnerships to advance economic resilience, democratic stability, and citizen security.
• A more integrated Middle East that empowers our allies and partners will advance regional peace and prosperity, while reducing the resource demands the region makes on the United States over the long term.
• In Africa, the dynamism, innovation, and demographic growth of the region render it central to addressing complex global problems.

Clausewitz’s most famous saying about war, that it is the continuation of politics (policy) by other means.

Here is the passage in full:

24. WAR IS A MERE CONTINUATION OF POLICY BY OTHER MEANS.

We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.

The headline is from this article. A better one would be the Reality of Real Profits v. Marxist Ideology Taking Over Wall Street.

The reality is real profits after expenses are what matters, or a business isn’t a going concern. A company must cover production costs, including salaries, and have some cash left (8 to 10 percent is the average target for an S&P 500 company) to reinvest for growth, new products, or expansion into new markets. You can’t structure a business around theoretical returns in feel-good social engineering.

In recent weeks there have been giant strides in the effort to challenge the legality of the “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) construct that has become a threatening obsession of the titans of Wall Street. Though ESG remains a unfamiliar acronym for most Americans, Main Street investors whose pension dollars are funding ESG investments are beginning to ask questions.

ESG is a social construct. The Left always projects.

While constituting competing frameworks, reporting systems, and scoring systems for environmental and social reporting for companies, the ESG construct lacks any quantifiable or worthwhile measurements. Put plainly, it is an entirely subjective scheme, created and funded by political, activists. Under the pretense of environmental protection and social diversity, these activists recognized that they had allies in the financial services and banking sectors who could be incentivized to do via the capital markets that which the activists knew they could never achieve using traditional market forces or democratic institutions. In short, voters would never agree to ruin their own economies, livelihoods and futures in the name of political ideology. To be successful, it necessarily needed to be stealthy and unchallenged.

And neither would shareholders vote to destroy real profits for green projects that have no chance of recouping investment costs, knowing that these schemes don’t make actual profits in free and open markets. By ‘traditional market forces,’ the article means, earn real money or die!

In recent travels, giant windmills stood throughout certain parts of the US west. Where is the study on ROI (Return on investment) for these hideously ugly and mostly idle steel versions of the Dutch windmills from the Middle Ages? Forget for the moment monetary ROI; the Left doesn’t care about that. Let’s talk about Kilowatt Hours of ROI. What is the breakeven for a windmill in terms of energy used to produce it vs. energy output over its installed productive years?

The things are gigantic, made from metals, with miles of wiring for each one, lubrication, transportation and installation, lifecycle maintenance, etc. At what point, having poured millions of kilowatt hours of carbon energy into its production, does a windmill pay for itself in carbon savings by kilowatt hours of energy output? We all know the answer; they take more to produce and maintain in the total lifecycle than they will ever deliver. We’re willing to be wrong about this; dear communist greenies, show us the math, please?

Therefore, if one doesn’t pay for itself in kilowatt hours of power produced, it can never pay for itself in real money!

That’s just one example under the E for Environmental. This is why the Green Energy New Deal is fake. Remember that to implement their Green New Deal completely, they’ll need you to suffer to the point where you’ll accept whatever they plan to implement if only you have enough food for your children. The S for Social is most assuredly destructive to capital investing. But we’re ranting, back to the article.

Recognizing this reality, attorneys general Jeff Landry and Todd Rokita of Louisiana and Indiana issued a letter earlier this month warning their states’ pension boards that ESG investing is likely a violation of fiduciary duty and potentially opens their investment staff and investment advisers to liability if they continue allocating funds to ESG-promoting asset managers such as BlackRock.

The Landry and Rokita letters follow another letter sent last month from them and seventeen other state AGs to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. That letter warns the asset management giant that BlackRock’s ESG investment policies appear to involve what they describe as, “rampant violations” of the sole interest rule, a well-established legal principle. The sole interest rule requires investment fiduciaries like BlackRock, to act to maximize financial returns, not to promote social or political objectives.

Yet, it is clear that BlackRock and industry counterparts are doing precisely that. They are attempting to use the ESG pretext of “protecting the environment” to re-orient trillions of dollars of their clients’ capital toward what are unquestionably their own political and social objectives. This effort is borne out in the companies in which they invest and the trends they curate and then fund. As is repeatedly touted in the literature of the most prolific ESG advocates, they believe that because their asset management partners, including BlackRock, manage such a substantial percentage of the total investment market, their ESG world view is above constraint of law, or beyond the reach of the institutions that have traditionally protected investors from dubious investment schemes.

