Shaun Newman Podcast - #336 - Alex Krainer & Tom Luongo

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Tom is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian & economist whos work can be found on sites like zero hedge & Newsmax media. Alex is a Croatian National, former hedge fund manager, author, contributing editor at Zero Hedge. We discuss Ukraine/Russia, the Fed & Europe.   Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brandt. This is Wayne Peters. This is Sean Baker. I'm Megan Murphy. This is Jess Moskaloop. I'm Rupa Supermonea. This is Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday, November 2nd. You know what that means? A new month, a new intro. The intro this month is obviously all guests that came on in October.

So I think this is the third or fourth month. I've done it this way each month. we try and showcase who we had on the podcast last month. So if you missed any of them, now you get to hear some of the names lead off the show, which keeps it a little freshen. And certainly if you haven't heard some of the top guests from last month, I suggest you go back and listen because there's been some great content. Now, we got a great show on Tap for you today.

As Tom and Alex get going at times, I go silent for a good chunk of time as I just try and tread water on what they're talking about. Either way, before we get there, let's get to today's episode sponsors. Blaine and Joey Stephan, Guardian Plumbing and Heating. They are the 2021 Lloyd Minster Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year. Shout out to Tebar, one, who is the 2022, not only business of the year, but employer of the year as well. So, side note there.

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whether you're looking for a small office or you've got multiple employees. Give Wade a call, 7808-808-50-25. Now, let's get on that tail of tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial, or oilfield locations. For more information, visit them at Hancock, petroleum.com. C.A. First is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on sites like Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media.

The second, a Croatian national, former hedge fund manager, author, and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. I'm talking about Tom Luongo and Alex Kramer. So buckle up, because here we go. This is Tom Luongo. I'm Alex Cranner, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Alex Craneer and Tom Lawongo.

first off fellas thanks for for doing this again hopping back on the show together this time instead of one on one sure I've got it on Sean good to be with you uh now for the listener if you're you're you know you're tuning in for the first time you're going who are these guys I I'm not going to go back through their back stories and everything else you got to go back to episode 321 with Tom or 327 with Alex there's a solid hour on each and I think that gives a good background on both you So where I want to start today, and we'll see where you two take this on me, but that's going to be the fun of it, is I'm curious. You guys stare at a lot of the world events and different things. What's catching your attention currently? And I don't know, boys, we'll see where it goes from there. And Tom, you look like you're foaming at the mouth. You know, you got the big cigar.

No, I'm actually sitting there just check and looking at the markets before we get started this morning to see where things are. Because the FMC meeting started. So I'm like, so where's oil? Oh, look, oil's at $95 a barrel. All right, good. That's always a good place to start, right? Absolutely. What's catching your attention?

What's concerning you? What do you think people need to know? What's got Tom's attention, I guess? Is there going to be World War III? Like, let's just get down the brass hacks. Like, what Alex and I, last time he and I chatted together was on my podcast, episode 119, which is, by the way, the last one that I've done, which is all way too long ago.

I was just telling Alex that it's one of the better traffic podcasts he and I did. But in that podcast, we went over our reasons why we thought the Brits were behind Nord Stream 2. And this was about four days after the bombing of North Stream 2 or four or five days afterwards. We jumped on a call together. We did the podcast. We put it out. And there was Alex at DM me and said, dude, this was obviously the polls and the Brits. And I'm like, yeah, you're right.

And they were doing it. And I'm like, yeah, and they did it for Davos. And then we sat and we just chat about all this stuff. And well, you know, the Russians came out the other day to let everybody know that, yes, indeed, it was, in fact, the British Navy with the Swedes giving them cover and probably the polls were involved as well and blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is an act of war. And they have the proof now because someone hacked Liz Truss's phone to prove it. They've got the timestamp, right? I don't know if you saw this or not, but they got the timestamp of the Gazprom, you know, saw the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the.

