Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[aeden]

https://www.salegion.org.uk/joe-slovo-signaller-ww2/

silver and platinum juice box shortages on que
he never got back to us on the dividend payment from that zone from the gold miners strike query

[Higgenbotham]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1651592526124417030

In the video, Jerome Powell says, yes, we print money.

Printing massive amounts of money is what I've been saying since 2011 is the main event that irreversibly tipped the world into a dark age. It wasn't just the US central bank that printed massive amounts of money; it was coordinated worldwide.

[Higgenbotham]

Verbatim of the remarks made by Mario Draghi
Speech by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bankat the Global Investment Conference in London
26 July 2012
(…)

I asked myself what sort of message I want to give to you; I wouldn’t use the word “sell”, but actually I think the best thing I could do, is to give you a candid assessment of how we view the euro situation from Frankfurt.

And the first thing that came to mind was something that people said many years ago and then stopped saying it: The euro is like a bumblebee. This is a mystery of nature because it shouldn’t fly but instead it does. So the euro was a bumblebee that flew very well for several years. And now – and I think people ask “how come?” – probably there was something in the atmosphere, in the air, that made the bumblebee fly. Now something must have changed in the air, and we know what after the financial crisis. The bumblebee would have to graduate to a real bee. And that’s what it’s doing.

The first message I would like to send, is that the euro is much, much stronger, the euro area is much, much stronger than people acknowledge today. Not only if you look over the last 10 years but also if you look at it now, you see that as far as inflation, employment, productivity, the euro area has done either like or better than US or Japan.

Then the comparison becomes even more dramatic when we come to deficit and debt. The euro area has much lower deficit, much lower debt than these two countries. And also not less important, it has a balanced current account, no deficits, but it also has a degree of social cohesion that you wouldn’t find either in the other two countries.

That is a very important ingredient for undertaking all the structural reforms that will actually graduate the bumblebee into a real bee.

The second point, the second message I would like to send today, is that progress has been extraordinary in the last six months. If you compare today the euro area member states with six months ago, you will see that the world is entirely different today, and for the better.

And this progress has taken different shapes. At national level, because of course, while I was saying, while I was glorifying the merits of the euro, you were thinking “but that’s an average!”, and “in fact countries diverge so much within the euro area, that averages are not representative any longer, when the variance is so big”.

But I would say that over the last six months, this average, well the variances tend to decrease and countries tend to converge much more than they have done in many years - both at national level, in countries like Portugal, Ireland and countries that are not in the programme, like Spain and Italy.

The progress in undertaking deficit control, structural reforms has been remarkable. And they will have to continue to do so. But the pace has been set and all the signals that we get is that they don’t relent, stop reforming themselves. It’s a complex process because for many years, very little was done – I will come to this in a moment.

But a lot of progress has been done at supranational level. That’s why I always say that the last summit was a real success. The last summit was a real success because for the first time in many years, all the leaders of the 27 countries of Europe, including UK etc., said that the only way out of this present crisis is to have more Europe, not less Europe.

A Europe that is founded on four building blocks: a fiscal union, a financial union, an economic union and a political union. These blocks, in two words – we can continue discussing this later – mean that much more of what is national sovereignty is going to be exercised at supranational level, that common fiscal rules will bind government actions on the fiscal side.

Then in the banking union or financial markets union, we will have one supervisor for the whole euro area. And to show that there is full determination to move ahead and these are not just empty words, the European Commission will present a proposal for the supervisor in early September. So in a month. And I think I can say that works are quite advanced in this direction.

So more Europe, but also the various firewalls have been given attention and now they are ready to work much better than in the past.

The second message is that there is more progress than it has been acknowledged.

But the third point I want to make is in a sense more political.

When people talk about the fragility of the euro and the increasing fragility of the euro, and perhaps the crisis of the euro, very often non-euro area member states or leaders, underestimate the amount of political capital that is being invested in the euro.

And so we view this, and I do not think we are unbiased observers, we think the euro is irreversible. And it’s not an empty word now, because I preceded saying exactly what actions have been made, are being made to make it irreversible.

But there is another message I want to tell you.

Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.

There are some short-term challenges, to say the least. The short-term challenges in our view relate mostly to the financial fragmentation that has taken place in the euro area. Investors retreated within their national boundaries. The interbank market is not functioning. It is only functioning very little within each country by the way, but it is certainly not functioning across countries.

And I think the key strategy point here is that if we want to get out of this crisis, we have to repair this financial fragmentation.

There are at least two dimensions to this. The interbank market is not functioning, because for any bank in the world the current liquidity regulations make - to lend to other banks or borrow from other banks - a money losing proposition. So the first reason is that regulation has to be recalibrated completely.

