How Covid lockdowns primed the current financial crisis

The Grey Zone | March 15, 2023

The lockdowns and the stimulus required to keep the economy alive helped drive inflation. Then the Fed jacked up interest rates. And all hell broke loose.

On Friday March 10th, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) died of Covid. Alright, it’s a little more complicated than that, but Covid lockdowns followed by massive government stimulus were a critical – and massively under-acknowledged – factor in propelling the bank’s demise.

At the heart of the crisis is the gigantic pile of low-interest debt that was issued during the height of the pandemic. While private-sector pandemic-era debt like corporate bonds also soared, US government debt like Treasury bonds piled up.

In a nutshell, during the pandemic the government issued enormous amounts of extremely low interest government debt — about $4.2 trillion of it. But now interest rates, including on government debt, are higher than they have been in 15 years and investors are dumping their old low-interest debt. As they dump, the resale price of the old debt goes down. The more it declines, the more investors want to dump. And thus, a panic is born.

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Midsize American banks ask FDIC to insure ALL deposits (to stop bank runs against smaller banks)

Image: Midsize American banks ask FDIC to insure ALL deposits (to stop bank runs against smaller banks)

(Natural News) Midsize banks in the US have reportedly requested that the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC) start insuring all bank deposits during the next two years in order to avoid further bank runs.

The move comes after a high-profile run on Silicon Valley Bank, which saw many large depositors move their money out of regional banks and into bigger national banks as they feared further collapses. Regional banks have been experiencing large outflows of uninsured deposits during the past few weeks.

The Silicon Valley Bank collapse was the second-biggest American bank failure on record and was followed a few days later by the third-biggest American bank failure when Signature Bank ended its operations.

Right now, the FDIC insures deposits of up to $250,000. However, some federal officials and lawmakers now believe that this figure is too low and should be revisited in light of what happened at Silicon Valley Bank, where a significant majority of depositors exceeded the cap.

The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America sent a letter to federal regulators stating that ensuring all deposits would, in their opinion, “immediately halt the exodus of deposits from smaller banks.”

They added: “Notwithstanding the overall health and safety of the banking industry, confidence has been eroded in all but the largest banks. Confidence in our banking system as a whole must be immediately restored.”

The letter was also sent to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve, and the Comptroller of the Currency.

The midsize banks believe that temporarily suspending the FDIC deposit insurance limit is imperative for helping smaller banks ensure they can navigate the banking crisis. The idea was also endorsed in a Twitter post by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said that it was a necessary move for stopping bank runs.

Brighteon.TV

The group suggested that the expanded insurance program could be covered by the banks themselves by raising the deposit insurance assessment on lenders who choose to take part in any increased coverage.

The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America has more than 110 members and includes banks that have assets of as much as $100 billion.

Treasury Secretary said regulators are only interested in protecting deposits at bigger banks

Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers that regulators are only interested in protecting uninsured deposits held at banks big enough to affect the financial system. This led to considerable concern among smaller banks.

The CEO of Independent Community Bankers Of America, Rebeca Romero Rainey, called out Yellen’s stance, saying it represents “a bailout for big banks that rewards mismanagement and risky behavior to the detriment of community banks and the communities they serve.”

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, an emergency rescue served to insure all of the bank’s deposits regardless of their size. After the run by depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, First Republic Bank received help in the form of $30 billion worth of deposits that were pooled together by a number of bigger lenders to help protect the banking industry as a whole.

While some believe that a sweeping deposit guarantee would stabilize the sector, others maintain that an overarching deposit guarantee might make banks feel more comfortable taking more risks with customers’ money, inadvertently encouraging or even rewarding irresponsible behavior by banks. This could potentially have the effect of spurring another banking collapse scenario like the Silicon Valley Bank one. It is a tradeoff officials will likely have in mind when deciding whether to scrap the limit or make other policy changes.

Sources for this article include:

CNBC.com

Edition.CNN.com

The climate cult is destroying international shipping … and global supply chains along with it

Image: The climate cult is destroying international shipping … and global supply chains along with it

(Natural News) The ratio of crude tanker capacity currently on order to crude tanker capacity currently in service has plummeted to an all-time low of just 2.7 percent, this due to pressures from the global warming crowd to “decarbonize” the shipping industry.

Because the writing is on the wall concerning the use of earth-based fuels like oil and gasoline – the climate change brigade wants these made obsolete – the owners of tankers that use such products are holding out on ordering new ships until it becomes clear the direction the “clean” energy industry is going to take.

“To decarbonize shipping, you either need an onboard carbon-capture system (which doesn’t exist yet) or to build new vessels that burn something other than fuel oil,” reported Greg Miller, writing for Freight Waves.

