This is the most important article I’ve written so far this year, even more important than the one I wrote last month that received more than 330,000 reads on ZeroHedge. While that article was important for exposing the reasons behind the growing divergences between spot prices and real physical prices of precious metals, this article will divulge what I ultimately believe is the primary reason behind the extended global pandemic lockdowns, which is much more important to understand to properly prepare for the rest of your financial life. However, whether or not you choose to read it and connect the dots for how it will affect your life is entirely up to you.
A Segmented Strategy Would Still Be the Best
Last month, I speculated about State leaders’ unilateral enforcement of global blanket pandemic lockdowns as being much more tied to the protection of the material excesses of the rich than a concern about the health of all people on planet Earth. For those of you that stick with me to the end of this podcast, I guarantee you that I will present to you a theory that will be completely new to you that will make the most sense of anything you have heard thus far. The unnecessary absurdity and length of lockdown measures made me dive even deeper into connecting more dots than I had done so previously and I believe now that beyond what I’ve already stated in skwealthacademy podcasts #85 and #86, that I finally connected all the dots that explained not just the stupidity of unnecessary blanket lockdowns that literally ruined millions of peoples’ financial lives, but that also explained the cruel, mean-spirited immorality of such decisions as well that were entirely based upon unknowns. For example, I live in Asia and though international borders are still closed from outsiders at the moment, I was caught in a city in which masks are not even required anymore. I have returned to the gym and worked out in close proximity to many others and no one has died in this city even though everyone has returned to business as usual. Though the ignorant may call me ignorant for doing so, that is because the ignorant have no understanding of how viral transmission occurs so they are easily fooled by State leaders with zero scientific background that spread specious non-factual information as facts. I have stated that even though I have no fear for my own health based upon my research that I would still exercise precaution when around the vulnerable population. And just because there are those of us that completely disagree with the State strategy of global pandemic lockdowns, this does not mean we do not believe that the threat of the virus is not real and serious for elderly, obese and immunocompromised people. The fact that there are large groups of people that do not understand that these two beliefs are not mutually exclusive simply points to the death of critical thinking skills in society.
It was completely unnecessary for mothers to tell their sons they no longer want to see them for fear of contracting the virus, as I have seen posted in videos this week. If their sons merely took precautions like washing their hands thoroughly upon entering their mother’s home and wearing a medical mask, the risk they would present to their mother would be very low. I worked in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) with premature babies on the fence between life and death for years and witnessed less precautions being taken in the NICU between nurses and the babies than between parents and their sons and daughters over the viral pandemic, due to the immense fear that State leaders have spread far and wide. The far better strategy is I’ve stated numerous times is to not treat the entire world as if we all have SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficiency) syndrome and to lock all of us down unnecessarily, but to take a segmented strategy that would have very little impact on the majority of the working population, while applying a stay at home strategy to the vulnerable to protect them. If one teenage boy that had SCID syndrome moved into your city, would you be okay with the mayor requiring every single person in the city to wear a hermetically sealed HazMat suit just to protect the boy and disrupting the lives of 10 million people or would you conclude the far better strategy would be a segmented one in which the teenage boy with SCID would have to live under quarantine rules for his own protection while the rest of the city’s citizens could go about their lives under normal conditions? Sweden has completely bucked the trend of global pandemic lockdowns and basically changed virtually nothing about how they proceed with daily life throughout this pandemic and have reported a lower mortality rate than America (though again, that statistic needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as we have no idea of what true mortality rates are in any nation from the virus as data gathering methodologies are horrendous, leading to unreliable and non-robust data about infections and deaths). In addition, Sweden did not even implement my suggested segmented strategy that would have allowed their country to still largely function in a little changed fashion pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic, but would have likely significantly cut down on deaths. In fact, if a second wave of greater infections manifests, as has been discussed ad nauseum on mass media outlets already as the rationalization for these extended global pandemic lockdowns, a segmented strategy to deal with a second, third, fourth or one hundredth wave would still be the most intelligent strategy.
