ZIRP-Addicted Japan Is Crumbling Under Higher Rates
The message is loud and clear: The Japanese economy has no tolerance for higher interest rates after the Bank of Japan has kept them artificially near zero for decades. Meanwhile, as the largest holders of US Treasury debt, Japan’s economic well-being has become inextricably dependent on the capricious whims of Federal Reserve monetary policy — and both of those chickens have now come home to roost.
Exhibit A: Japan’s 100-year-old Norinchukin bank, which holds a whopping 20% of the total outstanding foreign bonds held by Japanese financial institutions. It just announced it would sell $63 billion in low-yielding US and European bonds at a loss, catapulting Norinchukin’s total annual losses to ¥1.5 trillion, or around 9.5 billion dollars.
This follows a prediction just about a month ago that the bank’s losses would be ⅓ as much — and those losses still have room to grow if foreign bond markets don’t rally in the coming months. The losses exceed the bank’s previous record, set in 2009 during the financial crisis, by about 1 trillion yen, and bonds compose more than half of Norinchukin’s portfolio.
Norinchukin (“Nochu”) is Japan’s “farmer” bank: it holds around $600 billion in deposits from Japan’s agricultural and fishing collectives. Most of the pensions of Japan’s lowest-income workers are stored here.
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 19, 2024
Until recently, Nochu was best known as the CLO whale: it had… pic.twitter.com/TzanqrtXK9
Despite the BoJ’s April rate hike being minuscule, the domestic banking industry immediately began to sputter. The BoJ is broadly expected to announce another rate hike this year. But with Japanese banks already quivering under the weight of a mere 0.1% interest, and plenty of central bank “surprises” always possible, it’s hard to say for sure what the BoJ will attempt in the meantime to save its troubled economy. It has little hope of undoing the trap it set for itself from decades of zero percent interest rate policy and overdependence on US Treasuries.
The yen is now closing at 1990-era levels, remaining battered despite a $60 billion-plus BoJ intervention last May to prop it up, during which the BoJ cited “excessive speculative volatility” as the reason. As of this writing, the yen is right back where it was before the BoJ stepped in last May:
USD vs JPY 6-Month
The announcement follows a series of flashing warning signs for smaller and regional banks in the US, like the 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank, and the collapse of First Regional Bank earlier this year. It lays bare the absurdity of an entire financial industry — and economy — hinging on the monetary policy announcements of a handful of individuals.
As the main bank for Japanese agricultural, fishing, and forestry cooperatives, a Norinchukin implosion would directly impact those industries. But it could likely set into motion a cascade of meltdowns at other financial institutions. Norinchukin didn’t bother to hedge its assumption that interest rates would soon become more accommodative, putting all its chips on “black” that European and US sovereign bonds would remain a practically “risk-free” investment thanks to central bank tinkering.
The European Central Bank cut rates earlier this month, but for entities like Norinchukin with overexposure to foreign bonds, it’s too little too late. That’s especially true as the Fed, shocked by inflation it thought was “transitory,” continues signaling that it might lower interest rates only once this year.
If the Fed doesn’t cut, more US banks will fail. If it does cut, inflation will rocket upward. Loan-dependent sectors can’t handle even modestly higher rates, and the US dollar can’t handle a low cost of borrowing or other stimulative interventions without tanking in purchasing power and crushing consumers and manufacturers alike.
As in 2008, the meltdown will be global — the real question is whether the first big domino will fall in the US, Japan, or elsewhere. As Norinchukin scrambles to raise capital, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki emerged to reassure markets, laughably, that the bank is financially sound.
However, some of us still remember how S&P slapped an “A” credit rating on Lehman Brothers just days before it imploded and helped set into motion a global financial crisis.
The 2008 crisis helped solidify certain firms as being in the privileged “too big to fail” club — an official admission that if you’re a megabank, you can privatize your profits and socialize your losses. It triggered an epic global monetary intervention with ripple effects that linger to this day. And with the wizards of high finance no wiser, and the system itself no less self-interested after the fallout of that episode, the next crash will be even larger — and central banks will be powerless to stop it.
