Hi Desogames,
At least he tries, albeit a feeble attempt, but he tries. That’s much more than we can say from Rutte, our Prime Minister. And maybe it is a good thing given his popularity and credibility (i know quite some pro-trumpers who still are wary about some of his remarks). Now people really know that something is “rotten in Denmark”!
Well here’s the thing. When you’re talking Realpolitik and geopolitical games, you’re not working with things such as money for currency. Every country has tax payers every country has resources every country can drum up some wealth one way or another. Even dirt poor african countries have warlords living in abject wealth. Your Gold-standard currency are Options.
You can bet your ass the Saudi’s planned for this eventuality. Otherwise the arrests could not have immediately happened. There are political games within countries too, you can’t “just” throw your rivals in jail. Those rivals have followers who get upset too. Yes of course despots do despotic things, but this Mbs fellow doesn’t strike me as a fool. Otherwise he wouldln’t have gone on that Charm offensive last 2 years trying to get ARAMCO IPOd. He also had many projects planned to move away from the oil economy; it’s clear he sees some writing on the wall.
But he’s inexperienced and he’s up against Putin. Russia is extremely well prepared for this. They have No external debt. No treasuries (they sold everything a year or 2 ago, they have 0 bond market exposure). A sovereign wealth fund at 7% of GDP in pure cash from past oil revenues (in US terms that’d be $1,5 trillion in cash), complete isolation from the world economy thanks to US and EU sanctions that they’ve adjusted to, massive reserves in gold from the Russian central bank. Not to mention Putin’s superior domestic control over his populace. There was never a better time for a Russian No.
However. As i mentioned, options are the real currency here. Mbs was gunning for a continuation of the sweet spot he was in. After all as a critical part of the Petrodollar the Saudis have done very well for themselves. They would never move against this. That’s why he went into the meeting requesting deep cuts.
The moment that no longer was an option (because you can be sure Putin told him so in no uncertain terms) the options became either continue to support the US, go ahead with an OPEC production cut anyway, then hang Russia out to dry as the US accuses it of sabotage and sanctions it to hell and back. Or go against the US and follow Russia in a race to the bottom.
You gotta remember, the Saudis haven’t just stabbed the US in the back, they just stabbed the entirety of OPEC in the back. They’re not just trying to grab market share from the Russians, but from everybody. This really is a no holds barred fight. A straight up race to the bottom. This is capitalism at it’s finest. Actual real price discovery, not cartel fixing.
But don’t think for a moment anybody in the oil space isn’t looking directly at Shale. Shale’s producing such a massive amount of oil right now, to the point of making the US a net exporter, and this has hurt everybody’s bottom line. Nobody is happy with the massive subsidies that industry is getting. Not from the government - but from banks and private investors trying to take over the oil market then set the price they want.
That’s why “switching sides” was ever an option for the Saudis. Because if the US collapses anyway, they lose their protector anyway. They’re effectively on their own. They know Russia can bring down the US credit markets with this blow - it’s already happened. So their plan B is to grab as much market share as they can, so that when the dust settles after Shale collapses and prices go up again, they’re still the 1st people the Chinese come to, thanks to established supply lines (as well as a ravaged Iran).
The Virus wasn’t planned. I can assure you this simply because not a single actor on the entire planet stands to gain from it in any sort of significant way. The US was done for already before the virus - Idiot Fed policy made sure of that. Countries think in many years not weeks or months. Everybody was already expecting the collapse of the dollar. Just not before the elections. Why do you think everybody was hoping for another Trump presidency? You can’t have a better idiot driving this bus down into the abyss. The man doesn’t have a clue what to do in a real crisis. I would bailout the shale industry today to stop Russia in it’s tracks, while at the same doubting Trump will ever consider it simply because he doesn’t understand the implications.
Let me put it this way: You can throw together any team of professional players, and they will on the very first match, defeat a team of amateur players who’ve been together for a long time with better team play. How? Because once you get to a certain level, the right answer to a problem is always the same answer. Even if there is no communication possible, the difference between a professional and a amateur is that a pro just “knows what to do” because in that situation, it’s the most optimal thing to do. Wins or losses are then achieved by simple mistakes AKA not being able to do the optimal thing because well, you pressed the right button when you should’ve pressed the left one.
