Category Archives: Economics
Economic Storms are Gathering
Jordan Peterson interviews Peter Schiff
From the video description:
Peterson draws upon his extensive research and relatable real-life experiences to illustrate how to develop attainable goals for intimate relationships, meaningful friendships, and your career. Transform the chaotic potential of the future into actuality — with a vision.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and economist Peter Schiff discuss the gold standard, the corruption and impending failure of the fiat system in the wake of inflation, why politicians are pushing inflation to astronomical new levels, and why they’re lying about it.
Peter Schiff is an economist, financial broker, author, frequent guest on national news, and host of the podcast, “the Peter Schiff Show.” Starting in 2005 Schiff took notice of the red flags signaling that economic unrest was looming, and correctly predicted the 2008 housing crisis. His attempts to warn the general public across a multitude of news and radio networks earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom,” and ever since then he has been looked on as a source not only to watch, but heavily consider.
In 2006, Schiff predicted the financial crisis that eventually hit in 2008. At the time, other economists laughed at him. See this clip for example.
Decline of Christian faith during Covid
Some proof from the US
Chuck Baldwin is a conservative American Christian who has been heavily involved in politics in the past. He has recently written a piece commenting on a survey showing a sharp decline in faith among nominal Christians in his country: “America’s Pulpits Under Indictment: Let the Adjustments Begin!”
The findings of that survey confirm something I predicted based on what I learned from Gary North. When I saw how churches throughout the world, but particularly in the Western world, reacted to Covid, I predicted a further decline of faith. The clergy’s reaction was in principle identical to what they did, according to North, during the Plague or Black Death. Back then, they fled the towns for the countryside instead of ministering to the sick and dying. This cost the church a lot of credibility and paved the way for the Renaissance. The Renaissance was an intellectual movement that delved into the writings and philosophies of pre-Christian ancient Greece and Rome, looking for sources of truth other than the Bible. This ultimately led to thought centred on the human being instead of God.
The Renaissance in turn led to the enlightenment which first relegated God to a role of disinterested and distant Creator (so-called “Deism“), until essentially discarding God entirely. The “death of God” (Nietzsche) then led to the horrors of the French Revolution which, after having been defeated and staved off (just about) for a century (in which time the Industrial Revolution brought untold blessings to untold millions), led to the various horrific, ideologically driven mass slaughters by the millions in the 20th century, a phenomenon which essentially has to this day not yet abated.
During Covid, the clergy didn’t flee the towns. Instead, they locked the churches, implicitly declared their services “non-essential” and fled into cyberspace and Zoom services. They thus relinquished spiritual space, so to speak, which will now be populated by alternative beliefs of all sorts. They had been seeping in for some time, but this seepage is now becoming a torrent.
It will be interesting to watch how the churches recover from this blow.
Addendum: There is an interesting other recent survey with a somewhat contrary message: “Surprising Surge Of Young Americans Turn To Religion“.
Zero Hedge writes:
The story of religious trends in America has been one of increasing disaffiliation among younger generations. But a new study reveals an unexpected resurgence of faith among youngsters in a post-Covid era.
Some young adults had an awakening during Covid as the entire world crumbled around them. They were in search of a higher power to get through the government-forced lockdowns and controlled demolition of the economy, as well as watching loved ones and friends contract Covid-19 that some federal government agencies believe leaked from a Chinese lab.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new study commissioned by Springtide Research Institute found about one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds believe in a higher power, up from one-quarter in 2021. The findings were based on polling data from December.
Continue reading here.
However: Will the churches be able to offer these young people a long-term spiritual home?
Earth Day at 53
A reminder of the utterly preposterous predictions from the past
Net Zero Watch has issued a newsletter regarding “Earth Day”, the original one having been 22nd April 1970, which interestingly was the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday.
In 2015, Gary North had something to say about this non-event:
Forty-five years ago today, the Left celebrated their first Earth Day. Nothing has come of it. But they still celebrate it. They take their anniversaries seriously.
Nevertheless, in an editorial in TIME magazine, two New York professors urge “religious observance for the planet and its self-appointed watchkeepers under the headline: The Case For Making Earth Day a Religious Holiday.“, as Breitbart writes about this piece.
Here’s what Net Zero Watch writes this year:
Happy Earth Day!