The second point is in a sense a collective action problem: because national supervisors, looking at the crisis, have asked their banks, the banks under their supervision, to withdraw their activities within national boundaries. And they ring fenced liquidity positions so liquidity can’t flow, even across the same holding group because the financial sector supervisors are saying “no”.

So even though each one of them may be right, collectively they have been wrong. And this situation will have to be overcome of course.

And then there is a risk aversion factor. Risk aversion has to do with counterparty risk. Now to the extent that I think my counterparty is going to default, I am not going to lend to this counterparty. But it can be because it is short of funding. And I think we took care of that with the two big LTROs where we injected half a trillion of net liquidity into the euro area banks. We took care of that.

Then you have the counterparty recess related to the perception that my counterparty can fail because of lack of capital. We can do little about that.

Then there’s another dimension to this that has to do with the premia that are being charged on sovereign states borrowings. These premia have to do, as I said, with default, with liquidity, but they also have to do more and more with convertibility, with the risk of convertibility. Now to the extent that these premia do not have to do with factors inherent to my counterparty - they come into our mandate. They come within our remit.

To the extent that the size of these sovereign premia hampers the functioning of the monetary policy transmission channel, they come within our mandate.

So we have to cope with this financial fragmentation addressing these issues.

I think I will stop here; I think my assessment was candid and frank enough.

Thank you.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/dat ... 26.en.html

[Higgenbotham]

What is 'LTRO' and how does it work?
We explain the European Central Bank (ECB)'s plan to bolster the region's banks, known as the long term refinancing operation (LTRO).

BY CAELAINN BARR

What is LTRO?

The long term refinancing operation (LTRO) is a cheap loan scheme for European banks that was announced by the European Central Bank (ECB) towards the end of 2011 in a bid to help ease the eurozone crisis.

https://citywire.com/funds-insider/news ... rk/a569758

[Higgenbotham]

This...

Verbatim of the remarks made by Mario Draghi
Speech by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bankat the Global Investment Conference in London
26 July 2012
(…)

And then there is a risk aversion factor. Risk aversion has to do with counterparty risk. Now to the extent that I think my counterparty is going to default, I am not going to lend to this counterparty. But it can be because it is short of funding. And I think we took care of that with the two big LTROs where we injected half a trillion of net liquidity into the euro area banks. We took care of that.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/dat ... 26.en.html

versus this...

I can't remember the exact quote, but in the 1930's the US Central Bank was quoted as saying to the effect that, "We did all we could to stop the deflation." Now I need to add to that, "We did all we could to stop the deflation within the moral precepts that confined activity at that time."

...I think is what we are talking about.

I commented on this right after the LTROs and other things were done in 2012. Bottom line is Atilla Demiray is also a watcher of things market related and I think he is right in what he said today (in his tweet reproduced above). I think going as far off the rails as we have worldwide since 2011 will be the difference between a really bad depression and a new dark age.

This is an example of "going as far off the rails as we have worldwide":

‘Appalling’: Unearthed Documents Reveal How Hospital Pushes Medical Transitions On Children

MEGAN BROCK AND LAUREL DUGGAN
CONTRIBUTOR
April 27, 2023

Seattle Children’s Hospital encourages medical professionals to offer swift biomedical interventions as the default treatment for young patients with gender identity issues, even when parents are skeptical, and largely avoids recommending mental health services to gender dysphoric youth, according to documents published by the hospital.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/27/seat ... ht51.K26ZQ

Stopping the money printing would have stopped this nonsense dead in its tracks.

[Guest]

Even Paris now looks like an African garbage dump.

Paris has been an African garbage dump for decades. Only now the rot has spread to every corner of a once great and beautiful city. Paris will never recover. Most of France is lost. I hope for secessionist movements (which there are many) and monarchy.

[aeden]

Steady dripping decay. Less than three percent increase of third world chattel and known sunk costs from trafficking humans
as they printed over 5 trillion.
Two books track the debauchery of the liberal hive mind in facts.
One covered after the war thirty percent of revenue was from vodka and the cover story from government accounting stated
printing money as the public will not mind. During the total financed collapse, the looting went from a prairie fire to a
uncontrolled crown fire as in a Forest. No recovery, even less who survived. Like the educated idiots counting the Angels on a pin then to
the current press it's a right to mutilate children with surgery and drugs.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=one-third+of+ ... dka&ia=web phase one
https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Bols ... 190557035X phase two
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... in2009.pdf

Phase three prairie fire is more than on its way here.
Nothing survives in the Forrest from a crown fire.
As it was said clearly the delusion was sent from Above for these time's they will believe lies.

