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Sunday, February 8, 2026

2026-02-08

***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


Credit the Bank of Canada for a realistic depiction of risks facing the global and Canadian economies in its recent quarterly report. In the central bank’s view, the world is becoming more fragmented, geopolitical risks are elevated and for Canada, the future of trade in North America is an important uncertainty. Yet, in this author’s view, key assumptions mean the risks are not reflected in the bank’s economic projection. .......

......... Ideally an economic projection would represent a balance between identified upside and downside risks. Yet the most important risks rightfully identified by the bank – global trade disruption and financial imbalances and threats to USMCA – are overwhelmingly to the downside. ........


The future of the international monetary system

............ Some have sought answers in the work of Trump’s former economic adviser Stephen Miran, now member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, whose policy document A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System was published in the runup to the 2024 election. The paper appears to explain the logic behind many of the decisions which have played out since, calling for a “generational change” to “put American industry on fairer grounds vis-à-vis the rest of the world,” with tariffs the primary vehicle. The dollar’s strength for the past half century, writes Miran, has made US exports too expensive for the rest of the world to buy, while making imports too cheap for American consumers to pass up. The result has been the degradation of American manufacturing and industrial output. “Persistent dollar overvaluation” is said to flow from the way in which “dollar assets function as the world’s reserve currency.” It is simply too burdensome for the US to “finance the provision of reserve assets and the defense umbrella, as the manufacturing and tradeable sectors bear the brunt of the costs.”

Miran is not alone in arguing for the dollar’s devaluation. The belief that the currency’s global role puts the US at a structural disadvantage has a long history which stretches back to the early decades of the postwar era. Yet the fact that this view has outlasted that world of fixed exchange rates and gold convertibility, and has more recently been adopted by many in Trump’s orbit, reveals a deep misconception about how the twenty-first-century international monetary system actually works. ................

In what follows, we will first describe the development of the international monetary system from the era of Bretton Woods to the age of the offshore dollar. We will then explain how this system is likely to be reshaped over the coming years, as Trump’s misconceived tariff program provokes unprecedented trade wars and intensifies competition with China. What are the implications of this deepening disorder? It is possible to imagine four divergent scenarios, each of them favoured by different political coalitions: the rise of competing monetary blocs with their own distinct geopolitical alignments; the continuation of financial globalization, with the US assuming an even more coercive role; the collapse of the monetary order into a state of anarchy; and the establishment of a new transnational payments union. ............................


............. Despite this lack of foreplanning, though, there is no doubt that the system has given the US immense privileges. Sitting at the top of the pyramid, American authorities are able to weaponize access to international finance for countries lower down: a crucial means of exerting influence over the global periphery. .............

.......... For Miran, the practice of supplying currency to the rest of the world has forced the US to accrue a massive trade deficit, which he describes as a “sacrifice” for global dollar supremacy. 

This is a straightforward inversion of the real relation. It would be more accurate to say that the dollar’s dominance—as a partially denationalized currency—is what gives the US the freedom to import so much more than it exports. Although the country has become greatly indebted to the rest of the world, its debt is denominated in a currency whose ultimate means of settlement it controls. ....................

......................... In each case, attempts to upend the existing framework will surely cause more problems than they solve. As the US erodes an international system that is structured in its favor, it risks deepening its condition of imperial decline. The future monetary order that it is now imposing upon all of us will come with some buyer’s remorse.



.............................. So the long-standing ‘extraordinary privilege’ of the dollar is not going to end any time soon, despite the recent ‘debasement’ trade.




It's a Simple Stock Market Right Now

Right now, there are two trades.
..........
Trade #1: Everything That Isn’t Tech
............ The message right now it simple…..UP.


.......
Trade #2: Anything Overweight Tech
Now ask a different question. What’s struggling? Not small caps broadly. Not large caps broadly.
Not the market of stocks. 
The area getting the most airtime, the most retail attention, and the most emotional attachment is the area under pressure….Tech stocks.
So anything giving technology too big of a vote is meddling sideways.
And this is where the problem shows up.

.............. My Two Cents
The market does not care how innovative something is.
It does not care how exciting the story sounds.
We are not here to invest in what is cool. We are here for returns.
The market of stocks is doing its job. Participation is broad. Trends are intact.
Letting an interest in tech bog down portfolio performance is a choice, not a requirement.



Bubble Fare:

"That’s not just for shock factor. It’s where the math takes us."



Charts:
1:
2: 
4: 
5: 




(not just) for the ESG crowd:


As I explained before, there’s a dispute among climatologists about how much warming it actually causes when you double CO2 in the atmosphere. The consensus settled around 3 degree Celsius, but a group featuring Hansen most prominently, suggest that the warming is actually more than 4 degree Celsius.