That’s why i say Mbs is no fool. He made the right call. I would’ve done the exact same thing. If the price drop is guarranteed, refocus your effort in being able to withstand it longer. He doesn’t need to outlast Russia, which is the strongest positioned. He just needs to outlast both the countries around him, and the US.
AKA I don’t need to outrun the bear, i just need to outrun you. Trading rule no.3: in a bear market, you get richer by losing less then the other guy. What do you think the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, and all the other countries in former OPEC are doing now? They must be absolutely panicking. Especially since i haven’t seen a single press release of any of em since all this happened.
He’s not working with the Russians. Or the Chinese. It’s all simple capitalism. If he’s the last man standing, the Chinese will come to him regardless of allegiance. Mbs’s inexperience will mean Saudi Arabia loses more then Russia, but far less then the Former-OPECs or the US. The reason as to why this is all happening now, rather then some grand conspiracy, is far easier to explain:
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
It’s not that many actors conspired to start a crisis. It’s that a crisis started because of course one does every so often anyway, and many actors simply see the planets aligned to make good use of it. The sanctions hit Russia hard. But it simply said “there’s always the next crisis”.
Mbs simply sees more options in the future without the US then with the US. Especially with 1. Trump being an idiot and 2. US politics being gridlocked in an election year anyway. Whatever the US will do about the Saudi betrayal, it won’t happen in 2020. And who knows what the situation in 2021 will be now.
Again. If i was the president of the US i’d immediately bail out the Shale industry out of national security concerns (nationalize it if i had to) and sanction the Saudis to teach em not to do that again. But i also would’ve never let things come this far with this many asset bubbles stacked on top of each other. There’s no telling what’ll happen when credit dissapears completely.
This is by all accounts The Big One. I seriously don’t want to list everything i know that’s counting against the US at this point because if you think this post is long, that one’d be triple the size. So all bets are off on the short term.
So many thanks to all who comment here with on-the-ground updates and medical experience, and primarily to Chris and Adam, who are keeping this going. It’s a lifeline. I wish the “like” function still worked, but since it doesn’t, know that there’s a lot of appreciation out here in the peanut gallery.
Search:
| Country, Other | Total Cases | New Cases | Total Deaths | New Deaths | Total Recovered | Active Cases | Serious, Critical | Tot Cases/ 1M pop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 80,739 | +44 | 3,120 | +23 | 58,742 | 18,877 | 5,111 | 56.1 |
| Italy | 9,172 | +1,797 | 463 | +97 | 724 | 7,985 | 733 | 151.7 |
| S. Korea | 7,478 | +165 | 53 | +3 | 166 | 7,259 | 36 | 145.9 |
| Iran | 7,161 | +595 | 237 | +43 | 2,394 | 4,530 | 85.3 | |
| France | 1,209 | 21 | +2 | 12 | 1,176 | 45 | 18.5 | |
| Germany | 1,176 | +136 | 2 | +2 | 18 | 1,156 | 9 | 14.0 |
| Spain | 1,073 | +399 | 28 | +11 | 32 | 1,013 | 11 | 22.9 |
| Diamond Princess | 696 | 7 | 245 | 444 | 32 |
Isn’t it just as important to look at areas that have had strong exposure to COVID-19 and are not having pandemic numbers of cases? Lessons to be learned from every country.
I thought i’d write a bit why i think those are the geopolitical games happening right now. My expertise in the field if you will, since i’ve never held office or anything 
However, I’ve literally played games that involved geopolitics in a game called Stronghold Kingdoms.
On the off chance anybody played on World 6, i was known as TheSwiftSniper and my monk storms where legendary
Anyway i ended up as the right hand man of the strongest faction in southern ireland, twice, with the 2nd time that faction ending up taking over the entire world and that faction leader becoming king of the world for many rounds. I spent a lot of time in the Mailbox of that game (though not as much as my faction leader who we joked was basically playing a mailbox simulator) as well as on team speak, talking to people and making sure the faction ran smoothly as well as keeping everybody supplied and teched up.