However, because no State leader enforced an easily applicable, science-based, effective segmented strategy, similar to the one I proposed, that would have had little negative economic impact upon people’s financial livelihoods, the draconian decisions enforced worldwide that have deliberately taken millions of people to the brink of starvation prompted me to revisit this topic and dig deeper. As I explored previously unexplored connections, I discovered further greater possibilities for the real reasons behind the global pandemic lockdowns than those I already presented in podcasts #85 and #86. In addition, If you can prove that anything I explained in my segmented strategy podcast was 100% false with the actual presentation of documented facts produced by a robust data gathering methodology, then I would be happy to read your responses of why my suggestions for a segmented strategy would be ineffective.
Politicians Command ‘Lockdown For You, But Not for Me’
Regarding the dozens of governors, mayors and legislators that have threatened anyone with breaking the home lockdown measures that disobeyed their own orders with impunity around the world, it is likely that these politicians and legislators are just narcissistic tyrants that extract great joy from reveling in schadenfreude and from having the ability to take advantage of an artificially created crisis to mandate orders that allow them to gleefully wallow in this concept. Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer urged all Scotland citizens on 23 March: “We have the virus in Scotland and this is no longer a rehearsal for something that might have to happen. [New measures] can restrict the spread but only if people comply with each and every one of these measures”. After urging everyone to avoid all non-essential travel at all costs, Ms. Calderwood promptly disregarded her own lockdown measures and traveled to a weekend getaway 40 miles away from her home, where she was photographed by neighbors exercising enormous hypocrisy of mandating rules for all of Scotland to obey except for herself. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, after ominously threatening to arrest any Chicagoan that left his or her home during her proclaimed lockdown measures and fining them $500 for doing so, disregarded her own mandate and was photographed getting a haircut at a public salon, which she deemed essential for herself, but non-essential for every other person living in Chicago. I doubt she implored Chicago police to arrest her and throw her in jail for violating orders as she has ordered the Chicago police to do for every other person living in Chicago. In the Philippines, with his usual bluster, President Rodrigo Duterte warned of executing any quarantine violaters by stating, “Instead of causing trouble, I’ll send you to the grave,” after which Filipino Senator Koko Pimentol was photographed visiting a hospital even after he exhibited virus symptoms and disregarded the President’s orders. Did Duterte arrest and execute the Senator for violating his orders as he promised? Of course, that was a rhetorical question as we already know the answer to that question. All throughout the world, politicians at all levels have been very clear that there are separate laws for themselves and laws for everyone else in response to this pandemic. In addition, by exhibiting complete disregard for their own orders, orders that they have explicitly stated as necessary to protect lives, they have revealed their disbelief in the necessity of their own mandates. Do you really believe that they would risk their own lives if they truly believed that the threat to their own lives was severe?
Connecting the Remaining Unconnected Dots: Saving the Ponzi Scheme Global Banking and Financial System
After pondering this issue more deeply, I now believe that the global blanket lockdown measures were designed for the primary reason of warding off collapse of the extremely fragile global banking system, much as the deployment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Term Auction Facilities (TAF), and Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) deployed in 2008 accomplished. If you’re wondering why an apocalyptic level of economic destruction was necessary to achieve this goal, I am going to explain this important part of their equation. By deliberately creating as much economic destruction as possible worldwide, TPTB completely removed the option that Central Bankers possessed of significantly raising interest rates for at least two years, if not longer, which coincidentally just happens to match the time frame of near zero interest rates necessary to protect the fragility of the global banking system. Why was it so important to strip Central Bankers of this option? Continue reading, and I will explain. I am convinced now that enforcement of unnecessarily long and unnecessary one-size-fits-all global pandemic lockdowns was part of an overall plan to destroy as many people’s financial lives as completely as possible, as this was the best possible plan on behalf of TPTB to prevent the Ponzi-scheme global banking system from collapsing.