The models are now increasingly suggesting more than 4 degree too (which the moderates refer to as the “hot model problem”), although those models are not being fully included by the IPCC process, they’re being treated as unrealistic.

Well, there’s more evidence coming in that the “alarmists” are the ones who are right. .....................

It really seems like 3 degree of warming is just climate scientists being overly optimistic and reality being closer to 4.8 degree Celsius per doubling.

It’s the difference between a catastrophe and the apocalypse. Politicians still think of climate change as just another problem to manage, but it’s increasingly obvious that this is actually something that will result in billions of deaths during this century because of our failure to address it in a timely manner. .......



Abstract. The world seems headed into another El Nino, just 3 years after the last one. Such quick return normally would imply, at most, an El Nino of moderate strength, but we suggest that even a moderately strong El Nino may yield record global temperature already in 2026 and still greater temperature in 2027. The extreme warming will be a result mainly of high climate sensitivity and a recent increase of the net global climate forcing, not the result of an exceptional El Nino, per se. We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.

...................... Two years ago, when many doubted the reality of global warming acceleration, we noted[7] that the peak of the ongoing El Nino and the following La Nina valley could help confirm the reality of acceleration and assess whether average global temperature has already reached 1.5°C. The La Nina valley is yet to be determined, as the 12-month mean is still declining. We projected[4] a minimum of 1.4°C to be achieved by the second quarter of 2026. A minimum about 1.4°C will be strong support of global temperature acceleration, as such La Nina minimum is higher than any El Nino maximum in the prior decade, which included a “Super El Nino.” In turn, it supports the mechanisms that we suggest are behind acceleration: high climate sensitivity (at least 4°C for doubled CO2) and reduction of aerosol cooling due to declining aerosol emissions from East Asia and ships at sea .................



.......................... Climate change is the underlying driver of all these developments. The more the ice melts, the more accessible shipping routes and resources become, and the more tempting the Arctic appears as a prize worth contesting. What was once a frigid expanse of negligible geostrategic significance is now a potential site of commerce, contest, and conflict. In this sense, climate change has blurred the lines between environmental transformation and geopolitical competition, creating conditions where environmental change itself becomes a strategic resource and a catalyst for friction.



..................................... Democrats are paying the price for designing Paris to avoid Senate ratification. Knowing they lacked a two-thirds majority in the upper chamber, the Obama administration insisted on voluntary, non-binding contributions and targets, which ensured Paris would rest on a reversible presidential signature rather than durable treaty law.

The Trump administration has fully absorbed these lessons. During his first term, Trump withdrew only from the Paris Agreement, leaving the UNFCCC intact and allowing his successor to rejoin easily. This time, Trump’s action is far more radical: By targeting the Framework Convention itself, Trump deprives future presidents of an easy diplomatic reversal. ...............


As climate change intensifies the global food system is being stretched to its limits. Can real‑time data and rapid response strategies help manufacturers stay ahead?


Scientists studying Antarctica uncovered a surprising twist in how the Southern Ocean absorbs carbon dioxide.


Are we in for a Bronze Age Collapse 2.0?

.......................... We live in a finite world, with only so much easy and profitable to extract metal ores. The rest, no matter how much more of these elements Earth’s crust may contain, will remain increasingly out of reach, as most newly discovered deposits are either too small to worth going after, lie to deep, or both. And if you consider that diesel fuel, the lifeblood of the machines mining and shipping these ores, is increasingly in short supply, too, you begin to grasp the fact that we are facing a converging supply crisis here. Something, which is not only threatening the “production” of silver and copper, but that of many other commodities as well.

This is how hitting limits to growth looks like in real life: not a sudden fall off the cliff but a long, slow whimper.

Given these circumstances, indicating the imminent end of material growth, is it any surprise that the U.S. Department of the Interior, through the U.S. Geological Survey, has put literally half of the entire periodic table on its 2025 List of Critical Materials? According to the survey, there are now 60 minerals vital to the U.S. economy and national security which “face potential risks from disrupted supply chains.” ...........

............... The scarcities we face today are mostly due to growing demand for stuff outstripping stagnating minerals supply. If mine output forecasts are anything to go by, however, this stagnation can be expected to turn into a decline for many critical elements: not only for silver, but also for copper, and most importantly: oil. Competition for, and control of, these dwindling resources will thus shape not only politics and international relationships, but will decide which economy can grow, and which must endure a decline in living standards as the price of everyday items and consumer goods continue to rise, often beyond the point of affordability.



Sci Fare:




[more than just] U.S. B.S.:

Epstein the paedophile is a sub-plot.