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Are There Vaccines in our Food Supply?
In my previous articles, we looked at the global war on farmers, the organizations pushing for the Great Food Reset, the tactics used to foist these changes on the public, and the projects underway to remove your access to healthy, farm-fresh foods. Today we will delve into the contentious issue of vaccines in the food supply.
Accurate information on this topic is not easy to find. The USDA and drug developers aren’t required to release any information on veterinary drugs in the development pipeline, so independent detectives are left searching through peer-reviewed papers, university publications, USDA contracts, grant notifications, company white papers, and university websites to learn what is on the horizon. This system is far from transparent, and frankly, I don’t think that’s an accident.
Before any vaccine technology is used on humans, it is usually tried in the veterinary market first due to the incredibly lax regulations. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that our food animals had been receiving mRNA injections for years before the Covid vaccine rollout.
Around 2014, the USDA granted a conditional license for an mRNA vaccine for use in pigs for Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus. This is equivalent to emergency use authorization and gets around the USDA’s vaccine licensing and authorization process.
In 2015, Merck bought Harrisvaccines to acquire their RNA platform. Merck’s 2015 press release stated that this “RNA Particle technology…represents a breakthrough in vaccine development. It also has a highly versatile production platform able to target a wide range of viruses and bacteria. Pathogens are collected from a farm, and specific genes are sequenced and inserted into RNA particles, making safe, potent vaccines able to provide herd-specific protection.”
Introduced in 2018, Sequivity is Merck’s RNA vaccine platform built on the Harrisvaccines technology. These RNA injections are already in use in pigs. They are customized for different viruses, and each customized injection undergoes no new safety testing; new formulations are deployed immediately. Pork you are eating from the supermarket is already likely treated with these gene therapies.
In 2016, BioNtech and Bayer partnered to develop veterinary mRNA vaccines using Bayer’s veterinary knowledge and the BioNtech MRNA platform (the one used for the Pfizer Covid shot). Given the intervening years for development, there may be a host of new mRNA livestock shots released in the near future.
In October 2021, Iowa State University began a project testing a novel mRNA vaccine against RSV infections in cows, in the form of a subcutaneous implant that continuously releases mRNA into the cow. The anticipated completion date for the study is 2026.
If you think mRNA vaccines are the only problem, think again: according to a 2021 paper published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, DNA, RNA, and recombinant viral-vector vaccines are all in development. They are touted as capable of quick deployment: no time for pesky safety testing, let alone time to see if humans who consume meat from these animals suffer any long-term health effects. The paper also points out that farmed salmon are already receiving multiple DNA injections for various diseases.
According to Merck’s Veterinary Manual, experimental DNA vaccines have been produced against avian influenza, rabies, bovine viral diarrhea virus, porcine herpesvirus, bovine herpesvirus-1, foot-and-mouth disease, and other veterinary viruses.
All this begs the question: can DNA vaccines change the genetic code of an animal or human? According to a 2017 Moderna white paper titled mRNA Vaccines: Disruptive Innovation in Vaccination, “The key challenge associated with DNA vaccines is that they must penetrate the cell nucleus…Once inside the nucleus, DNA vaccines have a risk of permanently changing a person’s DNA.”
Can genetic injections given to animals affect the person who consumes the animal product? Chinese scientists have published a study wherein mRNA-laced milk was injected into the intestines of mice. The mRNA was successfully absorbed through the digestive tract and became active in their bodies. The researchers plan to follow up with a version where the mice are fed the mRNA rather than being injected, and in their paper’s conclusion, they opine that “In the near future, an mRNA delivery system based on milk-derived exosomes will serve as a platform for mRNA therapeutics development.”
We know that human breast milk was contaminated with mRNA lipid nanoparticles after Covid-19 injections. This raises concerns with the Iowa State project developing a continuous release, RNA implant for cows. How are we confident it would not cross into the milk supply?