“The regulations on this new fuel haven’t been written yet. So, why would tanker owners in the business of making money accept the residual-value risk of ordering ships that could be prematurely obsolete after the rules are written? … The answer is: They haven’t and they won’t. There is now a historically low number of crude and product tankers on order.”

(Related: Check out our earlier coverage about the dismal state of the American food supply chain due to covid.)

Between climate hysteria and the residual fallout from covid, global shipping and supply chains are screeching to a halt

The situation is almost as severe on the product tanker side, the orderbook-to-fleet ratio of which has cratered to just 6.1 percent. And once again, it is because nobody wants to order new ships that rely on fuel technologies that are slated for tougher regulations.

Brighteon.TV

“We are now seeing what happens when you go several years without investing [in new capacity],” said Jefferies analyst Omar Nokta about the dire situation.

Crude and product tanker owners only just recently started making money again after several dismal years of covid-induced supply chain failures, with 2020 and 2021 being the two worst years for the industry in 30 years.

“There is a two- to three-year lag between when an order is placed and when a new tanker is delivered,” Miller further explained about how the industry typically works. “These assets last 20-25 years. Thus, a newbuild ordered today will likely be in service in 2050.”

“If the world is actually decarbonizing and shifting away from consumption of dirty fossil fuels, what are tankers ordered today going to carry in the latter years of their life spans?”

The answer, of course, is that they will potentially carry nothing, hence why nobody is placing any new orders. In essence, the global shipping industry appears to be screeching to a halt, both due to climate hysteria and covid hysteria, which together have decimated both the tanker industry and global supply chains at large.

According to Bob Burke, CEO of Ridgebury Tankers, the overall lack of tank orders has nothing to do with capital discipline, which does not even exist in a market like this.

“It’s just not in our own best interest to order expensive ships with uncertainty over propulsion systems,” he said.

“For a ship that will be delivered two and a half years from now, at historically high prices, with a capital drag until delivery and when you don’t know whether the propulsion system is going to last very long, it is really hard for a shipowner to go out and take a flier on something like that without a charter from an oil company.”

The only people currently placing orders for new tankers either have some kind of tax incentive to do so or they are receiving backing from a longer-term charter, “typically for a dual-fuel design,” added Maersk Tankers CEO Christian Ingerslev.

“Otherwise, there’s nothing being ordered.”

More related news can be found at GreenTyranny.news.

Sources for this article include:

FreightWaves.com

NaturalNews.com

Into the Shadow in the Valley of Death

First published in 1854, the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ was about the ‘glorious’ deaths of a British brigade of Light Horse in a famous charge against fixed, mostly ground works, fortifications manned by Russian Regular Calvary, as well as Cossack Mounted in a defense of a captured Russian seaport in the previous version of the Crimean War.

The Light Brigade of Cavalry were launched by ambiguous words from the commander of the battle into a confusing melee that did not have the General’s vantage point view, thus, as usual in War, the ambiguity of the orders issued left the commanders in the field attempting to differentiate between targets only specified as ‘enemy guns’.

A sad error that cost the lives of 38% of the force of men of the Light Brigade, as well as 71% of their horses.

‘Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.

R. Airey’.

Order which launched the Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

The British have history in Crimea. They have buried soldiers in a lot of countries including Ukraine. Crimea was to Britain, as Vietnam is to the USA. Lots of blooded history there.

It would be preferable that USA not join the Brits in having cemeteries scattered through the region.

We are riding into the Shadow of this Valley of Death. Anyone noticing?

Perhaps we can dig deep, think as adults, and learn from history. 2023 – 1854 = 169 years. Long enough for this to be playing out? Shall we get wise & put these elitist games aside while we tackle our real problems?

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

I

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

   Rode the six hundred.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

   All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

   Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

   Not the six hundred.

V

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

   Left of six hundred.

VI

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

   All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

   Noble six hundred!

The Fake ‘Food as Medicine’ Agenda

The Attack on Food Symposium + Solutions to Fight Back

  • The Attack on Food Symposium brought together experts, including me, to discuss the pressing topic of food security and provide solutions at the individual and societal levels

  • My presentation focused on the fake food agenda and synthetic foods, which are threatening human health and the environment

  • Fake food is predicted to become a $3 trillion market; consulting firm McKinsey & Company predicted that 60% of all materials in the economy could be produced this way, including fake meat, fake milk and fake fat

  • Be on the lookout for industry buzzwords like precision fermentation, a term the biotech industry is using to piggyback off the popularity of truly health-promoting natural fermentation

  • Fake, ultraprocessed foods give the globalists unprecedented power and control over human health; the symposium goes into detail on how farmers, individuals and society can fight back

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The food supply is under attack. Whether it be from technocrats waging a war against real food, regulations that threaten food sovereignty or the use of toxic chemicals, humans’ right to access unadulterated, healthy food is slipping away.