Many of you that have followed me for years know that I stated way back in 2012 that Central Bankers wanted to collapse fiat currencies to their intrinsic value of worthlessness to enable them to introduce the Trojan Horse of 100% digital currencies and ban the usage of all cash and coins in the world that would eventually grant them 100% control over us monetarily. However, thought their plan is to collapse fiat currencies, though this may sound like an oxymoron at first take, they do not want the global banking and financial system to collapse alongside with their planned collapse of currencies. I warned of the global labor implosion that has arrived on 22 April in my article, “Beware the Coming Implosion of Global Education, Finance and Labor”, though I did not foresee State leaders implementing global lockdown measures in such an utterly inhumane and cruel manner that would usher in a global implosion of labor so quickly at that time. In fact, I also should have included the implosion of the real estate market in that article as well. And due to those consequences and my search to understand the real purpose of the global pandemic lockdown, this article was born. I should have also included the implosion of housing in that article as well.
Given the collapse of income for Airbnb renters ushered in by the pandemic, this will usher in the realization that those that made a living off of passive rental income from Airbnb rentals were largely responsible for unaffordable rising real estate prices in many neighborhoods around the world. According to market research firm AirDNA, though a third of Airbnb’s US hosts only owned one property, another third owned between two and twenty-four properties, while the final third of all Airbnb hosts incredulously owned more than twenty-four properties. Furthermore, companies like Sonder Corporation and Lyric Hospitality Inc., which managed properties for Airbnb hosts that owned twenty-five or more properties, have noted that with the collapse in Airbnb rentals ushered in by global pandemic lockdown measures, many overleveraged Airbnb owners are now swimming in massive debt with no ability to pay the mortgages on their properties with their income stream completely dried up. Inevitably, the collapse in real estate prices built on overinflated prices encouraged by Airbnb hosts will collapse property taxes as well. And as school budgets in America are derived from property taxes, expect already low quality education in the public school system to further drop in future years.
Collapsing Fiat Currencies While Saving the Rigged Global Financial System
But I have digressed a little but, so allow me to explain why a desired collapse of the fiat currency system and a desired perpetuation of the global banking and financial system are not goals that are in conflict with one another. Fiat currencies are just an idea, though a very unsound, immoral and terrible idea for what should serve as money in an exchange for goods and services. To prove my point that these currencies have an intrinsic value of zero, were I to print the exact same pieces of currencies whether currencies of the Americas , Europe or Asia, with the exact same colors, pictures of dead Presidents, Queens and Kings on them, on the exact same parchment or plastic, but deliberately omitted several important items like the numbers that told you how much the paper was worth, and important key phrases like “legal tender” and told you that no one would ever accept these pieces of parchment or plastic as money because I also would print them with the large bold word “counterfeit”, would you want them, even if I were offering you a million pieces of them for free? Of course not, because you know that you could not use them in an exchange for goods and services. However, as I stated, these pieces of parchment, fabric and plastic were of the exact same origin of currencies in widespread use and had the exact same pictures on them as currencies you could use, but with just with a few changes in the picture. Why should those pieces of currency suddenly be worthless if the currencies actually had any intrinsic value? But what if were to offer you a million blank rounds of physical silver and gold that were simply missing the same pictures and engraving that are present on nationally minted coins? Would you take them? Unless you are a complete idiot, of course you would.
Furthermore, the global financial and banking system is much more than a platform of fiat currencies. It consists of platforms that establish the prices for stocks, bonds and commodity markets, including stock exchanges, commodity warehouses and futures markets. It consists of technologies that determine prices of capital assets like networking technologies, fiber optics, Gigabit Ethernet technologies, low latency network servers, FPGA accelerated hardware, and more. And because these technologies give unfair advantages to those utilizing them to front run (aka steal) from other market participants that are ignorant about how such technologies are utilized against them, the Central Bankers do not want the illusions they invested hundreds of years building to crumble and for the world to realize that the Wizard is really not an all-powerful being but just a cowardly little parasite that is manipulating billions of others for riches. So this is why Central Bankers will do anything they can in their power to save this illusion from crumbling and from the curtain being drawn back to reveal the cowardly little Wizard, as a collapse of the global financial and banking system would reveal.