Beyond the vaccines for animals lies the frontier of vegetables genetically engineered to deliver mRNA into any human who eats them. The National Science Foundation is funding one of several studies using plants such as lettuce and spinach to generate mRNA gene therapies that enter the human body when the plant is eaten. Plant-based immunization experimentation began more than two decades ago: In 2002, a company called Prodigene was fined millions of dollars when their vaccine-producing GMO corn contaminated 500,000 pounds of soybeans.
RNAi pesticides also present a significant risk to human health. These sprays, used on GMO crops, are designed to genetically modify living organisms in an agricultural setting. RNAi sprays can blow freely in the wind, contaminating vast swaths of fertile farmland and otherwise clean crops, potentially causing genetic modifications to many species beyond their intended target, and even altering organic vegetables grown downwind. In 2017, the EPA approved Monsanto and Dow’s RNAi Smartstax PRO corn, which now accounts for up to 17 percent of the corn grown in the United States, so the corn you are eating in tortilla chips and other processed foods may well contain this gene-silencing technology.
Regarding the potential danger of genetic damage to humans and animal species from RNAi sprays, a report by Jonathan R. Latham and Allison K. Wilson of the Bioscience Research Project notes that “Mammalian digestion is a complex process in which food molecules are taken into the body by many routes. It has been demonstrated in mammals that some of these pathways allow limited entry into the bloodstream of macromolecules such as DNA and intact proteins. Thus absorbed, macromolecules may enter internal organs, muscle tissue, and even embryos. At least in some tissues, foreign DNA enters the nuclei of individual cells.” The authors also note that “long duplexed dsRNAs have previously been discarded as medical therapies for the reason that they induce side effects at low doses. Based on our analysis it seems unlikely that a convincing case can be made for their safe inclusion in food.”
In the Livestock Research Innovation Corporation’s 2021 white paper called “The Future of Livestock Vaccines,” the authors enthusiastically opine that: “The current COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons, including the fact that the development, mass production and approval process of vaccines could be shortened from several years (or decades) to 8-9 months. This will have a significant and long-lasting impact on how livestock vaccines are produced and deployed in the future.”
They remind us that “Good health starts with biosecurity” and that “resulting from the pandemic, society is more attuned to the One Health concept and so vaccination of livestock will be seen as part of a larger health picture, one that includes humans and the environment.”
MUST WATCH: Dr. David Martin Interview — U.S. Gov. Is Coordinating A Depopulation Program Against The World
The Draft: Slavery Re-Imposed
Last week, a most disturbing development took place that should concern all those who value liberty. The House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act and included in it a provision requiring the automatic enrollment of men from 18 to 26 years old for the draft. Before that, men were required to register for the draft when they turned eighteen, but whether to do that was up to them. Many of them didn’t, even though failing to register subjected them to criminal penalties. But the choice was theirs to make, and now, they won’t have it.
No one has actually been drafted yet, but calls for “national service” are in the air. This is an excellent time, then, to go over what is wrong with drafting people into the armed services, and this is what I’m going to do in this week’s article.
The fundamental point is easy to grasp. In a free society, everyone owns himself and his legitimately acquired property. Slavery is the greatest possible violation of your right to own yourself, and making the “state” your enslavers (actually the politicians who run the state) does not make things better. It makes them worse. As the great Murray Rothbard puts it in For a New Liberty, “Surely, for one example, there can be no more blatant case of involuntary servitude than our entire system of conscription. Every youth is forced to register with the selective service system when he turns eighteen. He is compelled to carry his draft card at all times, and, at whatever time the federal government deems fit, he is seized by the authorities and inducted into the armed forces. There his body and will are no longer his own; he is subject to the dictates of the government; and he can be forced to kill and to place his own life in jeopardy if the authorities so decree. What else is involuntary servitude if not the draft?”