Dubious is the exact right word. One might be able to make a contrarian investment in the E, but the S and G exist enforced by law under the runaway woke interpretations of the 13th amendment and 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s not just the most prominent corporations that are involved. Every medium or small (publicly traded in stock) corporation has to sign on to the woke S and G or get shut down by government enforcement. Meanwhile, because of the E, nobody can get funding for projects that make much-needed electricity, such as new nuclear power or natural gas plants.

America is famous for wealth extraction and not just overseas. It’s what government and businesses have been doing to West Virginia through coal for decades. The coal leaves on a train to make power for the big cities, and with it goes the profits leaving one of the most mineral-rich states in the union in poverty. Now, much of that coal goes to our self-declared enemy, China. The Left plans this same thing for Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Louisiana, and others by destroying the oil industry.

But don’t worry, they’ll take your tax money and put up a windmill, if perchance a breeze comes along, maybe you can have an hour of electricity. I was struck by the fact that there are no substations on large farms with 50 giant windmills or more. Every coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear plant that I’ve seen has electrical substations to concentrate and route the gathered electricity on high-tension wires to population centers. I’ve even seen a solar farm with a small substation. Maybe the windmills are magic?

The headline is a ruse; it’s actually the same this time. The times it was different were in 1987, 2000, and 2008. We’re talking about the economy and stock market crashes, of course. In all three of those recessions, there was a so-called V-shaped recovery in which the economy and the market bounced back fairly quickly. Those times were different and not the norm at all. What’s coming now is much more akin to serious historical economic problems.

In 1987 was the Saving and Loan crisis. Instead of bailing out the failed Savings and Loan banks, the government insured the depositors. That’s the exact opposite of what they did in the 2008 housing crash when they bailed out all of Wall Street. In the 2000 technology crash and in 2008, we had disinflation, the definition for which is not very good. We got disinflation by shipping manufacturing and production overseas; prices on many things stayed flat relative to inflation in domestic items and services. Technology is the best example; computing power has doubled several times in the last 20 years, but the price of a PC is still 600 to 1000 bucks. T-shirts at Walmart are another good example; they are (were) still 7.99 to 12.99 and have been for decades. But those prices are now on the rise.

The point of that boring background is to say this: the economy is in real trouble this time, something America hasn’t seen since the 1970s, two generations ago, and governmental mismanagement is exacerbating the conditions of the setup.

Steve Forbes isn’t wrong, but he is part of the supply-side establishment that got us into this mess.

The ‘real cure’ for inflation has gone ignored, Steve Forbes says

In focusing on raising interest rates to cool inflation, central banks and governments have overlooked the importance of maintaining stable currencies, said Steve Forbes, chair of Forbes Media.

[…]

“Today, unfortunately, not only is the Biden administration putting up obstacles to deal with supply-side problems, but also the Federal Reserve and other central banks think you have to depress the economy to bring inflation down,” he said, disputing the idea that a recession is the only solution to combating inflation.

“They do it by artificially raising interest rates. So they have fewer people employed … that is not the real cure,” he said.

“The real cure is to stabilize the currency. You don’t have to make people poor to conquer inflation.”

The money printing started a century ago, but the profligate printing started by Trump bailout checks and continued by Biden’s democratic policies to “recover” the economy from the “pandemic” is backfiring. There’s no more disinflation to cover the cost of money printing. The lowest practical overseas wage has been realized. Moving manufacturing to Africa is not a viable solution, so there’s nowhere else to seek lower wages. That’s but one set of problems. The war in Europe is another thing. But the worst problem is cutting off domestic energy and food production coupled with hyper-regulation of mineral exploitation and use; those choices will be crushing.

The conditions are not favorable at all for an easy recession that recovers quickly. Those last crashes were sudden; this time, it’s coming on slowly and will likely be long and grinding. Tell your family you love them.

Proverbs 22:7 comes to mind. Source:

The U.S. has about $30.9 trillion in national debt, according to the latest data from Treasury Department, and that total will reach a record $31 trillion as early as later in the month.

Roughly $24.3 trillion of America’s total public debt outstanding consists of debt held by the public, and $6.6 trillion is intragovernmental holdings, according to Monday data from the Treasury Department.

Intragovernmental holdings include federal trust funds, revolving funds and special funds, as well as Federal Financing Bank securities, the Treasury Department said on its website.

You can be sure that nobody will pay this “intragovermental holdings” debt but you, dear reader.

Debt held by the public consists of all national debt “held by any person or entity that is not a U.S. federal government agency,” according to the Treasury Department. That includes corporations, domestic individual investors, local or state governments, Federal Reserve banks, foreign investors, foreign governments and other entities.

Chart via Charles Hugh Smith.

Quiet quitting is giving up on your job and your company without actually resigning because it’s been made clear that it’s a hopeless endeavor to effect change that satisfies the human desire for the accomplishment which drives self-worth.