Not to make too long a story of it but to just indicate my position in that world, It was me and me only who gave the starting sign for the entire invasion of England by Ireland (the planning involved many people but i was the monker who had to get the initial monkstorm right, usually a job for many people, and i said “neh i’ll just burn 25% of my resources i got this”). Aside from attacking in that game, there was “monking”, which gave invulnerability to villages or took away their monk powers. By timing a “monk storm” across an entire province, made possibly by my many concentrated villages together (which i’d taken over by diplomacy as well so i had 12 villages in the same spot). If any villages in an area had the capability to send out monks, long timed attacks (such as crossing the sea) would be futile. And i made sure all of them landed on 200+ villages within 10 seconds of each other. The invasion was very successful.
Without a doubt i was one of the top 10 most powerful people on that server, and i think i didn’t spend more then 200 euros on that world. Anybody even close to me spent thousands. Purely through reading situations and diplomacy. Heck i even managed to get the enemy to turn over 2 provinces simply by being all fire and brimstone in a high level team speak negotiation.
They just wanted a truce, i threatened annihilation (complete bluff because we where exhausted), they told me to calm the fuck down, but then we got a truce and 2 provinces handed to us simply because i read the situation right and knew they didn’t trust their allies as much as we could trust our fighters to stick with it. We wasted no time in locking that down either, moved in people within the hour after the truce - and when they tried to stab us in the back anyway a month later like i said they would after the meeting, we where in such a strong position in those provinces we flipped them back overnight and cleared the backstabbers out entirely and permanently in a week.
It’s such a shame that game went down the micro transaction path (they added in a patch at some point that quadrupled some card’s effectiveness so that it became extremely pay to win, it’s never been the same since). I really enjoyed making the world my bitch
This is great stuff - so good to hear what folks are facing, finding and doing in the real world. While lab research provides good information, information from the front lines where people are living with this every day is much better for those of us trying to figure out which way to jump. Thank you!
Let us eat Jim H logo. Serious.
C60-Fullerene-Baati-Rats-Lifespan-Longevite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMNV4yc1598
Chris, first many thanks for your website and the important information you have given to us.
Now regarding Russia’s situation. Here is a quick listing of my take on Russia’s current financial situation:
- Russia will see a significant drop in oil revenues. The drop in Brent since 12/31/19 is over 40%. I don’t know how much of this is hedged or for how long.
- Natural Gas, Russia’s second leading export has also seen significant price decline since 12/31/19.
- Russia’s other major exports such as iron, steel, and aluminum are also likely to see price declines in a deflationary environment.
- The Russian Ruble has fallen 9.6% against the US dollar since 12/31/2019. The lower value of the Ruble will contribute to higher import costs.
- Russia is engaged in two war’s, one in Syria, and one in the Ukraine. Both are constant drains on their foreign exchange reserves.
- Per Zero Hedge, the Russians Sovereign wealth fund is only 9.2 % of GDP.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/russia-says-it-can-weather $25 oil for 6-10 years
The above factors suggest a significant contraction in the Russian economy due to the world recession now starting.
To offset a potential high single digit annual decline in GDP Russia has only 1 year of reserves per the Zero Hedge analysis above even though the Russian Finance Ministry claims 6-10 years.
Once financial markets focus on these facts the ruble will fall further exacerbating the problems noted above, and Russia will very likely follow the Soviet Union into collapse.
My guess is Putin put forward a negotiating position and didn’t expect the extreme Saudi response. If true, it’s a good example of world leaders blundering into a disaster.
I should do some due diligence regarding C60… I know Sarah Westall is a big fan. I am a huge Buckminster Fuller fan, but I have not really looked into the health claims for the molecule that is my namesake here : )
Again. If i was the president of the US i’d immediately bail out the Shale industry out of national security concerns (nationalize it if i had to) and sanction the Saudis to teach em not to do that again. But i also would’ve never let things come this far with this many asset bubbles stacked on top of each other. There’s no telling what’ll happen when credit dissapears completely.
In the long run there are no winners in the game you want to play, no matter how well you play it.
Perhaps one day the whole world will realize this and everyone will simply walk away from the the people who play these games. “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came” as Charlotte Keyes once wrote.
Sadly I fear we are a long way from that day. First the people must understand the difference between right and wrong, and that is not an easy puzzle to solve. And then we must remake our society’s institutions from top to bottom.
Rebel
I think we can confirm a testing shortage in the Netherlands. Because they just ran an item on the state news about this guy who is recovering and is now allowed outside after 24 hours of not showing symptoms (another big mistake).
