Baltic Dry Index. 1855 -06 Brent Crude 59.42 Spot Gold 1490
Never ending Brexit now October 31,
maybe. 12 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs
Now In Effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October
18.
“How dare you. You have
stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Greta Thunberg. But
who wrote it?
The main economic melodrama of the
weekend comes later today in the UK Parliament, aka the longest running farce
in the world, when a handful of luminaries, together with the other nearly 650 very
ordinary MPs, get to debate and vote on the very latest Brexit Agreement for
the UK to leave the wealth and jobs destroying, and dying EUSSR.
Since Withdrawal Agreement 2.0 is almost
identical to Mrs May’s dreadful WA which was rightly voted down three times, I
can only hope that these giants of parliamentarians vote this agreement down
too, and GB leaves the EU cleanly on October 31st on WTO trading
terms.
While we await that outcome later in the
day, this morning as a service to LIR readers, we take a look behind the agenda
of schoolchild, and eco-loon number one, Greta Thunberg, whose agenda it is,
who funds it, manipulates it, and why.
Come now, you didn’t think it was a spontaneous, natural, grass roots
movement did you?
Well the extreme left wing,
anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-British, anti-Christian, anti-Israel, BBC
portray it that way, and most in the hard left anti-Trump media follow that
line too, but the reality is very different, very disturbing.
Below, a 21st century reality
check. You’ve been had.
The Elite Machine Behind Greta Thunberg
A look at the powerful, elite-backed machine behind Greta Thunberg and the true agenda behind her world tour.Published October 15, 2019
In the matter of a few months, Greta Thunberg went from a lone girl protesting in front of the Swedish parliament to an international phenomenon. Although mass media is making it seem as if this meteoric rise to prominence happened organically, this is simply not true.
Behind Greta is a major machine, one that is controlled by major international actors and backed by major funds. This PR machine has allowed Greta to make the covers of magazines, become the subject of thousands of news articles while being photographed with world leaders and giving speeches at elite organizations such as the United Nations.
Although Greta might very well be genuinely concerned with the fate of the planet, her message is carefully crafted by those who control her to generate a specific response from the youth. In short, Greta is the face of a major marketing scheme – a tightly coordinated international effort to sell global warming through a specific lens: Fear, panic, and urgency.
Before going further, I need to point out that I am neither a “climate denier” nor a “climate activist”. That is not my field of expertise. I never analyzed any data regarding climate change and its correlation with human activity. I am far from qualified from speaking about this issue so I won’t.
My field of expertise is mass media and its relation to power. In the “Read This First” article of this site, I explained (using quotes from the founders of the field of Communications such as Edward Bernays) how mass media is used to shape and mold opinions.
----Most media outlets are owned by a handful of mega-corporations, making it very easy for the elite to saturate the world with a specific message. And the meteoric rise of Greta is a result of this kind of media saturation. In fact, her entire movement is undeniable proof of the extreme reach and power of mass media in the world today which is able to create massive movements out of nothing.
Mass media programming is particularly effective on those who did not develop an acute sense of critical thinking – notably young people. And the Greta phenomenon was custom-made to cater to this very specific demographic.
Here’s a look at the rise of Greta.
Greta Thunberg’s father is actor Svante
Thunberg, whose father is actor and director Olof Thunberg. Her mother is the
famous opera singer Malena Ernman who became a celebrity at the Eurovision Song
Contest in 2009. In 2010, Ernman was named Hovsångerska (translated to “court
singer”) by Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.
In 2017, Ernman won the WWF “Environmental
Hero” award for her “involvement in the climate issue for the past several
years”. About a year later, Ernman’s 16-year-old daughter is seen protesting in
front of the Swedish parliament. The perfect storm begins.
----Written as a “family autobiography”, the book discusses various issues such as Greta’s Asperger’s syndrome, which Ernman describes as a “superpower”. In one bizarre passage, Ernman states that Greta can actually see carbon dioxide emanating from vehicles and buildings.
The perfect timing between Greta’s strike and the book release was not a coincidence. And Greta’s strike certainly did not go unnoticed.
On the very same day of the first strike, a picture of Greta was published on the Facebook page of We Don’t Have Time, a “social network for climate change”. The page is managed by Ingmar Rentzhog – a specialist in financial marketing.
Rentzhog is also a chairman of the Global Utmaning Board, a think tank that “promotes sustainable development within social, economic and environmental dimensions”. The Global Utmaning Board was founded by the Swedish politician and economist Kristina Persson, who is the daughter of the billionaire politician and entrepreneur Sven O. Persson.
Backed by this machine, Greta’s story garnered intense and immediate media attention in Sweden and, soon after, around the world. After a few months of weekly strikes, Greta took a year off from school to focus solely on climate change and began a tour of European cities.
During these events, a woman was often spotted “advising” Greta: Luisa-Marie Neubauer.
Neubauer is a member of ONE Campaign, an organization managed by Bill Gates and Bono, which is heavily funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
On the Associated Press’ “fact-checking” site, an article with the bizarre title Climate activist Greta Thunberg does not have ‘handler’ asserts that Luisa-Marie Neubauer does not serve as Greta’s “handler”. It nevertheless admits that Neubauer is linked with this powerful Soros-funded group.
According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, “One
originated in conversations between Bill Gates and Bono in the early 2000s
about the need to better inform Americans about extreme poverty around the
world.” The One Campaign has ties to Soros, founder and chairman of Open
Society Foundations, which works to build democracies.