In my article titled “The Biggest Risk in the Global Financial System that No One is Discussing”, published on 3 April 2020, I discussed how no one in the world of mass media journalism had discussed the enormous building danger of the Over the Counter (OTC) derivatives markets in recent months, despite its growth from an absurdly bloated state in 2008 to an obscenely bloated state by 2020. In that article, I explained, by providing simple analysis of the OTC derivatives market, why it was impossible for US Central Bankers to raise interest rates, and why my understanding of this risk led me to call out the absurdity of comments from bankers like Karen Gillmore of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who stated that she anticipated two interest rate hikes that would raise the Fed Funds interest rate to 3.25% at some point in 2019. While employees of the US Central Bank were claiming that the Chairman would raise interest rates, I pointed out right here on my news site the absurdity of those predictions and predicted the exact opposite outcome of US Central Banker cuts of the Fed Funds rate all the way back to zero, which of course, was precisely what happened. In the aforementioned article, I explained the following:
“As long as everything goes to plan, the risk of the global derivatives market remains at its market value. But as a heart surgeon once told me, surgery is simple ‘as long as everything goes to plan.’ It’s when things don’t go according to plan, he said, that surgery becomes complex and technical. The global financial market is exactly the same. If platforms of global financial markets experience operational glitches and everything does not go “according to plan”, then the risk that global financial derivative markets can wreak havoc at amounts much greater than their market values, and this havoc can escalate at an exponential rate, much like a high R0 rate of an infectious disease.”
Everyone Missed the REAL Reason for the US Central Banker March Emergency Interest Rate Cut
If you believe that the first five months of 2020 have gone exactly as Central Bankers have planned, then you may as well stop reading at this point, because nothing of which I discuss in the remainder of this article will have any validity in your opinion. In Part 2 of this article, I connected the dots of the points I made in Part 1 even further. Though I reserved Part 2 of that series as exclusive content for my skwealthacademy patrons, let me explain how I have now connected the dots of the global wide State leader coordinated blanket global pandemic lockdown and destruction of the economy to the fragility of the global financial markets. In mid-March of this year, the USD index spiked to 103.81 and this event brought the OTC forex and interest rate derivatives markets to the brink of disaster, with trillions of derivative products betting on sustained USD weakness. This happened, despite an emergency interest rate cut executed by US Central Bankers to zero earlier that month. Imagine how high the USD index would have spiked in the absence of that emergency rate cut, which was the reason US Central Bankers could not wait until their regular date to cut interest rates later that month. Most people completely missed the real reason for the emergency interest rate cut to zero and though it was completely about reviving a crashing US stock market and that was the primary decision for the emergency rate cut. On the surface, this appeared to be true, but as I’ve stated dozens of times, stop looking for the truth at the surface, and you will never arrive at the truth. The triggering of collapse of OTC interest rate and forex derivative markets would have dwarfed the negative effects of even a further 30% collapse of the US stock market. (If you want to read my full explanation of why a collapse of the OTC forex and interest rate derivatives markets would have completely imploded the global financial markets and how close this situation came to actually happening this past March, and you are an skwealthacademy patron, just click here to read that article.)
In conducting an internet search for this possibility that I disclosed to my patrons last month, it comes as no surprise that an internet search returned zero articles that discussed this possibility, which meant that zero journalists in the mass media were aware of this event. However, the mid-March ramping of the US dollar index posed a serious problem to those trying to prevent certain sectors of the massive OTC derivatives market from blowing up, and the mid-March strength of the US dollar index likely triggered a warning of the highest national security level to all Central Bankers that they must fix this problem immediately. So for all US dollar holders that foolishly believe the US dollar will retain its purchasing power over time, the global system is set up in a way that literally makes that pipedream an impossible one to materialize. Furthermore, a strengthening dollar does not only involve decisions of US Central Bankers but is also reliant on decisions of bankers that own the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of Canada, as the dollar index is based on relative, not absolute strength. So whenever these other bankers cut interest rates for their domestic currencies and the US Central Bankers did not, the USD went soaring, even though it was definitely not a strong currency as perpetually misreported by the financial puppets that work for financial news programs.