Never trust the prophets of doom
22 April 2023
Earth Day at 53
None of the eco-doomsday predictions have come true
From predicting ecological collapse and the end of civilisation to warnings that the world is running out of oil, all environmental doomsday predictions of the first Earth Day in 1970 have turned out to be flat out wrong.
More than three decades before Greta Thunberg was born — the Swedish environmental activist on climate change — more than 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970.
We now look back at quotes from Earth Day, Then and Now,” by Ronald Bailey of the spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions from Earth Day 1970.
Considering the current doomsday predictions scaremonger activists are verbalising about global warming that will result in the demise of civilisation within the next decade, many of those unscientific 1970 predictions are being reincarnated on today’s social and news media outlets.
Many of the same are being regurgitated today, but the best prediction from the first earth day five decades ago, yes 50 years ago, was that the “the pending ice age as earth had been cooling since 1950 and that the temperature would be 11 degrees cooler by the year 2000”.
The 1970’s were a lousy decade. Embarrassing movies and dreadful music reflected the national doomsday mood following an unpopular war, endless political scandals, and a faltering economy.
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded.data.
Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:
1. “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
3. “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” — New York Times editorial
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich
6. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
7. “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
8. “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” — Life magazine
9. “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
10. “Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich
11. “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
12. “[One] theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” — Newsweek magazine
13. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt
History seems to repeat itself as there will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak. I guess we’ll need to critique the 2020 doomsday predictions in the year 2050 and see if they were any better than those from the first Earth Day 50 years ago.
Good short summary of Gary North’s theology
"which is anti-apocalyptic. It is in favor of slow, steady work in the fields, helping the poor, starting businesses, starting Christian schools, opposing foreign wars -- that sort of thing"
Article by Gary North of September 28, 2019:
Pope Francis was in Mozambique earlier this month. He was talking with Jesuit priests on September 5. What he said was published on September 26. This is my response.
The Pope was in Africa to promote his view of theology: liberation theology. It argues for wealth redistribution by the state.
Next came a question from Bendito Ngozzo, chaplain of the Santo Inácio Loyola High School: “Some Protestant sects use the promise of wealth and prosperity to make proselytes. The poor become fascinated and hope to become rich by adhering to these sects that use the name of the Gospel. That’s how they leave the Church. What recommendation can you give us so that our evangelization is not proselytism?”
What you say is very important. To start with, we must distinguish carefully between the different groups who are identified as “Protestants.” There are many with whom we can work very well, and who care about serious, open and positive ecumenism. But there are others who only try to proselytize and use a theological vision of prosperity. You were very specific in your question.
Two important articles in Civiltà Cattolica have been published in this regard. I recommend them to you. They were written by Father Spadaro and the Argentinean Presbyterian pastor, Marcelo Figueroa. The first article spoke of the “ecumenism of hatred.” The second was on the “theology of prosperity.”[3] Reading them you will see that there are sects that cannot really be defined as Christian. They preach Christ, yes, but their message is not Christian.
Specifically, he was talking about my father-in-law, but since I have always been the economist, he was talking about me. I followed his footnote. There were links to both articles in the footnote. I clicked on the first one. You can, too. Click here. We read the following:
Pastor Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) is the father of so-called “Christian reconstructionism” (or “dominionist theology”) that had a great influence on the theopolitical vision of Christian fundamentalism. This is the doctrine that feeds political organizations and networks such as the Council for National Policy and the thoughts of their exponents such as Steve Bannon, currently chief strategist at the White House and supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics.
“The first thing we have to do is give a voice to our Churches,” some say. The real meaning of this type of expression is the desire for some influence in the political and parliamentary sphere and in the juridical and educational areas so that public norms can be subjected to religious morals.
Rushdoony’s doctrine maintains a theocratic necessity: submit the state to the Bible with a logic that is no different from the one that inspires Islamic fundamentalism. At heart, the narrative of terror shapes the world-views of jihadists and the new crusaders and is imbibed from wells that are not too far apart. We must not forget that the theopolitics spread by Isis is based on the same cult of an apocalypse that needs to be brought about as soon as possible. So, it is not just accidental that George W. Bush was seen as a “great crusader” by Osama bin Laden.