But here’s the thing. He says he wants written proof that declares him virus free so that other people won’t socially avoid him. Gotta love dutch sensibilities. The government won’t give it to him. Because “Testing priorities are for new cases at the moment”. They also lowered the “recovered” requirement from requiring a negative test to “24 hours symptom free”.
There’s only 1 logical reason why they’d do something so MONUMENTALLY STUPID. They don’t have the tests to give out.
EDIT: also i forgot to say, most cases are located in my province. They introduced stricter rules for my area then for the other provinces. So shit’s getting real boys
On a personal note, I’ve implemented heavy social drinking and minimal outside interaction for over two weeks now. If I see someone heading towards me in the liquor store, I just cough loudly and give them a straight-arm defensive stance (and wipe my runny nose on my sweatshirt sleeve. BTW, this is a potential backup for hand-sanitizer - Spirytus Rektyfikowany.
Compounds with antiviral activity are generally of great medical interest and different modes of pharmaceutical actions have been described. Replication of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be suppressed by several antiviral compounds, which are effective in preventing or delaying the onset of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Fullerenes (C60) and their derivatives have potential antiviral activity, which has strong implications on the treatment of HIV-infection. The antiviral activity of fullerene derivatives is based on several biological properties including their unique molecular architecture and antioxidant activity... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676811/
This evening there was an official advice from the Dutch government: was your hands, don’t shake hands, and use paper handkerchiefs. In the southern part the advice is to work from home if possible. According to our government and RIVM (CDC equivalent) this should help to curb the honey badger virus… meanwhile, my Chinese acquaintances living in the Netherlands are scared s#%tless, maybe, just maybe, they have a little bit more inside information about the situation in China…
Coronavirus can travel twice as far as official ‘safe distance’ and stay in air for 30 minutes, Chinese study finds
Source
- Authorities advise people to stay 1-2 metres apart, but researchers found that a bus passenger infected fellow travellers sitting 4.5 metres away
- The scientists behind the research said their investigation also highlighted the importance of wearing face masks because of the length of time it can linger
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can linger in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 4.5 metres – further than the “safe distance” advised by health authorities around the world, according to a study by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists.
The researchers also found that it can last for days on surfaces where respiratory droplets land, raising the risk of transmission if an unsuspecting person touches it and then rubs their face and hands.
All this is very interesting, and the fact that Russia is so well prepared? Why???
Desogames: who said this is the big one, what does that mean for newbies? LOL. Does that mean stock will crash or are you referring to some other nefarious fall outs? I believe war was mentioned, but with who and what would they gain? ESP with a virulent virus circulating?
Very scary numbers coming out of Italy… very scary. USA is very much in trouble due to our lack of willingness to believe bad things can happen here.
BTW- mayor of NYC said high risk: over 50 yo!!, heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, hypertension. The age of 50 is huge. He said it in press conference yesterday and again today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXh7jUxfdak
Don’t miss, Fauci said “obesity” is considered high risk group in addition to the above, he also lists asthma. Think of the average american and the top 5 chronic health disorders in USA.
Fauci interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HGC-mRNTPo
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/important-health-problems-matter-2016091510267
The big case study from China shows the CFR per decile and it’s (from memory) 0.4% for 40-49 and 1.3% for 50-59.
So it looks like a big jump at 50 but in reality it’s going to be a nice smooth curve. Probably around 0.6% at 49/50 and up to something like 2% around 60.
Those numbers should all be halved (or more) to reflect uncounted cases and they are also inclusive of comorbidities. So - by my estimate anyway - someone in otherwise good health at 50 years old is still pretty unlikely (0.2% or less) to die.
Worth a read. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/momento-mori-unpopular-thoughts-on-corona-virus/
And well worth spending time on Craig’s web-site if you’re not already familiar with it.
Craig is what I call a Boromir. He’s fighting the good fight so he’s worth listening to on most topics especially when highlighting malfeasance in high places. But he still thinks that the power of the state can be wielded for good, so his solutions are often (at least in my opinion) off base.
I mean this is it, this is the big one, the one time it is different. The one time stuff will come crashing down because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can stop this reckoning from happening. The time the boy cried wolf, and an actual pack showed up while the hunter had used up all his ammo shooting ghosts.