Consequently, cut the interest rates to zero, and the only way that the USD can strengthen is if other Banks cut interest rates into negative territory or further into negative territory. So by destroying the world economy through globally enforced, one-size-fits-all global pandemic lockdowns, the first problem of a rising dollar, relative to other global currencies, was solved. Problem number two was the necessity for keeping interest rates at zero for the next few years to prevent the nuclear implosion of the OTC derivatives market that would be difficult to achieve were the US economy to improve. So how did TPTB solve this problem? They destroyed the entire US economy through unnecessary blanket applied lockdown measures to ensure all businesses, small, medium and large, were harmed to the greatest extent possible, and caused nearly 50 million people to lose their jobs in just six weeks during the lockdown as unemployment rates soared to rates higher than they were during the Great Depression. Does anyone besides myself find it suspicious that the US government and the Bureau of Labor Statistics have reported a fake, Alice in Wonderland unemployment rate to us for our entire lives that often underestimated real unemployment by 4 to 5 times, but since the viral pandemic started, all of a sudden, have found in their heart to finally be somewhat aboveboard in the reporting of this statistic and telling us that it is a lie? For example, consider this article in which US Central Banker and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, James Bullard, stated that 30% unemployment in the US wasn’t out of the question and that the May jobs data report likely underestimated the true devastation due to the timing of the collected data. During the 12 years between 2008 and 2020, how many times did you hear a US Central Banker ever state that the US jobs data was not legitimate and unrealistically portraying the jobs situation in America. I can recall zero. So why the change of heart now? In my opinion, it is due to the premise I’ve presented in this article that is the real reason for the enforcement of a global pandemic lockdown.
This is where I’ve connected dots I had not yet connected in my other previous articles about this same topic. In one of my previous articles, I postulated that the real end game for the global pandemic lockdowns was to instill learned helplessness among the entire global population. While I still believe that this was an important goal, I now realize that it was not the end game, but more like a secondary goal. The primary goal of the global pandemic lockdown was to inflict as much economic damage as possible to strip away any possibility that Central Bankers would face any pressure to raise interest rates that might cause not only the massive hundreds of trillions of notional amounts of OTC interest rate derivatives to implode, but also the (now likely) hundreds of trillions of notional amount of OTC forex derivatives to implode, either event of which could bring down the entire house of cards were it to happen (based on figures pulled from the latest data provided by the BIS). As I have already stated, rising interest rates would cause these OTC derivative markets to implode and create a domino effect upon the global banking system that would pull back the curtain on the Wizards of Central Banking and reveal that the system under which all of us have been living for our entire lives is a complete fraud? So in order to kill this option, the best way to accomplish the elimination of this possibility was to destroy the economic livelihood of as many global citizens as possible by ordering billions to stay at home under what amounted to essentially the enforcement of martial law as an irrational response to the true threat of this pandemic.
Will You Be a Lion or a Sheep?
This is why I stated in this skwealthacademy podcast that the time to decide if we are lions and will exercise our voices and our rights to resist unjust orders is now, because as lions, we will win and continue to progress. However, if we act as sheep, not only will we sentence ourselves to lives of slavery, but we will be sentencing the next generation to lives of slavery as well, so if you have children, good luck to your children having any semblance of a life that is equal to yours in terms of quality of living standards. And in that podcast, when I spoke of the urgency to exercise our voices, I do not mean to exercise our voices in ignorance, as so many people have done during this global pandemic lockdown, doing the State’s dirty work for them, akin to German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte’s printing of CIA propaganda in German newspapers as fact. If you are a lion, you must be a lion on the side of light, power and justice. Far too many people during the global pandemic lockdowns, fancied themselves as lions while lobbying on behalf of State tyranny against unjust lockdowns that were enforced on the basis of zero facts and zero provided knowns regarding numbers of infections and consequent deaths in the segment of the world population that consisted of healthy, working age people with no serious pre-existing medical conditions.
It is with great irony that the counterintelligence program executed against us has produced millions of people around the world that purport to be of high intellect and believe that they are forwarding truth and saving millions, when the exact opposite is reality – they are among the most emasculated lions on planet Earth – people that believe they are acting as lions but are truly acting as vessels for State tyranny and are therefore sheep (i.e. Baratunde Thurston’s “activism” against people violating lockdown orders in an attempt to feed their families and earn a living. And before any of Baratunde’s fanboys and fangirls get emotionally heated over this comment, I levy this charge only as it relates to his comments in that video and not to any of his other comments, as I cannot offer any opinions of Mr. Thurston outside of the comments in that specific video because I’m unfamiliar with his stances on other issues. However, he does receive a second strike from me for his ignorant hashtag #schoolsnotprisons on his snapback as schools no longer provide any serious critical thinking skill development anymore. An #educationnotprisons, not a #schoolnotprisons phrase would be far superior to encourage the development of more lions instead of more sheep).