Rusdoony and I started Christian Reconstruction in the late 1960’s. I was his recruit. Neither of us is remotely apocalyptic. We hold a view of eschatology called postmillennialism, which is anti-apocalyptic. It is in favor of slow, steady work in the fields, helping the poor, starting businesses, starting Christian schools, opposing foreign wars — that sort of thing. Our view has always been this: shrink the state.
The article is a hatchet job. The author clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But that didn’t stop the Pope from recommending the article. The author may not have known about me, but he knows about my position: Rushdoony’s. He has misrepresented this position.
Continue reading here.
US Presidential Candidate RFK jr. Denounces Lockdowns
Writes Tom Woods in his newsletter today:
Yesterday Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., officially announced his bid for president.
And his speech had some great bits in it.
Have I gone soft, and love politicians now?
Don’t worry about that.
What I do genuinely respect is a disruptor. Because if anything deserves to be disrupted, it’s the way what we laughingly call our national conversation is carried on.
RFK spent a chunk of time denouncing the lockdown regime — and of course it’s important to make minds explode by having a prominent Democrat do that.
He said:
Lockdown was the biggest shift in wealth in human history. And I blame President Trump for the lockdown…. President Trump gets blamed for a lot of things and he didn’t do and he gets blamed for some things that he did do. But the worst thing that he did to this country, to our civil rights, to our economy, to the middle class in this country, was the lockdown.
Now, President Trump, in fairness, let me just make this point. He’ll tell people, well, lockdown wasn’t my idea. My bureaucrats sold me on it. I was saying we shouldn’t do it. But that’s not a good enough excuse. He was the president of the United States. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here.
On May 2nd, 2020, 600 doctors wrote a signed a letter to President Trump begging him not to allow the lockdowns. Because at that time, all of the pandemic protocols anywhere in the world, the WHO, CDC, everywhere, the European Health Agency, all say you never do mass lockdowns. It causes much worse havoc and deaths and injuries. You do the standard protocol, which is you lock down the sick, you protect the vulnerable, and you let everybody else go back to work. Otherwise, you are going to wreak havoc.
I wrote about it on Instagram. I was writing every day. I was citing these economic studies that showed that with every point in unemployment, you get you get 37,000 excess deaths: from heart attack, suicides, plus imprisonment. And they dumped me from Instagram. They said that’s misinformation. But it was not. But people were saying it. People knew it. It wasn’t just me.
And we now know, of course, that it’s true. There’s now study after study and every comparison between the states and nations that locked down compared to those who didn’t…. The more you locked down, the worse you got. Worse COVID deaths. Worse excess deaths.
Sweden’s numbers came out this week. Sweden was the only country in Europe that didn’t lock down. It had the lowest excess deaths in Europe….
The the IMF and Harvard study by Larry Summers says the cost of the lockdown to the United States was $16 trillion. 16 trillion for nothing. $16 trillion. We shifted $4 trillion from the middle class in this country to the super rich….
These lockdowns were a war on the poor and they were a war on American children. According to a Brown University study, toddlers lost 22 IQ points. A third of children throughout their school careers are going to need remedial education. Children all over the country have missed their milestones.
What is CDC’s response? Here’s CDC’s response. The CDC five months ago revised its milestones so that now a child no longer is expected to walk at one year. They have it at 18 months. And a child now does not have to have 50 words at 24 months. It’s 30 months. So instead of fixing the problem, they are trying to cover it up….
As soon as they knew they could censor us they then went after the other part of the First Amendment, freedom of worship. They closed every church in this country, without any scientific citation, for a year….
They told us we had to social distance. They went after our property rights, the Fifth Amendment. They closed 3.3 million businesses with no due process, no just compensation.
He went on to talk about chronic disease and the strange conditions, including all the food allergies, that nobody his age remembers anyone having when they were growing up.
And then Ukraine: the authorities are lying about their intentions, he said, and the current policy is not in our interest.
There were some traditional Democratic talking points, too, particularly with regard to the environment. He spent a great deal of time on that.
I think the opinions of RFK, Jr., are fundamentally wrongheaded on a lot of things. But at this particular moment in history, the issues on which RFK is right are more critical than the ones on which he’s wrong, and they’re issues that no other prominent figure in the Democratic Party will raise.