Brooke Havlik, a communications officer with Open Society
Foundations, told the AP that the organization has given $10 million to the One
Campaign since 2011.
Through these powerful connections, Greta skyrocketed on the world stage. She gave speeches at Ted X talks, the European Parliament, the United Nations and she was even nominated for a Nobel Prize. She also met world leaders and celebrities across the world, including the Pope.
Of course, mass media went into overdrive
to turn Greta into a larger-than-life icon as she graced magazine covers around
the world.
From a lone girl protesting in front of
the Swedish parliament, Greta turned into a figure of heroism and martyrdom.
----But what is exactly the role of Greta in the grand scheme of things?
Greta’s Role
Although many are ready to deny this fact with great vigor (because it goes against their agenda), Greta is merely a pawn. She is controlled by powerful people and big money to promote a specific agenda. The agenda is not merely about climate change – it is about climate change through a very specific angle.Her role was perfectly defined by Greta herself during a speech at the (very elite) World Economic Forum:
“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.”
Panic and fear: Two words that lead to hasty and irrational responses based on negative emotions.
And this fear and panic is being thoroughly ingrained into the youth, creating a generation that is convinced that the world is burning.
Greta is the
face of a massive push across mass media and the education system to convince
children that their “house in on fire”. Since children absorb the information
that is given to them without any kind of questioning, this push has created a
new worrying phenomenon: Eco-anxiety.
More, much more.https://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/the-elite-machine-behind-greta-thunberg/
Finally, coming soon to a pension plan,
and annuity near you. Hopefully not yours. The downside of ZIRP and insanity of
NIRP. Thank you, ECB and Federal Reserve.
Going Dutch? Low interest rates rattle 'world's best' pension system
October 18, 2019 / 7:08 AM
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - When Frans Kolkman
hung up his police badge in 2017, he was looking forward to a comfortable
retirement. Two years later he’s among millions of Dutch pensioners facing a
cut and fearing there may be worse to come.
The planned
reductions, due to take effect from January 2020, have shaken a country
renowned for having one of the world’s strongest pension systems, and are an
early warning to others about the impact of record low interest rates.
Kolkman, who
spent 43 years in the police force, hastens to add he will still be well-off
but “if I live another 20 years, and there’s cut after cut after cut, then I
really don’t know anymore.”
The European
Central Bank’s (ECB) stimulus policies, which have helped drive interest rates
into negative territory, are blamed in part for the impending cuts in the
Netherlands and have triggered a fierce debate over how the funding of pensions
should be calculated.
ECB
President Mario Draghi said last month that the central bank was “very
concerned” about the side effects of negative rates, but maintained they were
required for economic growth.
At the heart
of the Dutch debate is a technical question over how to calculate the cost of
future pension payouts while the ECB helps keep rates low.
Actuaries
make assumptions about how long pensioners will live, count up the future
payments that have been promised to them and then use an assumed interest rate
to “discount” how much must be put away to pay them.
The lower
this interest rate, “rekenrente” in Dutch, the more conservative the
accounting, and the more it costs to meet future liabilities.
The
rekenrente is derived from government bond yields — which have turned negative
across Europe as interest rates steadily fell this summer.
Each 1% fall
in interest rates has led to roughly a 12% fall in the coverage ratio between
assets and liabilities in pension pots, the Dutch central bank says. As a
January deadline approaches, cuts appear inevitable.
That has led
several funds and some experts to argue that the rekenrente, which is around
0.3%, should be raised instead. Many blame ECB policy and see its effects as
temporary.
Increasing
the rekenrente to 2% or 3% would restore the funds to full solvency. Corien
Wortmann-Kool, the chairwoman of the 456 billion euro ABP civil servants fund,
told Reuters she opposes pension cuts as “unnecessary” for now.
“We believe
we can achieve good returns, now and in the future,” she said, estimating a 4%
return over time is achievable despite low interest rates.
ABP’s
coverage ratio first fell through a 95% “critical” level, below which pensions
should be cut to ensure a fund has enough assets to meet its liabilities, in
July. It fell to 88.6% in August before recovering to 91% in September.
But Dutch
Central Bank President Klaas Knot, the country’s top pension regulator, says
the rekenrente is “integral” to the system.
“We will
continue to adhere to the risk-free rate of interest,” Knot told journalists
this week.
His approach
is supported by a group of 10 academics who this week wrote to parliament
arguing against a change.
“Imagine you
took the risk free rate of return and raised it by 2%. Then the coverage ratio
would increase at a typical fund by up to 30%. It sounds too good to be true —
and it is. Pensioners get that money paid out now, but the assets pot will be a
little more empty each year, and that would go on each year for years,” the
letter said.
More
“The permanent misfits can
find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually
find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”
The True Believer: Thoughts on
the Nature of Mass Movements
This weekend’s musical diversion. Boccherini again. The top Italian composing in
Spain. A contrast with last week’s Boccherini composition.
Boccherini-Quintetto n. 4 G 448 - Fandango (III-parte II)
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: 26,917
+57 Up. NASDAQ: 7,999 +62 Up. SP500: 2,977 +61 Up.
Another inconclusive month, but all three moved up weakly. I
would not rely on nor take such a weak buy signal.
No comments:
Post a Comment