Qbserving about the failed socialist Western colonial sanctions illegally imposed on Russia without United Nations authorization by the United States: “The West decided to destroy the world economy for the sake of teaching Russia a lesson”, says top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov then assessed: “Many are beginning to see the light and understand that, firstly, the sanctions backfired on them, and secondly, turned out to be not so painful and pushed us to build up our own potential”—all of which followed Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warning yesterday about the future of Russia-United States relations: “The level of diplomatic ties may be lowered; and the severance of diplomatic relations is also possible”.
Among those knowing the true and catastrophic state of current global affairs, this report notes, is President Donald Trump, who last evening during an interview with the Spanish television company Univision warned: “The whole world is a mess…We did some job and now everything is horrible…You’re going to end up in a world war…We have an incompetent leader of the United States…He can’t, he can’t walk off a stage…He can’t find the stairs…He can’t put two sentences together…He can’t talk…And this man is dealing with Putin and President Xi and all of these people that would probably not say they love us”–a warning understood by the Wall Street Journal, that quickly released its article “Bonds vs. Bond Funds: How Higher Rates Are Changing The Calculation”, wherein it explained: “A bond is effectively an investor lending money to the federal, state or local government, or a company…The borrower makes interest payments, usually in twice-yearly fixed amounts, until the time the issuer pays back the principal…Bond investors often share a sentiment credited to Mark Twain, that the return of their money is more important than the return on their money”.
Most certainly known to President Trump and the Wall Street Journal, along with investors who “share a sentiment that the return of their money is more important than the return on their money”, this report continues, are the facts contained in the just released economic article “‘Terrorist’ Economy: Washington Is Prepared To Create A New Financial Disaster For The Whole World”, wherein it warningly observed:
There is a mantra that has essentially become axiomatic: the US Treasury market is the deepest and most liquid in the world. And a corollary to that is: US Treasury bonds are ‘risk free’.
These once-taken-for-granted pillars of eternal truth are looking awfully shaky.
The tectonic plates of the US-led global financial system have been rustling ever more frequently in recent years but the quivers are now coming more frequently. At the heart of this increasingly brittle and dysfunctional system is the US Treasury market.
Everyone has noticed the sharp rise in yields in recent months. In early October, the US 10-years hit a yield of nearly 5%, the highest level in 16 years. This is, of course, entirely understandable: rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have pushed bond yields higher. But what we have been seeing is more than a manifestation of the vicissitudes of finicky markets.
As foreign buyers of US Treasuries dry up and the US government continues to run astronomical deficits at a time of high interest rates, the Treasury market is coming under increasing strain and showing ever more signs of dysfunction. The implications of this are hard to overstate.
Some form of outright yield curve control is coming and probably sooner rather than later. It is already creeping into the realm of mainstream speculation. But this time it will hardly resemble a temporary war-time policy; rather it will be a move of desperation far down the road toward outright dysfunction of a market at the very heart of the global financial system.
And this will spawn a banquet of consequences.
A breakdown in the functioning of the Treasury market will trigger the widespread epiphany that the United States has turned itself into something akin to the terrorist-rigged bus set to explode if it slows to below 50 mph in the 1994 Keanu Reeves film ‘Speed’.
Politically unable to backtrack on its entitlements and military commitments but unable to afford them, it will run into the fiscal wall of excessive interest expenses and insufficient demand for its debt.
The Fed has become uncannily adept at patching up markets and, to quote Luke Gromen, employing its standard technique of “extend and pretend… then inflate” and it may continue to find ever more ingenious ways to keep the tottering edifice upright for some time.
But the rot at the very heart of the global financial system is becoming increasingly apparent for those with the eyes to see it.
Most critically seeing “the rot at the very heart of the global financial system”, this report details, is the world’s largest bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), whom the vast majority of Americans don’t know is the largest seller of US Treasury Bonds used to finance the United States and its failed wars—yesterday the world was flooded with articles like “Market For U.S. Treasuries Disrupted By Ransomware Attack – On China” and “World’s Largest Bank Forced To Use USB Stick To Trade”–then it was reported: “ICBC has told market participants that its US subsidiary appears to be experiencing the issue and is working to resolve US Treasury transactions as soon as possible…There was speculation among market participants that the issues with ICBC were part of the catalyst behind a very poor auction result for Treasury’s sale Thursday of 30-year bondst”.
