Western Finance: Feeding on the Chaos

https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/16/zelensky-signs-agreement-with-jp-morgan-on-ukraines-reconstruction/

Profits are on the rise. The railroad industry is booming and Norfolk Southern is buying back stocks to increase their value even as they throw crumbs at the people in East Palestine, Ohio.  Utility companies across the United States and the world are raising prices even amid what are in some cases record profits.

As Ukraine burns, the weapons industry literally can't keep up with the demand and the need for ammunition is so great these companies can all but write their own check with no-bid contracts.

And as recently reported, Zelenskiy has been meeting with representatives from the likes of JP Morgan and Blackrock – already looking ahead toward the rebuilding of the country. Whether Kyiv joins the EU or NATO is of secondary importance. The IMF and its affiliates will own this country. Its people will be enslaved to international finance for a generation or more to come. Years from now people will actually look back and long for the days of the war – or gasp, Soviet days.

Austerity will be the order of the day for the Ukrainian people. Some will cash in to be sure but the regular folks won't.

It seems as if the whole world is in a state of upheaval. France faces unrest as Macron, the president of the rich continues to chip away at the social safety net. There are strikes in the UK as Sunak and his faction seek to break the NHS and begin the process of privatisation.

In the US, the railroads, in collaboration with the trade unions and the White House crushed an attempt by workers to strike, even as the industry cuts safety corners and effectively 'nuked' a town (as one put it) in order to get the trains rolling again. The controlled incineration of chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio was dramatic but more importantly it was cheap. Problem solved and millions saved – and as far as the people of that little Rust Belt town (located in the dystopian industrial wasteland between Pittsburgh and Youngstown) – too bad for them. But apparently the lot of them are fools as they clamoured to see Trump as he came rolling into town. Instead of egging him for his deregulation regime which helped create the conditions for the derailment, they cheered his self-serving message of deceit. In some respects this was as tragic as the accident itself.

In other places we're seeing anger and violence as finance capital squeezes whole countries and has rendered their political mechanisms all but impotent and crippled. Lebanon remains in a state of chaos with the 2020 Beirut port explosion still looming large. Crushed by debt and turning to China for help, Pakistan faces massive hardship only exacerbated by the recent floods. Argentina is being choked by runaway inflation. In Iraq, the currency is collapsing, and in Sri Lanka utility costs are soaring and the people are suffering as the Colombo government attempts to comply with the austerity agenda required in order to qualify for a new package of IMF loans.

Everyone blames Russia and China for the world's woes. China's debt diplomacy is crippling the developing world or so it is claimed. Well, it's not just China by any means. Western finance has been at this game a lot longer than Beijing. And some of the problems and reverberations caused by supply chain disruptions are not solely the fault of China. The US is doing all it can to disrupt China's hand and some of the snarls are manufactured, not merely the result of Covid.

And as far as energy goes, everyone wants to blame Russia for the fuel and fertilizer problems that are generating grief across the globe. But remember, it's not Russia that's blocking the export of these items. The shortages are due to Western sanctions – imposed when Russia (backed into a corner) decided to strike back and prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO beachhead. The sanctions were imposed by the West, and its leadership seems more than happy to let people suffer and die in order to meet its geopolitical goals. They too are casualties in Washington's larger war strategy directed at both Moscow and Beijing.

Russia and China are certainly headed by evil men, but this cannot be stated with any kind of moral authority or integrity unless one understands the West's role in all of this – and its own evil machinations.

And while they attack China for its policies which lead to debt and control, the US Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates in an attempt to slow the US economy and ultimately force it into a recession – thus breaking the current worker-friendly jobs climate. Wages will come down or at least stabilize, though they will certainly be outpaced by the inflation rate – which is the goal.

But there's more to Fed policy than many seem willing to grasp. The interest rate hikes have led to a stronger dollar and this in face of weakened currencies abroad. As nations struggle to pay back debts to the Western Finance giants the IMF and World Bank, they now must do so with a dollar that is worth more, a dollar that must be purchased with their weakened currency. The dollar is but one of the currencies in the SDR framework alongside other currencies such as the Yen, Euro, and Pound – but if the dollar (or any of these currencies go up) it affects the payment. In other words their debts are in fact growing and increasing even as they attempt to service them.

All of this combined is producing not only great social tension but rage and with a hundred small fires burning – along with some big ones, the world seems poised for a new round of chaos and trouble. Any of these small fires can quickly spread or permutate into something else.

The architects of empire are watching all of this and trying to manage the situation. They want the frogs to boil in the water and so they keep increasing the heat but oh, so carefully. They don't want the frog to jump the pot – or for things to spiral out of control.

In the meantime there are select group of people in the investment class that are making a great deal of money and yet they do so by feeding on blood and tears and standing on the backs of a lot of suffering people.