He is saying things that need to be said, and I hope he keeps on doing it.
If you missed it, here is my interview with RFK, Jr., in which among other things I asked if he would describe Anthony Fauci as a sinister person.
(Hint: the answer wasn’t no.)
Link
The meaning of Trump’s indictment
It's the end of US politics
Writes Tom Luongo:
Civilization rests on the fantasy that there is a shared acceptance of the rules on which it operates. Americans are both immensely cynical and naïve about politics in this sense. We all know politicians are lying when their lips are moving but we also believe in the myth that the American system of justice will get the right answer often enough to keep the lights on.
Today that’s a very big assumption.
[…]
Davos is at war with humanity through undermining the institutions of civilization itself. They will not be stopped in their quest to secure global control over humanity. They have stoked an animus against Trump in the minds of people like Nancy Pelosi that can only end in fire and violence.
They know that the 2024 election is where all their dreams come together. They need another Davosian quisling in the White House to counter what’s happening with the Federal Reserve’s hawkish policy.
Davos has control over the political and monetary policies of Europe. It lost political control over the UK and got it back and will reverse Brexit. That’s brought the Bank of England back in line. However, it is very clear at this point they do not control the Fed.
So, they have political control until January 2025 in the US, but do not have monetary control over the Fed until 2026, when Powell’s second term is done. This is the window for US patriots to win this civil war before it even begins in earnest.
[…]
Davos knows this is it for them. 2024 in the US or bust. George Soros said as much at Munich this year. This is why Trump needs to be indicted even though the case is legally illiterate.
[…]
They [‘Davos’] will play this all the way out. They have no other choice if they want to win this war they’ve started to validate their view of themselves as gods among mere men.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
My answers to the six fundamental questions of ARC
The World Economic Forum is where the power-brokers negotiate the restructuring of the world
It has taken over this role from the United Nations, says Doug Casey
From a recent interview with Doug Casey (see his website here):
International Man: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has promoted 15-minute cities. Why are they interested in this topic?
Doug Casey: In the past, the United Nations provided the premier forum for governments to get together and palaver about how to restructure the world. But the UN—fortunately—is fading into obscurity. It’s now really no more than an expensive club for mid-level government officials to vacation in New York while playing big shot and connecting with other ambitious bureaucrats.
The World Economic Forum is for the real power people.
The WEF, however, needs a reason for existing. These people are into power and money. They naturally like to socialize with each other, scratching each other’s backs and seeing themselves as masters of the universe. Now that they’ve gotten to know each other at the WEF and have clearly taken the reigns over at least the Western world, they’re no longer there just to socialize. They have lots of big plans for the plebs.
The concept of the 15-minute city is one of the many prongs of attack that they’ve launched to essentially take over the world, as outrageous as that sounds.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
An exciting new project arising from Jordan Peterson's ideas, arguments and presentations
It’s called ARC, alluding to Noah’s Ark and the arc of a person’s life – and maybe even to the Ark of the Covenant.
Here is their launch announcement.
Quotes from that announcement:
“New International Alliance Announces Major Conference to Enhance Global Prosperity, Challenge Declinism and Revitalize our Understanding of Human Flourishing”
“The ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ (ARC) will provide an alternative to “the claim that decline is inevitable.””
“The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is being established as an international community with a vision for a better world where every citizen can prosper, contribute and flourish.”
The website is here. At the top, it says:
We are seeking answers to some of our day’s most fundamental questions, grounded in our core belief that everyone has intrinsic worth and something to contribute, and humanity has an extraordinary capacity for innovation and ingenuity.
Jordan Peterson presents the reason and ethos of this new organisation in a Youtube podcast. Here’s the main text of what he says in written form in full: My Vision for ARC.
Excerpts:
Despite all this good news, this undeniable progress, a shadow has emerged, an adversarial challenge to this state and process of expanding abundance; an emergent crisis of meaning and purpose. God is dead, or so the story goes, and the future is uncertain. Five centuries of ascendant reductionist Enlightenment rationality have revealed that this starkly objective world lacks all intrinsic meaning. A century and a half or more of corrosive cultural criticism has undermined our understanding of and faith in the traditions necessary to unite and guide us.
In the midst of this existential chaos, the false idol of apocalyptic ideology inevitably beckons.