Exactly coinciding with the mysterious chaos surrounding the world’s largest bank ICBC trades in US Treasury Bonds, this report notes, it was grimly revealed in America: “Regional bank stocks tumbled this week amid a surge to new record highs for bank’s usage of The Fed’s emergency funding facility”, then gravely reported: “Moody’s Investors Service lowered its ratings outlook on the United States government to negative from stable, pointing to rising risks to the nation’s fiscal strength…Earlier this year Moody’s cut its outlook for the entire US banking sector to negative and put six banks on ‘downgrade’ watch”.
On Wednesday, this report continues, the leftist Axios news service reported: “President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are preparing to announce the resumption of military-to-military communications between the two countries when they meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit later this month, according to three people familiar with the matter”—but yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying announced: “At the invitation of US President Joe Biden, President Xi Jinping will be in San Francisco from November 14 to 17 for a China-US summit meeting and the 30th APEC Economic Leaders Meeting…The US has so far added over 1,300 Chinese entities and individuals to various sanctions lists, which are getting longer and longer…It has also kept in place illegal punitive tariffs on a large amount of Chinese products…While engaging with China on arms control, the US has not stopped its military operations along with allies in the vicinity of Chinese territories”.
As a China-America showdown looms this coming week, this report concludes, the Chinese leadership view of the United States was best expressed by President Jimmy Carter, who told a congregation at his regular Sunday school lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains-Georgia in 2019: “Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?…None…And we have stayed at war…The United States is the most warlike nation in the history of the world”–and nine months ago on 20 February 2023, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released its definitive document guiding its policy entitled “US Hegemony And Its Perils”, wherein it warningly observed:
Introduction
Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.
The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”
This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.
I. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Around
The United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights.
◆ Instances of U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs abound. In the name of “promoting democracy,” the United States practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “color revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries.
In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an “America for the Americans,” what it truly wanted was an “America for the United States.”
Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall perish.
The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of “color revolutions” — the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a “central role” in these “regime changes.” The United States also interfered in the internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called “People Power Revolutions.”
In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange, exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential election.
◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization “supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organization’s “bias” against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.
The United States has also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries’ activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest obstacle to realizing “a world free of chemical weapons.”
◆ The United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance system. It has been forcing an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” onto the Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.
◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the first “Summit for Democracy,” which drew criticism and opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host another “Summit for Democracy,” which remains unwelcome and will again find no support.
II. Military Hegemony — Wanton Use of Force
The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
According to the book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were “spared” because the United States did not find them on the map.
◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019,” the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.
Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.
◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless.
The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.
The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as “pure looting.”
In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.
The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.
III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation
After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including “approval by 85 percent majority,” and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting “seigniorage” from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy.
◆ The United States exploits the world’s wealth with the help of “seigniorage.” It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.
◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon’s secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”
◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America’s strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.
◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America’s strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called “three lost decades.”
◆ America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population. “The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.
How to Prepare for a Collapse
Protecting yourself from a U.S. economic collapse is difficult. A catastrophic failure can happen without warning. In most crises, people survive through their knowledge, wits, and by helping each other. Make sure you understand basic economic concepts so you can see warning signs of instability. One of the first signs is a stock market crash. If it’s bad enough, a market crash can cause a recession.
Second, keep as many assets as liquid as possible so that you can withdraw them within a week. In addition to your regular job, make sure you have skills that you’d need in a traditional economy, such as farming, cooking, or repair.
Keep yourself in top physical shape. Know basic survival skills, such as self-defense, foraging, hunting, and starting a fire. Practice now with camping trips. If you can, move near a wildlife preserve in a temperate climate. That way, if a collapse occurs, you can live off the land in a relatively unpopulated area.
As for cash, it may not be useful in a total economic collapse because its value might be decimated. Stockpiles of gold bullion may not help because they would be difficult to transport if you needed to move quickly. In a severe collapse, they may not be accepted as currency. But it would be good to have a stash of $20 bills and gold coins, just in case. During many crisis situations, these are commonly accepted as bribes.
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