.......................... The truth is that in our Empire of Lies, compromised individuals are the most favored candidates for key positions of power. The obvious benefit of recruiting such individuals is that they are easily controlled. This is not unique to Great Britain. In 2017, in the aftermath of the “Pizzagate” scandal, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds recounted what she learned from an FBI colleague who worked for four years (1993-1997) running background checks on candidates for federal judges. He said that individuals with most “skeletons in their closets” were systematically appointed to become federal judges. Those with unblemished records were not considered.

Sir Keir Starmer is himself the product of this same process: a pliable, compromised sock puppet in the service of oligarchic power which is deliberately concealed from view. When such low-calibre, compromised individuals find themselves in positions of power, they’ll do whatever their superiors demand, without asking too many questions. .............


“People don’t realize how hard it is to speak the truth to a world full of people who don’t realize they’re living a lie” – Edward Snowden
My government overlords and their legacy media propaganda outlets tell me the economy is booming because GDP is between 4% and 5%, the stock market is near all-time highs, inflation is declining, unemployment is low, and AI is going to transform our world for the better. According to their narrative, All is Well. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose in every facet of our everyday lives. We are seeing 6 sigma (once in 500 million) events in multiple markets (gold, silver, JPY bonds) within one week. Well functioning non-manipulated markets based on price discovery do not crash by 40% in one day, like silver did last week.

Government shutdowns, ICE shootings, massive welfare program fraud, passing more bloated spending bills, fake staged shutdowns, violent upheaval in Democrat run urban shitholes, uncovering and ignoring the 2020 election fraud, Democrats (with RINO support) desperately trying to stop the SAVE Act voter ID bill to continue their election fraud scheme, and Trump tariffing and threatening every country on earth if they don’t do what he says, makes every day seem like an exhausting slog towards perdition.

And now we know for a fact the world is run by Satan worshiping, vile, child molesting pedophiles, powerful sadistic billionaires, who use politicians, bankers, and their propaganda media whores to coverup their crimes against humanity. The information which has seen the light of day is revolting, disgusting, criminal, and makes any normal person physically ill. Imagine the material they haven’t released or have already destroyed ...............
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth” – Aldous Huxley


........................ All the subcultures named by Lippmann appear in the Epstein files: the diplomatic-political world (Clinton, Trump), high finance (J.P. Morgan, the Rothschilds), high military and intelligence circles (CIA, Mossad), religious authorities (including representatives of the Vatican Bank), the academic world (Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky), owners of newspapers and media outlets (Robert Maxwell), and their wives and daughters who function as a kind of ceremonial masters (Ghislaine Maxwell). It is remarkable how accurately Lippmann, in 1922, described the international organism that is now, a century later, being pulled out from society’s shadows. 

.............. The Epstein files constitute a cultural tipping point—a structural moment. We find ourselves at a point where human relationships at the top of society have been hollowed out to such an extent that they can no longer sustain appearances. .................


 .............. The Epstein reporting has only confirmed this retreat by the western media into disgrace and venality. It has only confirmed their betrayal of what should be a noble profession. 

........ I’ve written before about how the media have attempted to defenestrate the Epstein story, a story about a shadow state operating though elite networks of corruption, criminality, power, and abuse, and reduce it to a tabloid-style palace intrigue.

But now, watching the media ignore Epstein’s extensive connections to Israel and instead try to make the Epstein files about Russia, really tops it all. ................


A handful of figures will be sacrificed - but only to protect a wider culture that believes rules don't apply to the ruling elite

....................................................... This is a false reckoning. The Epstein Files don’t just show us the dark choices of a few powerful individuals. More significantly, they highlight the degenerate logic of the power structures behind these individuals.

.............. Set aside his paedophilia for a moment. Epstein was the ultimate personification of the twin corrupting ideologies of neoliberalism and Zionism, which dominate western societies. That is reason enough why he excelled for so long in their upper reaches.

The ultimate destinations of those ideologies were always going to lead to a genocide in Gaza, and in the years or decades ahead – unless stopped – to a planet-wide nuclear holocaust or climate collapse.

Epstein could serve as a salutary warning of what is so deeply amiss with the West’s political and financial culture. But the wake-up call he represents is now being smothered in his absence as much as it was in his lifetime.

Neoliberalism is the pursuit of money and power for its own sake, divorced from any higher purpose or social good. Over the last half century, western societies have been encouraged to venerate the billionaire – soon to be trillionaire – class as the ultimate signifier of economic growth and progress, rather than the ultimate marker of a system that has rotted from within.

Predictably, the super-rich and their hangers-on have been drawn to the advocates of “longtermism”, a movement that justifies the world’s current gross inequalities and injustices – and is resigned to a coming climate and environmental apocalypse as the world’s resources are used up.

Longtermism argues that humanity’s salvation lies not with reorganising our societies politically and economically in the here and now, but with intensifying those inequalities to achieve longer-term success via a class of Nietzschean Ubermensch, or superior beings.

