Geopolitical Compass #5
Geopolitical Compass #5
Asian financial sovereignty incoming. UAE rises in the ranks while the USA continues its decline. The CAR will learn the hard way that shitcoinery leads to financial ruin.
Notable events in geopolitics and capital markets this week. Expand your perspective, gain context, and discover actionable insights.
Asian Sovereignty
China Debt
Move along, nothing to see here.
Yuan Settled Trade
China and the UAE have completed the first yuan-settled LNG trade for 65,000 tonnes of gas. Expect lots more to come.
Meanwhile Brazil and China have reached agreement to ditch the US dollar in trade.
The deal will enable China, the top rival to US economic hegemony, and Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America, to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions directly, exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa instead of going through the dollar.
China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, with a record US$150.5 billion (S$200 billion) in bilateral trade last year.
ASEAN Changes
In related news, ASEAN nations are looking to exit Western currencies as well:
An official meeting of all ASEAN Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors kicked off on Tuesday (March 28) in Indonesia. Top of the agenda are discussions to phase out the use of the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and move to settlements in local currencies.
Moving away from Western payment systems is necessary to protect transactions from “possible geopolitical repercussions,” Widodo said.
The trend is clear. While the USD may strengthen during the current geopolitical turmoil, its days are numbered over the long term and in the meantime you pay the price for holding it with high inflation against any real goods.
Bitcoin
MicroStrategy
Those waiting for the demise of Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy will need to continue waiting:
Germany
1,200 German banks will now be able to offer Bitcoin to their customers.
Energy Sources
A new study outlining where Bitcoin mining energy is sourced. Please keep this in mind when you see purposely misleading headlines screaming how Bitcoin will kill the planet.
Note the ‘Flared’ gas portion of 1.23%. I believe this will be a rapidly growing source of energy for mining in the future. It refers to capturing flared gas - natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off at the well head, therefore eliminating additional CO2 at virtually no cost, or more precisely for additional profit.
This flaring allows energy companies to continue oil production where regulations on emissions would otherwise necessitate them to shut down to stay within caps. An increasing number of energy producers are implementing this strategy, but do so quietly due to the ongoing stigma of Bitcoin in the mainstream investment climate.
Stay cognizant that Bitcoin offers an alternative to the current corrupt fiat money system perpetuated by government for its benefit. As such government will do anything to halt its progress, including funding a plethora of academics, think tanks and ‘NGOs’ to try to convince you Bitcoin is to blame for climate change (the lowest hanging fruit), racism, inequality and trans gender discrimination.
Canada
Speaking of the corrupt fiat monetary system, the Canadian government tells us it will fight high inflation with….. if you guessed more inflation, you’re spot on!
a one-time Grocery Rebate, providing $2.5 billion in targeted inflation relief for 11 million low- and modest-income Canadians and families.
Increasing Canada Student Grants by 40 percent—to provide up to $4,200 for full-time students.
Central African Republic
Only one year after adopting Bitcoin as legal currency, it seems the CAR has not been able to withstand the pressure from it’s colonial masters and will soon repeal Bitcoin’s currency status alongside the CFA Franc. Politicians will no doubt profit behind closed doors while their citizens will ultimately pay the price.
Sadly the CAR fell into the lure of shitcoinery and its promised riches instead of remaining focused on Bitcoin and financial sovereignty as El Salvador has.
Shitcoins remain one of the biggest attacks on Bitcoin by confusing people who then become disaffected after they inevitably lose their money. This will set their path to Bitcoin back by years to their detriment, as people in the CAR will find out thanks to their leaders greed.
Chat GPT
Good Citizen confirms what I've found with ChatGPT after a few weeks of use - it's basically just google repackaged. Only narrative approved answers.
One area I have found the AI useful is pulling out specific, non-controversial data points instead of trawling the web to find it yourself eg. 'Can users of Revolut bank in xyz country withdraw Bitcoin?'
A seemingly simple question takes surprisingly long to answer by searching the Revolut site yourself and Google was useless with the same question, but ChatGPT has already found it for you and spits out the answer.
Other than that narrow use case - I get enough bullshit narrative from every other information source.