Numerous clinicians are now diagnosing Alzheimer’s in teenagers.
A comment was made we have no idea what happened.
Such a World of young adults that eat crayons.
CNN pushed back on the Teachers Union today.

We can date here when we pivoted CNN to learn about non woke facts.
freddyv Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:00 pm get the first nod to what was coming.
We just added a date they got over their skis that cost them in the only area they are only concerned with anyways.

[Guest gtpm above]

With open borders and the breakdown of law and order in America and Europe, not mention the very real dangers of Critical Race Theory and White Fragility, none of this will come to pass. We have already entered a post-American era and are deep into a breakdown crisis. We are entering a new Dark Age. I agree with Higgenbotham in that regard. However, it is going to be a lot worse than Higgenbotham has predicated. We are heading for a near extinction level series of events. I doubt I'll see the other side. I don't think many of us will.

Thank you for this board, Mr. Xenakis, and thank you for this thread Mr. Higgenbotham and the "guests".

I would argue that large parts of America already are worse that what Higge has predicted.

Towns and cities along the US-Mexican border is already like Tijuana---->shockingly violent, unbelievably dirty, and practically bankrupt.

The rust belt cities are filled gutted buildings and rotting infrastructure and little tax base. White flight has gone supersonic. Crime goes completely unpunished in some cities and towns. Homeless attack people in broad daylight and our often released back onto the street the same day.

I could go on, but anyone living in an American city can see it with their own eyes.

[Guest]

More people are getting away with murder. Unsolved killings reach a record high

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/11727754 ... ecord-high

[Higgenbotham]

With open borders and the breakdown of law and order in America and Europe, not mention the very real dangers of Critical Race Theory and White Fragility, none of this will come to pass. We have already entered a post-American era and are deep into a breakdown crisis. We are entering a new Dark Age. I agree with Higgenbotham in that regard. However, it is going to be a lot worse than Higgenbotham has predicated. We are heading for a near extinction level series of events. I doubt I'll see the other side. I don't think many of us will.

Thank you for this board, Mr. Xenakis, and thank you for this thread Mr. Higgenbotham and the "guests".

I would argue that large parts of America already are worse that what Higge has predicted.

Towns and cities along the US-Mexican border is already like Tijuana---->shockingly violent, unbelievably dirty, and practically bankrupt.

The rust belt cities are filled gutted buildings and rotting infrastructure and little tax base. White flight has gone supersonic. Crime goes completely unpunished in some cities and towns. Homeless attack people in broad daylight and our often released back onto the street the same day.

I could go on, but anyone living in an American city can see it with their own eyes.

Some of that has been covered, but most of it was years ago. Anything that was discussed 5 or 10 years ago would be much worse now.

Here, I'll just requote some of what has been said about the parts of Texas that are along the US-Mexican border. I realize you are not just referring to the border of Mexico and Texas, but other states as well.

Coincidentally, yesterday I was talking to someone who said, "We won't be going to Mexico anymore." She described a recent trip to the border as "scary". Someone else was there who had wintered in Pharr in previous years. I asked him his opinion about being in that area now. Their basic message was that if you are within the US borders near that area, you are essentially in Mexico. About 7 years ago, someone who grew up in El Paso told me something similar regarding the change in her home town, where she said the signs went from mostly English to mostly Spanish from about 2000 to 2005. Not knowing those areas, when someone who does says these areas are now more like Mexico than the United States, I have to believe what they are telling me. Another thing I've been doing is looking at the election results county by county across the south of Texas, and there are strong demarcations. Many south Texas counties went about 75% for Obama, and that abruptly flips to about 75% Romney moving 1 or 2 counties north.

Redraw the border in the US to exclude the parts that are predominantly non-White and you have a collapsing population. Roughly 50% of babies born in the US are now non-White and that number rises by about 1% each year. El Paso, Texas for example is not really the United States any longer yet it is included in the population estimates. Many schools along the southern border of the US are comprised of 99% plus Mexican. If we had a strict border like Japan those schools would be empty just like the Japanese schools she visited. The Japanese are better off leaving them empty than to waste taxpayer money to fill them like we do. We are subsidizing another country and another culture.

As you state, the borders of Texas will be redrawn, but I believe they will give some of that territory back to Mexico or to whichever Mexican strongmen or gangs that want it.

It's true I didn't say that many of those areas along the border are filthy and crime-ridden.

"The population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover."

This hasn't happened yet, but if 14th Century timelines continue to hold, permanent population depletion will happen within 5 years and maybe 10 at the outside. It's already happened in the former Soviet Union.

Also, when I said "this hasn't happened yet" that is using official numbers and not subtracting out the parts of the population that have not assimilated into the main culture and by all indications are not going to. If those numbers are subtracted out, population depletion has in fact already occurred.