There is an obvious objection that I’m sure has occurred to many of you. “If we rely on completely voluntary armed services, the why would people volunteer if we were engaged in war? True enough, people join the military now. But most of them don’t expect to fight, and for many in the military being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq was an unwelcome surprise.” In fact, as Murray pointed out, our so-called “volunteer” military isn’t genuinely voluntary. You are free to join, but not free to leave. You can’t say, “I don’t want to fight—I’m out!” The “volunteer” army we have now is still slavery, albeit one that doesn’t include all men of military age, but only those who enlist. As Murray says, “While conscription into the armed forces is a blatant and aggravated form of involuntary servitude, there is another, far more subtle and therefore less detectable form: the structure of the army itself. Consider this: in what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for ‘desertion,’ i.e., for quitting the particular employment? If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?”
This point about the “volunteer” army returns us to the obvious objection that I mentioned earlier. Suppose we are engaged in a war and a young man of military age supports the war. Still, wouldn’t he prefer that others do the fighting? People will only enlist, under such circumstances, if they are aware that that the government will draft them if they don’t. In short, there is a “market failure” that the government needs to remedy.
The notion that the market cannot provide for defense is ridiculous. If you can buy anything else, why can’t you buy defenders as well? The real “problem” for the government is that people will fight only for what they really think is their vital interest. They won’t volunteer to spread the blessings of that false god “democracy” to savages and barbarians. As Ludwig von Mises notes in Socialism, people will fight if they think their existence is at stake: “War carried on pro aris et focis [for hearth and home] demands no sacrifice from the individual. One does not engage in it merely to reap benefits for others, but to preserve one’s own existence. This of course, is only true of wars in which individuals fight for their very existence. lt is not true of wars which are merely a means of enrichment, such as the quarrels of feudal lords or the cabinet wars of princes. Thus Imperialism, ever covetous of conquests, cannot do without an ethic which demands from the individual ‘sacrifices’ for the ‘good of the State.’”
Suppose, though, that we don’t get involved in a war. Compulsory national service is still a terrible idea. We should look at the military we have now. The armed services have become welfare agencies, especially for member of “protected” minority groups like racial minorities, ”trannies,” homosexuals. Those in the army are indoctrinated with “wokism.” Here is a sample of what is being done now, taken from a speech by Thomas Spoehr:” Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change. The push for it didn’t begin in the last two years under the Biden administration—nor will it automatically end if a non-woke administration is elected in 2024. Wokeness in the military has become ingrained. And unless the policies that flow from it are illegal or directly jeopardize readiness, senior military leaders have little alternative but to comply.
Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.
Much of the emphasis of wokeness today is on promoting the idea that America is fatally flawed by systemic racism and white privilege. Our fighting men and women are required to sit through indoctrination programs, often with roots in the Marxist tenets of critical race theory, either by Pentagon diktat or through carelessness by senior leaders who delegate their command responsibilities to private Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion instructors.
These indoctrination programs differentiate service members along racial and gender lines, which runs completely counter to the military imperative to build cohesiveness based on common loyalties, training, and standards. Traditional training and education programs used to combat racial and sex discrimination have been supplanted by programs that promote discrimination by replacing the American ideal of equality with the progressive ideal of equity—which in practice means unequal treatment based on group identity.
The Biden administration’s Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, decided last year to add Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist—one of the leading sourcebooks on critical race theory—to his list of recommended readings. To give an idea of how radical Kendi’s book is, one of its famous (or infamous) arguments is that ‘Capitalism is essentially racist,’ and that ‘to truly be antiracist, you also have to be truly anti-capitalist.’”
Once a sufficient number of people have been indoctrinated in this way, the army could be used to suppress resistance movements by patriotic Americans who want to secede from this nefarious ideology. They would be forcefully beaten down and sent to concentration camps.
A compulsory draft would enable “President” Joe Biden and his gang of neo-con controllers to force everybody to accept this malign ideology. And given the racial quotas that now prevail, why would we think that the armed services could defend us anyway?
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EXCLUSIVE: Australian Political Prisoner Responds To Julian Assange Release
Aussie Cossack joins Alex Jones live via Skype to discuss Julian Assange’s release back to Australia.
Also:
Bird Flu Vaccines to Be Administered to Humans in Finland Starting Next Week
Finland on Tuesday became the first country in the world to offer vaccinations for bird flu, as public health officials warn of a potential outbreak.