Delusion vs Reality
While the West including the UK and EU continues degrading it’s infrastructure with boondoggle spending on solar and wind power - increasing prices of energy wherever renewables grow their market share of energy production - the Eurasia and the Global South including China, Brazil, India and now Saudi Arabia are ramping up spending on oil and gas production and refining.
Virtue signalling in Europe and the rest of the delusional West are making their economies, industry and infrastructure more fragile and prone to failure as well as more expensive for the privilege.
Luckily for them, other countries increasing their supply capacity will be able to somewhat alleviate the inevitable catastrophes that will befall the virtue signallers. At a price of course, and as long as they don’t sanction and hubris their way out of those markets as well… which seems like an increasingly optimistic assumption these days.
EUSSR
Asset Impairment
Inside the EU is not a place I’d be looking to hold property for numerous reasons, this is just another one to add to the pile. Did someone say value impairment?
The European Parliament has voted in favor of introducing strict energy efficiency rules; approximately 35 million homes across Europe will be ripe for renovation, with owners of older homes particularly targeted.
How much value, choice and freedom will be destroyed in the West at the hands of ‘climate crisis’ before people become fed up I wonder?
The State of German Armed Forces
Germany rules out providing further weapons to Ukraine. Can’t imagine why!
It uncovered widespread shortages of even basic equipment such as clothing, with soldiers frequently complaining about uncomfortable uniforms.
The German army was also found to be desperately short of effective communications equipment like radios, as well as crucial gear used to protect troops from the effects of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Despite constant claims of Russia’s failure to achieve its goals in Ukraine, it seems one of the primary goals of demilitarising NATO is going well.
Food Shortages
For those with lingering doubt of whether food shortages are coincidences of bad luck or intentional destruction:
Desperate populations are more compliant….. until they are pushed one step too far.
Russia
Shock & Awe Sanctions…. Apparently
Exports of crude oil via sea remain above 3 million barrels per day and a planned 500,000 bpd production cut by June is yet to show up in cargo data.
Putin Interview
An interview with Putin this week provides some interesting insight into current thinking inside the Kremlin:
Arms shipments to Ukraine:
The result of the new shipments of arms to Kiev will only be to prolong the fighting, which is what they want, but as for outcomes they just exacerbate the tragedy.
Russia’s ability to arm itself while maintaining the Russian economy:
In the USA and in some NATO countries this will be the choice they face, but here in Russia we have budgeted to cover all of our preexisting infrastructure development, civilian residential construction, healthcare, education – we are not cutting back on anything. We have organized our economy so that there is no excessive militarization.
On UK's move to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium munitions:
As regards my talks with Alexander Grigor’evich Lukashenko, the decision to send tactical nuclear weapons there was prompted by the announcement from Britain on depleted uranium artillery shells. But without any reference to this latest development, he has long requested that we provide to Belarus tactical nuclear weapons. There is nothing unusual about this. The USA has done precisely the same for decades, supplying such weapons to its allies, NATO members: Turkey, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Greece. And so we decided to do exactly the same, without violating in any way our obligations under the Non-ProliferationTreaty.
On moving from USD to other currencies for trade:
By restricting the use of dollars on the basis of momentary considerations of a political nature, they have done harm to themselves. The fact that they froze our gold and currency reserves: the whole world was watching and thought about this, about just how reliable their American partner is. And they all came to the same conclusion: America is not reliable. And so we are pleased to agree with our commercial partners to trade in Yuan. The oil exporting countries in the Middle East also have said they want to settle accounts in Yuan. So we will gradually extend this, extend the use of all currencies that are reliable. Yes, we understand the present-day advantages of the dollar. There are limitations on all the currencies we use today, not only the Yuan. But all countries are interested in strengthening their national currency and all countries will move in this direction. So, without a doubt, this was a great mistake on the part of the American authorities.
On his talks with Xi Jinpin:
We spoke a lot about economic cooperation and with the Chinese we will combine our efforts in technological areas, where each of us has well developed competitiveness in world markets.
The Chairman of the PRC is a very interesting talking partner. He is deeply immersed in international affairs, in the economy, in his own country and others including ours. He was well prepared. It is interesting to talk to him. I think we each got a lot of satisfaction out of this.
Saudi Arabia
Continues the process of joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation alongside China, Russia, India and Pakistan.