The Attack on Food Symposium, hosted by Dr. Meryl Nass and presented by Children’s Health Defense TV, brought together experts, including me, from a variety of disciplines to discuss the pressing topic of food security and provide solutions at the individual and societal levels. You can view the seven-hour event in its entirety above and my individual presentation below.

The Fake 'Food as Medicine' Agenda and Synthetic Foods

Beginning at 3:30 in the video above, my presentation — “The Fake ‘Food as Medicine’ Agenda & Synthetic Foods” — focused on attacks on food and agriculture. There’s an impending crisis coming with The Great Reset, and food is going to be a real issue — even more so than it is now.

The globalists behind The Great Reset have long had a monopoly on food with their patented genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The primary purpose of GMOs was to facilitate the use of the toxic herbicide glyphosate,

which Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presents in the next section of the symposium video. But to understand what’s coming, it’s important to understand the past.

The biotech industry used lobbying to ensure GMOs would be treated as substantially equivalent to real food, essentially bypassing the requirement to do safety testing before releasing them on the market. Their playbook is reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s tactics for a product that doesn’t harm you immediately but is detrimental gradually over time. An equally serious threat as GMOs has now emerged, however — synthetic food.

Fake food is predicted to become a $3 trillion market.

Sometimes referred to in industry jargon as “the bio revolution” or synbio (short for synthetic biology), consulting firm McKinsey & Company predicted that 60% of all materials in the economy could be produced this way, including fake meat, fake milk and fake fat. Their report noted:

“As much as 60 percent of the physical inputs to the global economy could, in principle, be produced biologically — about one-third of these inputs are biological materials (wood or animals bred for food) and the remaining two-thirds are nonbiological (plastics or fuels) but could potentially be produced or substituted using biology.”

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are the major players in the fake meat marketplace. The first fake fat, Cultured Oil, has also been released. In June 2020, Bill Gates also announced startup company BIOMILQ, which is using biotechnology to create synthetic lab-made human milk for babies. Using mammary epithelial cells placed in flasks with cell culture media, the cells grow and are placed in a bioreactor that the company says “recreates conditions similar to in the breast.”

Fake food companies want you to believe their products are natural because they’re made with components of plants, even though nothing like them exists in nature. Be on the lookout for their industry buzzwords like precision fermentation, a term the biotech industry is using to piggyback off the popularity of truly health-promoting natural fermentation.

Precision fermentation, however, is nothing like its natural counterpart. It’s a form of synthetic biology that’s been around for at least 20 years. It uses genetically engineered microorganisms, such as yeast and bacteria, that are fermented in brewery-style tanks under high-tech, pharmaceutical grade sterile conditions. This is because these cultures are highly susceptible to contamination which would ruin the entire batch.

And, contamination can happen easily, so billions of dollars have been poured into this technology, which is using biological pathways that have never existed in nature before.

They’ve obliterated the precautionary principle, as the long-term outcomes are completely unknown, to produce fake meats, fake fats and fake milk. But it’s all serving the underlying agenda, which is total control and world domination. There’s no easier way to achieve this than by taking control of the food supply.

These fake, ultraprocessed foods give the globalists unprecedented power and control over human health, and they’re using stealthy marketing techniques. I was approached by Zero Acre Farms about their Cultured Oil, which they’re promoting to restaurants as an inexpensive alternative to seed oils.

Many know I’m passionate about raising awareness of seed oils’ devastating health effects, as they contain about 75% linoleic acid and are contributing to rising rates of chronic disease. This new Cultured Oil contains less than 1% linoleic acid, so it sounds great — except it’s made using precision fermentation.

The term has even fooled many experts in the health industry, who believe it’s safe and natural. Instead, it’s another form of deception, changing the meaning of some of the most basic words in our vocabulary, like fermentation.

The industry wants people to believe that products produced with precision fermentation are no different than other fermented foods, like kimchi and yogurt. But what they fail to disclose is that the most often used organism in precision fermentation is the common bacteria E. coli. The E. coli is likely creating any number of non-targeted metabolites that have completely unknown environmental consequences.

The waste products created by natural fermentation are nonhazardous and actually edible and beneficial in many cases. It also is compostable and not a biohazard. In contrast, the biowaste from GE synthetic biology fermentation products can’t go into a landfill.

Because this has been going on for decades, the laws are already in place to allow these products to bypass any safety testing, as they’ve been labeled as biologically equivalent to real food. I recommend staying as far away from fake food as you can and focusing on foundational human nutrition. This is what will get us through The Great Reset.