We find ourselves, in consequence, inundated by a continual onslaught of ominous, demoralizing messages, most particularly in the form of environmental catastrophism; the insistence that we confront a severe and immediately pending emergency of biological destruction, causally associated with our degenerate social structures and their excess and destructive industrial production.
The narrative generating these messages, quasi-religious in its structure and intensity, paints a dismal existential picture: the individual is a rapacious, predatory, parasitical consumer; society—even the little society of the family—an oppressive, tyrannical despoiler; and nature, herself, a hapless, fragile, virginal victim.
[…]
A deep, worldwide, social, economic and environmental revolution is therefore allegedly at hand; those who dare suggest otherwise are blind, if not malevolent, and must be silenced.
The results of such theories? The consequences of such proclamations?
The increasing and increasingly compelled imposition of severe, involuntary limits to material abundance and growth; the resultant artificially-inflated prices, particularly for energy, that most truly punish the poor.
The fraying of our social fabric into a chaos of alienated polarization; simultaneously, and in predictable lockstep, the extension of reach and control over even the most private details of our lives by increasingly gigantic and centralized organizations, governmental and corporate alike.
The spread, particularly among the young, of a demoralizing and socially-divisive doubt and hopelessness.
[…]
We have therefore initiated the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a new movement of hopeful vision, local, national and international in its aim and scope, aimed at the collective, voluntary establishment of a maximally attractive route forward. The ARC will open itself up to widespread public membership, as rapidly and extensively as is practically manageable, at as low a cost as is possible and desirable, so that everyone interested can aid in voluntarily formulating this story and strategy, and to discuss how its implementation might be encouraged.
[…]
The sheer complexity of the world, and the genuine diversity of individual ability and preference means that distributed decision-making is a necessity, not a luxury: no elite technocracy is capable of knowing best and then determining how we should all move forward as individuals and communities.
It follows from this that policy requiring compulsion, let alone force, rather than the voluntary assent of the participants, is bad policy.
We offer for the contemplation of those potentially interested in our invitation six fundamental questions, the answers to which might form the basis for a vision that is voluntarily compelling, motivating, stabilizing and uniting.
- Vision and Story: What destiny might we envision and pursue, such that we are maximally fortified against anxiety and despair, motivated by faith and hope, and voluntarily united in our pursuit of a flourishing and abundant world?
- Responsible Citizenship: How might we encourage individuals to reflect and to act so that they adopt full voluntary responsibility for themselves, present and future, as well as their families and communities?
- Family and Social Fabric: How might we effectively conceptualize, value and reward the sacrificial, long-term, peaceful, child-centered intimate relationships upon which psychological integrity and social stability most fundamentally depend?
- Free Exchange and Good Governance: How can we continue to gain from the genius of unbridled human innovation and the productive reciprocity of voluntary production and free exchange, while protecting ourselves against the tendency of successful organizations to degenerate into a state of wilfully blind and narrowly self-serving authoritarianism?
- Energy and Resources: How do we ensure provision of the energy and other resources crucial to our shared security and opportunity in a manner that is inexpensive, reliable, safe, efficient and widely and universally accessible?
- Environmental Stewardship: How might we properly pursue the environmental stewardship that most truly serves the needs and wants of all individuals today, tomorrow and into the foreseeable future?
Concluding words
We at ARC do not believe that humanity is necessarily and inevitably teetering on the brink of apocalyptic disaster. We do not believe that we are beings primarily motivated by lust for power and desire to dominate. We do not regard ourselves or our fellow citizens as destructive forces, living in an alien relationship to the pristine and pure natural world.
We posit, instead, that men and women of faith and decisiveness, made in the image of God, can arrange their affairs with care and attention so that abundance and opportunity could be available for all.
Those who present a vision of inevitable catastrophe in the absence of severely enforced material privation are not wise seers of the inevitable future, but forlorn prisoners of their own limited, faithless imaginations. Those who scheme to lead using terror as a motivator and force as a cudgel reveal themselves by definition unfit for the job.
We hope to encourage the development of an alternative pathway uphill, out of both tyranny and the desert, stabilizing, unifying and compelling to men and women of sound judgement and free will.
Welcome aboard the ARC.
I intent to formulate my own answers to the above questions, which I will post on the ARC website survey page and on this blog.