A Race to the Bottom of the Abyss?
In any event, since I produce a lot of content (articles and podcasts) that sometimes take me a week to upload (as will likely be the case with this article by the time I’m finished writing and editing it), one proof that would give great credence to my theory that the global pandemic lockdowns were enforced to inflict as much economic harm to all of us as possible, as evil as that sounds, would be if Central Bankers had to keep cutting interest rates below zero. As US dollar and Euro “strength” that could implode the OTC forex and interest rate derivatives markets could still happen if interest rates on the major currencies that comprise the US dollar and Euro index happen, then Central Bankers would be forced to cut interest rates below zero or already negative interest rates into further negative interest rate territory. As I was typing this very sentence, I kid you not, a news bulletin flashed across my computer screen in which the very situation I was describing in this article that would support my theory materialized, almost as if a pre-crime AI division could read my thoughts. The news bulletin stated that the US Fed Funds rate was projected to turn into negative, below zero territory by the end of this year.
The reason that this event will become necessary, and I predict it will happen before the end of 2020, is because the European Central Banks and the Bank of Japan have already adopted negative interest rates, so to prevent the US dollar from strengthening against the two major components by which it is measured in the USD index, Fed Funds rates may have to necessarily retreat into negative territory as well. However, since there are trillions of Euro interest rate and forex derivatives that depend upon a weak Euro to avoid implosion, US Central Bankers cutting interest rates into negative territory would likely trigger European Central Bankers cutting their interest rates further into negative territory and a war into increasingly negative interest rates would be sparked. Of course, since I wrote the original draft of this article on 7 May, by the time I publish this a few days later on my news site and it is published a few days after that on other news sites, in the fast moving global world of finance, it is possible that winds may have already shifted away from negative interest rate cuts. But even if they have, I still believe the possibility for US interest rates drifting into negative territory is very real.
The important part of this equation, however, was that interest rates for the USD and Euro remained as low as possible until the vast majority of the hundreds of trillions of forex and interest rate derivatives denominated in these two currencies betting on the persistence of extremely low interest rates matures and expires. If you look at the maturity schedules of the OTC forex and interest rate contracts, the vast majority of them mature within one year, followed by maturity schedules of one to five years, so a first tier of risk will expire by June of 2020 with the next tier of risk expiring by June of 2024. The deeper the economic destruction inflicted by these global pandemic lockdowns, the more likely interest rates will stay near zero or lower for four more years, and thus prevent the nuclear implosion of these specific notional six hundred trillion OTC derivative markets. One can of course chalk the manifestation of one event that supports the perpetuation of another up to pure coincidence, or take the opposite side of this equation and believe that no massive economic events happen without planning and connect the dots as I have. Of course, negative interest rates are just another reason to keep stacking physical gold and physical silver, as negative interest rates will likely spark even more absurd divergences between the prices of paper and physical gold, silver and other precious metals that may someday relegate the realm of paper prices to its rightful place of total irrelevance.
Let me know if you agree with the premise I just presented and if you think I connected the dots between the economic destruction unleashed by State leaders upon their nations’ citizens all around the world and the capital gained by doing so in protecting the global banking and financial system Ponzi scheme. Or do you believe that economic destruction unleashed by State leaders worldwide upon their nations’ citizens was just an “unfortunate, unintended side effect of their lockdown measures?
Other recent skwealthacademy content:
A Quick Performance Review of skwealthacademy Investment Suggestions from January/ February
Recent skwealthacademy podcasts:
skwealthacademy podcast #90: Bankers Continue to Lose Their War Against Gold and Silver
skwealthacademy podcast #88: How We Can Mimic Aspects of Synesthesia to Improve Our Quality of Life