Other speakers in the symposium included Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), who summed up the evidence that food from real farms is being replaced with fake food. From Haiti and Sri Lanka to Indonesia, Holland and Canada, “the story is the same.”

Corporate interests with global trade prerogatives collaborate with government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank, which offered debt relief in the form of grants or low-interest loans to countries collapsing economically during the pandemic, but with strings attached.

“They drive the family farmers off of their land and into the city,” Baden-Mayer said.

Benjamin Dobson, who spoke about the history of incursions on small farms, noted that independent farmers and people who grow herbal medicines are a threat to a centralized economic system.

Seneff shared how the use of chemicals like glyphosate is also threatening the future of food.

The amount of glyphosate used annually in the U.S. is equivalent to 1 pound for every man, woman and child, she said. It’s the most used herbicide on the planet.

While it’s common on GMOs, she pointed out that the highest residues are showing up in non-GMO foods such as wheat, oats, barley and rye, because it’s used as a desiccant, or drying agent, on these crops right before harvest. Glyphosate inhibits the shikimate pathway, which is involved in the synthesis of the essential aromatic amino acids phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan.

Seneff used Florida manatees as an example of glyphosate’s toxicity. The chemical is ubiquitous in the state’s waterways, particularly during the sugar cane harvest. Manatees have increased body burdens of glyphosate and have become sick, plus they’re starving because seagrass is dying off in the waterways’ disturbed ecosystems.

Session 2, which begins around 2:40 in the full-length video, offers solutions for farmers. Ronnie Cummins, OCA cofounder and director, noted that among the world’s small farmers, fewer than 1% are certified organic. However, there are 60 million small and medium farms that could become certified organic if it weren’t for all the regulatory hurdles in place.

“If you look at the amount of farmland and the amount of food that these people are producing, it’s substantial. The global food market is about $10 trillion, but it’s estimated that a good $1.5 trillion of that is being produced in an organic or nearly organic manner,” he says.

Since many organic farmers are able to find and flourish with local markets, this is one strategy to keep afloat.

Meanwhile, food sovereignty naturally leads to complete ecosystems that support human and planetary health, according to Mark Fulford, an independent farmer and farm consultant.

He advocates for independent food hubs, which cut out the middle man, and using strategies like reading the landscape, using fungal or bacterial composts and embracing bees and other pollinators.

You can take action on an individual level by building your own food security safety net. Starting a garden and learning some basic food production skills is essential and discussed in Session 3, at 4:10 in the full-length video.

Dr. John Day shares how to prepare a kitchen garden that’s as close to your kitchen as possible. He recommends choosing a spot that’s at least 400 square feet and 20 feet away from trees, because their roots will take the water from your garden. Southern exposure is ideal to get adequate light for your plants. “During hard times, and for food security, having your own vegetable garden and already knowing how to work it is really helpful.”

Beverly Johannson, another gardener, advocates for no-dig gardening, another strategy you can use to grow vegetables. When you till the land, it stimulates the earth to initiate repairs, which it does by increasing weed growth. Tilling also destroys vital microbes and fungal mycelium, which helps to mobilize nutrients in the soil. With a no-dig garden, you’ll experience fewer weeds, higher yields and healthier plants, with less watering.

She points out that storage is a key element of gardening, as you’ll want produce not only during the growing season but during the winter as well. Johannson has a root cellar where potatoes and other root vegetables are stored and another area for winter squash and onions, so she has access to fresh food year-round.

The final session deals with societal solutions to fight back against the war on food. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie highlighted the vulnerabilities in the U.S. food supply, which fell apart during the pandemic when farmers had to euthanize animals because they couldn’t get them processed.

Four meatpackers control 85% of the meat that’s processed in the U.S. One of them is owned by China, one by Brazil and the other two are multinational corporations. Food prices are going up while farmers are going broke. Massie introduced the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act, which would allow farmers to sell meat processed at smaller slaughtering facilities and allow states to set their own meat processing standards.

Because small slaughterhouses do not have an inspector on staff — a requirement that only large facilities can easily fulfill — they’re banned from selling their meat. The PRIME Act would lift this regulation without sacrificing safety, as random USDA inspections could still occur.

“If a farmer wants to sell pork, beef or lamb to a consumer, as long as that consumer and that farmer and that processor are all in the same state, they’re not crossing state lines, they keep the federal government out of that transaction,” he says.

He’s also introduced legislation to protect access to raw milk, which he calls fresh milk.

Ultimately, the answer to food safety and security lies in a decentralized food system that connects communities with farmers growing real food sustainably and distributing it locally.

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