A tiny financial elite needs absolute freedom to amass more wealth in search of the solutions – via tech innovations, of course – to overcome the difficulties of surviving on our fragile planet. The rest of us are an impediment to the super-rich’s ability to steer a course to safety.

Ordinary men, women and children must be left on the sinking ship, while the billionaires requisition the lifeboats. In the words of one of longtermism’s gurus, Nick Bostrom, an Oxford University philosopher, what lies ahead is “a giant massacre for man, a small misstep for mankind”. .........


The Trump administration may be gunning for a total takedown of the pathogenic British establishment. UK's color revolution playbook may be coming home to roost.




Two chilling stories converge this week: The Epstein files reveal an oligarchy operating beyond democratic oversight, while nuclear arms control collapses into mutual mistrust. Both expose a world where power brokers recognize no constraints — where “trust” has become an abandoned relic and force alone governs.

.................................... The public is finally becoming aware of how a class of visible and invisible power players have crafted and are running a system designed for their comfort, pleasure, greed and narcissism. We now need to look beyond the anecdotal and seek to discover and describe how their power articulates with what we still believe to be the legitimate political authority of our liberal democratic institutions. Democracy, like beauty, may well be in the eyes of the beholder, but we can see more clearly today that it’s also in the tight grasp of an invisible oligarchy.



There are, broadly speaking, two different types of people who are calling attention to the Epstein files right now: (A) those who hope the revelations lead to high-level prosecutions and major institutional changes in the US government, and (B) those who know this will never happen but hope the revelations will help radicalize people toward truly revolutionary politics.

Those in category (A) believe the system is broken and needs to be fixed. Those in category (B) understand that the system is working exactly as intended and needs to be destroyed.



Geopolitical Fare:




Will the destruction of Gaza, the extermination of its society end before it is completed? Not if the government of Israel, the majority of its citizens and the United States have their way. Israel will never make peace with the Palestinian people, not in Gaza, not in Jerusalem, not on the Westbank. As long there are Palestinians between the river and the sea, they will stand in Israel's way—mission not accomplished. In fact, now, after 2 years of slaughter, peace, whatever its terms, would be nothing short of a national catastrophe for Israel, a devastating defeat. Peace would have to end the blockade of Gaza, which has by now lasted almost two decades, subsidized by four American presidents: Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump. Gazans would have to be released from their open-air prison, visitors allowed in. Pictures, many more than now, would find their way out of a ravaged landscape of irreparably damaged homes, schools, hospitals, churches, and universities. Stories would be told, of children without parents, parents without children, families without mothers or fathers, emaciated, starved, crippled in body and soul. Investigations would get under way, and not just by the corrupt, Israel-paid so-called Palestinian Authority: witnesses would be heard, memories recorded, events reconstructed, Israeli commanders responsible for the worst crimes identified, and genocide would cease to be a legal abstraction. The state of Israel would finally end up a pariah state, as Germany might have after 1945 had it not been for its American friends needing an ally-vassal against the Soviet Union and for the Korean War. “Enjoy the war, peace will be terrible,” Germans used to whisper to each other as WWII drew to a close.

No end in sight. The nightmare will go on, and will be allowed to go on, as long as there are still Palestinians that refuse to be ruled by the likes of Netanyahu. .................



The period around 1980 was pivotal to the fate of nations. In the West Thatcher and Reagan came to power and finished the destruction of the post-world War II order, setting the West on a new path. This process had been ongoing since 1968, but the form of the new consensus was not clear until Reagan’s victory: financialization, crushing workers, destroying the middle class, asset bubbles and so on.

In 1978 Deng came to power in China and instituted reforms, especially market ones. .........

.......... Reagan went after unions hard, Thatcher broke the miner’s union, the most powerful in Britain. The Federal Reserve started a long term policy of raising interest rates every time wages rose faster than inflation, meaning that over a period of decades wages rose less than inflation, and thus were reduced in real terms. The BLS moved towards understating inflation systematically, to undercut things like pensions with cost of live adjustments and to help “boil the frog”. Every change in how inflation was measured, for decades, which I am aware of, reduced the measured inflation rate. That doesn’t happen randomly or if your goal is the accurate measure of inflation. ...........

The Gods often grant want we desire, if we’re willing to work for it. American elites got their wish. So did the Chinese.

Welcome to the Chinese century.




Book Fare:

Lessons on Attention and Thought

........................ What Bradbury feared most was not machines, but systems that relieved people of the burden of thought. He understood systems as devices for efficiency that surreptitiously trained obedience. When decisions are automated, routinized, or deferred to procedure, the individual is spared the discomfort of judgment. That, for Bradbury, was the real danger. A society can survive powerful tools. It cannot survive the widespread habit of not thinking.



Other [Johnstone] Fare:









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