Ukraine
God bless brave Ukrainian soldiers fighting the evil Russians to uphold freedom and democracy for their people. Clearly this Russian soldier deserves the abuse he received.
Ukrainian sources on the internet claim this is a Russian fake, but the only evidence apart from conjecture provided is a supposed geolocation and resultant streetview, but the coordinates don’t have streetview available so I am dubious as to this claim.
I enlisted the help of my friend, a linguistic expert in English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian languages, to scrutinize the video. Her opinion:
I can tell that Ukrainian language is spoken by pure western Ukrainian. The woman speaks Russian with Ukrainian and a bit Tatar accent. Her name is also Muslim. Probably she is a Tatar living in Ukraine, but they all speak Russian local dialect.
German Mines
German supplied AT2 remote mines being dropped into Donetsk, killing civilians (Warning: Graphic). Well done Germany, you must be proud.
United Arab Emirates
No personal income, capital, net worth, or withholding tax.
Corporate Tax: 9% over AED 375,000.
Residency: 10 year renewable visa with an AED 2 million property investment.
Ranked 16th country for ease of doing business.
It may not be for everyone, but the old adage applies: capital goes where it’s treated best.
United Kingdom
United States
Objection Obliteration
What has been obvious to many from the day after January 6th is now becoming clear:
“This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in an earlier case filing. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.”
Prosecutor Moran acknowledges such in a motion filed on March 24.
“The specific footage, GoPro video recorded by an MPD police officer who was stationed at the Capitol in an evidence-gathering capacity, captures the officer shouting words to the effect of, “Go! Go! Go!” Moran wrote.
Expect to see much more of this worldwide. Have vocal community members or even elected politicians starting to point out a few too many inconvenient facts? It’s very easy to ‘discredit’ or simply malign them in a pathetic, complicit mainstream media.
Take the recent example in Australia of Victorian politician Moira Deeming who attended an anti-trans rally. All that needed to be done to have her expelled from her party was the mere presence of uninvited ‘neo-Nazi’s’.
It doesn’t matter if they were legitimate or planted in this instance, the point is now clear - anyone who is making the elite feel uncomfortable can be ‘taken out’ simply by sending in undercover agents with the right provocative clothing and signs, and that person stops being a nuisance.
This playbook is so obvious, I’m not sure what is more pathetic - the predictable tactics, or that the sheep fall for it.
Charts of an Empire in Decline
These are not the trends of a healthy society, vibrant economy or advancing nation.
The White House also came out celebrating inflation in February is “down by nearly 30%."
Now let’s look past their pathetic spin and do some back of the napkin math minus the gaslighting:
Feb 2021 Inflation: 3% - notional price of a 2020 $100 item rises to $103
Feb 2022 Inflation: 8% - notional price of the original $100 item rises to $111
Feb '2023 Inflation: 5% - notional price of item has now risen to $116
For this they’d like you to thank them for a job well done. Price rises haven’t stopped rising, nor God forbid reversed, but are just increasing at a slower pace. Bravo!
Keep in mind these are purposely manipulated figures to make the government look ‘better.’ For real price rises, check out ShadowStats (around 9%) or the Chapwood Index (every city in the double digits).
Restrict Bill isn’t About TikTok
Don’t be fooled. The proposed Restrict Act is not about TikTok. It applies to all forms of communications, domestic and abroad. Once passed, the new law will effectively provide authorities the ability to levy a $250,000 fine and a 20 year prison sentence on US citizens using a VPN to access ‘banned apps’.
What app will they deem is dangerous next? Communication apps without NSA back doors, most likely. Bitcoin wallets for sure. Community and news apps going against the narrative, almost certainly.
So what of yours can they access to confirm their belief you have become a ‘national security threat’? Everything:
If authorities suspect you of anything - you know, like using a disapproved social media app - they can turn your life upside down. This is your freedom being taken from you in plain sight while they distract you with a foreign boogeymen. As usual, the sheep not only let the wolf in, but they cheer on their own enslavement.
If this new law was actually about TikTok, it would be as simple as banning the app inside the country, it would take all of one paragraph and a couple of phone calls to a compliant Google and Apple, end of story.
No, this law is about taking away your freedom and rights. When you start down this road, human and financial capital will follow only hastening the decline.
Thanks for checking out Rambling Investor. Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment below if the mood strikes you, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t done so already.