Had it been just the economic crash, it could’ve lasted years. Had it just been the virus, the recovery would’ve been swift. But now, the virus, something you cannot print away, hit right after the fed printed half a trillion in 1 month to stop the repo market from collapsing because the system was already broken. Something they utterly failed to fix, instead the money went straight into juicing stocks just like at Y2K.
They can print a $10 trillion bailout package, and all that’ll do is confirm to everybody that this time it is indeed, really bad. Because $10 trillion isn’t going to stop the virus count from doubling. Sure, you can simply not test, but that isn’t going to stop the virus from overloading your hospital system anyway.
What ever they print. What ever they say. They cannot prevent people from dropping dead in the streets, just like what happened to China, South Korea, Iran, and i imagine we’ll start getting those reports out of Italy soon as well.
But even IF, even IF the virus went away with the heat, cases stay confirmed to about a million, with bout 40k deaths (which is exactly like the flu then). Even if that where the case - that changes nothing about the incredible leverage in the US shale sector.
It changes nothing about P/E ratios. Forward Earnings. a $3 trillion BBB bond high yield credit bubble. The student loan bubble. The car loan bubble. Tesla having never turned a profit with their factories shut and traffic dwindeling.
Virtually the entire “disruptor” market (Uber, Lyft and such will definitely take a hit) is gonna go down. In that sense, anybody wanna make a sidebet on when softbank implodes? Like WeWork wasn’t bad enough already. Remember they never cut their losses, they actually bailed WeWork out by putting more money in. The collapse of the vision fund alone is another $100 billion just vaporized.
Then there’s the EU sovereign debt crisis that’ll come back, as per the image i posted above somewhere. Greek 10 years have already been rising for a week or 2, contrary to everybodies belief (even I thought it was humming along nicely towards the downside along with the rest of the flight to safety bonds). They’ve basically gone parabolic, even after the Idlib ceasefire. There really aren’t that many people at the border yet. Maybe enough to justify an uptick. not a parabolic rise. The bond was up further then oil was down!
Deutsche bank and the rest of the german banks being bankrupt. the US consumer being tapped out. US housing market based on investors and speculation more then actual value. Pension funds that just went bust today because they saw their compounded rate just vaporise. Illinois’s pension fund is… Was, until today, only 35% funded. They will go bust within a year now. Maybe a week.
Chicago as a city was already teethering on the edge. Detroit went bankrupt a few years ago, expect more cities to follow soon. This all isn’t even touching the ETF bubble that Michael Burry says is the next big short.
All of these things are stacked on top of each other. 50 plus years of extremely bad fiscal policy. Reinflating bubble after bubble. The dollar losing 98% of it’s value since 1900. This is only going to end in 1 way.
The total collapse of the US dollar through loss of faith and hyperinflation.
Is that gonna happen tomorrow? Nope. But will it happen in the next decade? Oh absolutely. Today made sure of that. Imagine the worst car pile up you ever saw: There was a moment the 200 cars where still just 10.
In a sentence: The problem is just too big to contain.
Edit: Here’s a good chart of “Why this time, it’s different”. Because simply, the following wasn’t ever the starting point of a crisis:
I’ll toss in this link too; since it’s a good read of why the virus really no longer matters, except that it does.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/there-no-liquidity-market-paralyzed-fraois-explodes
A new synthetic route may lead to better targeted Fullerenes;
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-fullerene-compounds-virus-infections-hiv.html
Two years ago, a research team led by Skoltech Professor, Pavel Troshin, proposed several effective approaches for the synthesis of water-soluble fullerene derivatives. In their latest study, the researchers discovered a unique new reaction that helped obtain a series of previously unavailable water-soluble fullerene derivatives with high antiviral activity. The mechanism of this unusual transformation of fullerenes was proposed based on the quantum chemical calculations. "Our latest study focuses on the synthesis of highly effective inhibitors of dangerous viral infections, such as HIV, different varieties of flu, HSV and CMV, using fullerene derivatives as a multifunctional platform. We discovered a unique inversed Arbuzov reaction that allows fine-tuning the antiviral properties of new compounds and establishing fundamental correlations between a compound's structure and antiviral activity," explains the first author of the paper and Skoltech Ph.D. student, Olga Kraevaya. The results of this study open up vast opportunities for developing effective antiviral drugs capable of suppressing virus resistant lines, which will help combat currently untreatable infections.