All job slots are being turned into a commodity. Fill a role, and follow the rules. Try to advance; no is the answer. Try a lateral move; no. Make a suggestion; follow the guidelines like a good monkey is all you get. Procedure-driven cost reduction has turned work into a nightmare for younger workers. A profit-driven race to the bottom doesn’t include learning, growing, or contributing. A worker is a unit of production cost in the global communist drive to equalization of all assets, of which an employee is merely an interchangeable byte. This communist equality in the workplace includes salaries, options, and ever-repressive systematized drudgery based on computational algorithms to maximize profit. The American job place is demeaning to the spirit which God has given men to conquer in dominion that which He has blessed them to take charge over. The divide is not generational; the businesses have changed to garbage in –  garbage out workaday soul-crushing slogs. Every employee is a mere cog in the global communist New Order. Creativity is frowned upon as cost competition with foreign sweatshops demands throwaway products, services, and people. Companies complain they can’t find workers, and customers complain that all the products, services, and people delivering them are ineffective or worse. The companies want them that way; they have no more small business competition nipping at their heels. Lobbyists have solved that pesky problem; what do global corporations care for the customer? And therefore, an employee is also a throwaway component. Every specialization is being absorbed into the global equality blob of gray meaninglessness. The worker never sees a customer’s smiling face at a wonderful product or service delivered; all they hear are complaints that they have no power to correct. Imagine spending half your day apologizing for C-suite masters you’ve never met because your work peer is somebody who doesn’t speak English working for a bowl of rice a day in some place you can’t pronounce or find on a map. And then, they tell you to train your foreign replacement, although they don’t say it that directly. The younger generation can’t express these things because they’ve been purposefully dumbed down. Oh well, give ’em the shot; the New Order doesn’t need them anyway.

In his “Time has run out” speech, then Prince Charles laid out a roadmap to enslave all of humanity. To understand their desire to monetize “carbon,” you must realize that all life as we know it is so-called carbon-based, especially you. In calling for enterprises to have a system by which to value carbon, what they are doing is enslaving you to corporate masters. You have a monetary value placed upon your work for their common good.

We could easily argue that this is fascism but indeed, the powers that be are communistic. History books will one day reflect that a new brand of totalitarianism was created out of the climate cult in the 21st century.

If you don’t function to serve one of the major global companies to their desired benefit, you must be eliminated. No old people can be allowed, no rebels, no independents, and limited new births of only the mental and physical characteristics desired to fulfill the needs of the plantation owners. Some of these items are from the Nazi program of eugenics that the communists will weave into their global collective.

The drive to zero-based wages is this: to pay you just enough to keep you from being free while ever tightening the physical and intellectual distance you are allowed to travel. In short, it’s a global, corporate-run slave plantation. Live in the pod, eat your bugs, and lights out at ten. Missing too much work or desiring a better life gets you fired; no job, no income, and no way to survive or move about. Social credit is simply a way to keep compliance by weeding out the uppity types like you.

Money is the reason King Chuck III and his pals need the corporations on board. The corporations control the money. Don’t be confused; they don’t own the global money supply and in no way run the banking cartel; quite the opposite is true. No, the large firms control how much money you get; they control you by the money, and the appetite of the globalists is to leverage all you do for their profit and your compliance.

This is what King Chuck is actually saying, between the lines, to his pals. And now you know. This is agenda 2030 or whatever they’re calling it today. It appears increasingly so that the Covid-19 hoax was a submission test. Either way, they have results that educate to that end. I’d say they know what they have, don’t have, and how they’ll proceed from here. But remember, we learned some things too, and in the US, at least, we still have one box left to stand upon.

It’s not wise to expect too much from the most prominent global businesses in the way of pushback. With the stroke of a pen, whole industries can be eliminated. Some on wall street, and probably the majority, don’t want what the globalists have planned. There is some resistance to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance). The “sustainability and ethical impact” that establishments thought was good is not a money maker because it makes them less competitive. On top of these policies having no financial value, now Wall Street is realizing that most people don’t want corporate social agendas.

People want to belong to something bigger than themselves. This othering that’s been going on will lead to war. ESG is only othering by a fancy new title; it’s bullying.

The interest-free cash dump of money to Wall Street enticed them into ESG. Money was free, times were good, and buying back their own stock while pretending to make real profits was easy. That’s all ending. Now they see ESG as a liability. But they fell for Bankers at every turn since FDR. We hold little hope for actual “corporate excellence” to replace ESG. They shipped all the manufacturing overseas for “shareholder value.” What happened to American excellence and American value?