According to The-Express.com, Finland has procured enough two-dose vaccines, produced by CSL Seqirus, for 10,000 people as part of an EU agreement securing 40 million doses for 15 nations.
Finnish health authorities hailed the jab procurement and said it will be distributed to adult patients on a voluntary basis, stating, “The vaccine will be offered to those aged 18 or over who are at increased risk of contracting avian influenza due to their work or other circumstances.”
The jabs are projected to be distributed next week.
Although there’ve been no documented cases of zoonotic animal-to-human transmission of avian influenza in Finland, the country ostensibly claims it’s taking steps to prevent a potential outbreak due to its numerous fur farms.
“The conditions in Finland are very different in that we have fur farms where the animals can end up in contact with wildlife,” said Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare Chief Physician Hanna Nohynek.
The US government also ordered 4.8 doses of CSL Seqirus cell-based adjuvanted H5 bird flu vaccine earlier this month.
While cases of bird flu in humans are rare, the establishment has made the disease their latest cause célèbre, with public health figures claiming it has the potential to become the next “great pandemic,” and sparking fears among consumers of beef and dairy products.
Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations globalist think tank has called it “alarming” that the public is no longer as receptive to mask mandates and social distancing amid a potential bird flu outbreak.
WHO: New Monkeypox Strain Causes Miscarriages, Has 10% Fatality Rate & Spreads Without Sexual Contact
The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning about a new strain of monkeypox spreading in Africa that could allegedly make its way to Europe and wreak havoc around the world.
The mutant variant is named clade 1b, which scientists call, “undoubtedly the most dangerous strain of mpox yet.”
Spreading throughout central Africa, mainly the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the variant allegedly “causes miscarriage and has a fatality rate of 10 percent.”
The spread of mpox in Africa needs to be addressed urgently, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, as scientists warned separately of a dangerous strain in the Democratic Republic of Congo. https://t.co/gk7sHvCjys https://t.co/gk7sHvCjys
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) June 25, 2024
A new strain of monkeypox that causes miscarriage and has a fatality rate of 10 per cent is spreading rapidly in central Africa, a team of experts warned in a press briefing today.
— josette caruso (@josettecaruso) June 25, 2024
There are fears the new virus – now officially called mpox- could quickly spread to Europe and… pic.twitter.com/3nNu4IPD41
The virus is behaving “extremely” differently than prior monkeypox variants, now being transmitted between humans without sexual contact.
Additionally, doctors are worried this new strain is resulting in blisters all around the body and not just on the patient’s genital area.
The virus is being rebranded by the media this month as “mpox” as they appear ready for the illness to travel worldwide.
“Overall, 7,850 mpox cases have been reported in DRC, and 384 deaths, according to the World Health Organization – although it is unclear how many are attributed to clade 1b,” reports The Telegraph.
The leading researcher on the new strain, Leandra Maskina, said, “This is just the tip of the iceberg. The cases are getting higher and higher every day, and it’s only a question of time before it spreads to other countries.”
On Tuesday, Reuters reported South Africa recorded its third death from “mpox” in an outbreak that started in May.
The WHO’s technical lead for monkeypox recently told journalists, “There is a critical need to address the recent surge in mpox cases in Africa,” and that efforts are ongoing to get monkeypox vaccines out to central Africa.
Executives from Moderna said on Wednesday they initiated a research program to look into creating an mRNA monkeypox “vaccine.”
It’s quite interesting that expert research scientist Dr. Judy Mikovits has been warning that monkeypox viruses have been found in vaccines since the 1990s, including simian virus 40 being found in the Moderna and Pfizer Covid shots.
Watch Dr. Mikovits break down the scandal below:
In the aftermath of COVID-19, citizens across the globe have been repeatedly told the “next pandemic” is coming.
These bizarre warnings from the global elite have billions of people anxiously awaiting the next round of forced experimental jabs and totalitarian lockdowns.
Will monkeypox be the next election-interfering virus to disrupt the world?