The mercantilist business class that are the nuts and bolts of Wall Street are good folks who support America First, and many of them have been raving against the Fed and easy money for years or decades. They’ve seen all this coming. Those guys and gals are not the communist chattering classes New York City is famous for. NYC has its balkanization problems and not just ethnicity.

If the globalists had cared about the environment, they would have left the West as the industrial base of the world and let the third world be. The government lied then and is lying now. CEOs and would-be moguls at the direction of global banking and self-proclaimed government elites wanted cheap labor while keeping prices flat, to maximize profits wrecking your children’s future.

People want good and interesting jobs with future prospects of clever inventions and better quality of life. Men have tasted the opportunity technology has afforded, especially the option of leisure time.

They need you to have taken to the good life so thoroughly that you refuse to leave leisure and quality of life, get hard, and fight back by forsaking all for future generations. Humans, and all life, take the path of least resistance. But that direct course for us leads to the allotted daily portion of bug meal protein while you’re stuffed into a pod, provided you’re still able to get up in the morning and work until you drop.

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Evil pursueth sinners: but to the righteous good shall be repayed.” – Proverbs 13:20-21

Your plan must include a spiritual aspect. You want wisdom, the proverb says; make the wise your friend. If you seek to have faith that we’ll win, take up with the faithful. If you want righteousness, turn unto God, for He is the only righteous and wise King.

Ninety percent of the people in the world will follow the power, and strength of character is what’s lacking most today. We must prove ourselves strong, determined to win, and steadfast in the knowledge that sinners will be overtaken by their evil; God repays the righteous with good. Every month eliminate one corrupt evil from your life; tv, toxic “friends,” pornography, cussing, lying, stealing, cheating, drug and alcohol abuse, wasting time, etc. (There are many ways we steal and cheat, and boy, is time wasting a problem these days.) This is just as important, as the Bible says, perhaps more important than physical training and preparation.

“And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” – Job 28:28

The wicked are a dime a dozen; be someone worth knowing, worth fighting beside, worth following.

Charles Hugh Smith discusses how the Air Force cannibalizes to keep the illusion of a fully functional Flightline. He also shows what’s being done to the American healthcare system through this hollowing out. You’ll undoubtedly learn something from the article. This general definition is offered. (Bold in the original.)

Cannibalize is an interesting word. It is a remarkably graphic way to describe the self-inflicted destruction of a system by stripping previously functional subsystems to sustain the illusion of system functionality.

Wall street does this all the time. Investors don’t care if a company does it because the stock price keeps rising for a time. More often, they sell the lower profit-producing business units first. But sometimes, in an act of cannibalistic suicide, they will sell the money makers and bankrupt the company. This point is well taken.

An enterprise maintains a substantial cash position even as it loses money every quarter by quietly selling off its most valuable assets. This maintains the illusion of financial strength even as the enterprise is being hollowed out.

With some tactical variation, this is more or less what Cerberus Capital Management did to Remington. The Cerberus web page touts: ” Your partner to improve performance and drive value. Learn how Cerberus creates an edge for our investors and business partners worldwide.” Uh-huh?

Turning small-scale, localized finance into centralized / globalized hyper-financialization cannibalizes finance to benefit the few with unlimited access to credit, leverage and monopoly. First you borrow vast sums at low rates of interest that are inaccessible to mere mortals, take a corporation private, indebt the company and use the funds to accumulate mountains of derivatives that leverage the debt 10-fold or even 100-fold, then take the corporation public again, goose the stock and then cash out all the leveraged gains.

The newly public company has been stripmined of core assets and burdened by debt. The financiers cannibalized the corporation to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else with a stake in the business and the future viability of the enterprise.

Food is also discussed.

Highly processed products are simulacra of food that hijack our hardwired pleasure responses to heavy concentrations of salt, sweets, fat and spice and crunchy/chewy mouthfeel. The nutritional content of these products is so low and the fat-salt-sugar content so high that they are severely damaging to health on multiple levels.

The unwary consumer who stuffs themselves with these simulacra of food (shall we call it “fud”?) feels full even as their body and brain are starved for real nutritional content and real-food fiber.

A high sugar intake means gaining weight in fat. But few understand that anything that tastes like food but delivers minimal nutrition makes people fat. The reason is that your body releases enzymes and other chemical reactions to process the food; your digestive system then looks for particular nutrients found in the food based on that taste. But, with processed food, the nutrients aren’t there, so your body ‘thinks’ that something is wrong with its ability to absorb nutrients, so it starts packing on fat. Before processed foods, this is an excellent function for the body to have. In lean years and drought, this functionality ensures the body can make it through seasons, or a year, of low-quality foodstuffs until a better harvest. Lean times may well be approaching. Understanding how your digestive system is supposed to work may come in handy.

The linked article also appeared at WRSA.