the explosion on their sensors. And a minute later, Liz Trust texts Anthony Blinken and says, it's done. Now, I, you know, I'm sure she wasn't talking about, you know, her popovers. So, like, let's not kid ourselves. This is an act of war by the Brits. The Russians have them dead the rights. And there's, and my dog agrees with me. And so I, it's clear that every provocation, I have to do that because I'm doing the

outside and she's a she's a she's a guardian dog and she just barks randomly at stuff she hears in the woods um no no man it's like to me this is the sign that even the dogs now understand if they're paying attention what's going on absolutely right Alex like no but it's seriously like you know it's clear that every one of these major provocations that we've had in ukraine over the last month or so last month of six weeks as we move towards the mids the midterm elections here in the united states that they were trying to gin up an excuse for war or at the very least tie the incoming GOP majority's hands that they would have to go with more war spending and everything else. And this is actually where I want to take it, the conversation today, because I think it's also very clear that

we have a, well, from, you know, the globalist point of view, a wayward federal reserve who needs to be brought back in the line. What do you think, Alex? Well, I do agree with you. And I think that if we go back to the North Stream 2 thing, the reason why I suspected it would be the Brits is because they are all over this conflict in Ukraine. They are really stage managing it from behind. They have a military pact with Poland and another military pact with Poland and Ukraine. and according to some Ukrainian nationalist, fascists who were briefed on this, Turkey was meant to be part of this pact. So it was going to be, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, there was a speech by one of those, the leader of the C-14 gang or organization, which is like the youth organization of the Pravi sector. or so like Nazis Nazis. He was giving a speech. I think it was back in February. I don't know if you'll, you might recall it was that young guy who was saying like, we have fun killing.

We have fun making war. And that's why the West is giving us all these weapons. We have more javelins than any other nation in Europe other than the UK. And they're giving us loads and loads of weapons because we are the only ones who are willing to execute their commands or, you know, something to that effect, but pretty, he was pretty explicit about this. And this was a recorded video speech by him, you know, I think it's still floating around on the, on YouTube somewhere. And basically, what he was saying is that they were going to defeat Russia, that there was a coalition being formed between the UK, Poland, Ukraine, and Turkey. But now we know

that Turkey pivoted completely and Turkey is no longer. You know, like Erdogan was kind of trying to sit on both chairs for a long while. Yes. Now he made his choice. And I think that the repercussions of this are going to be huge. Agreed. And, okay, going back to the Fed, you know, man, I read your stuff. I kind of think there's no chance that you're wrong about this.

Yeah. I, FYI, I spoke to some people, I was at a conference in Miami over the weekend. I spoke at an investor's conference over the weekend

and some of the people in the room that I chatted with. Yeah, they confirmed so much of what I've been saying because they're one step closer to the people that I've been writing about. And then everything I hear from Daniel D. Martino Booth,

who's very close to the Federal Reserve. And every time she gets close to saying whatever needs to be said, she said, well, I can't see any more than that. Okay. You can't say that the Fed is trying to destroy the Eurodollar markets to bankrupt the Bank of England so that the U.S. can finally declare independence after 250 years. You can't say that. Okay. Well, what is she saying? Is she saying that like, I can't tell you that the Fed is, is that what she said? What she said, what she said with Keith McCullough at Hedge-I a couple weeks ago, interview on October 13th, the last, it was that

Hedge I did their big investor conference, and she was the final, like the keynote interview. And there she said, Powell is, quote, trying to, and I'm going to screw the quote up because now my brain locks up, but quote, that Powell is attempting to add a controlled demolition of the offshore, of the leverage loan market in dollars. Now, what she didn't say was the word offshore. but it's clear when you're talking about the context of the UK guilt crisis and everything else and that's what she's saying and when Keith McCullough pressed her on that she said I can't say anything and I almost I almost and she was almost I was watching this going but if you but if you listen to my man Tom he'll tell you everything you need to freaking up okay I this whole this whole interview was literally like a whole Jedi master young Pat you know talking to his young Paduan and Keith

my college has happened to be in the way. Like, I literally thought she was speaking to me directly for an entire hour. She mentioned almost every one of my talking points. She mentioned all of this stuff. She won't mention me directly. That's fine. Maybe she's not even listening to me directly. I don't know. I happen to think that there's, you know, there's, there's something going on there. But that's fine. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Maybe she's just heard it through the zeitgeist and it's filtered up to her. And she's not aware that I've been talking about it this way. But as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. Like she's hearing it from somebody. within her organization, within her circle of friends or whatever.

So and that's all the matters. And that's now she's and she can't say what she can, what she needs to say because she's too close to the Fed. So when boys, I'm listening, you know, when you talk about masters and paddaloons, I'm like,

I'm like below a paduan, you know, I'm just like on the bottom tier of this sucker. So when you talk about the Fed trying to bankrupt, uh, the European dollar like is that, not the year, well,

the, the offshore. dollar markets. They're called Eurodollar, Sean, because it's an old term of art, because during the Marshall Plan, we recapitalized Europe by sending dollars over there and filling their banks with dollars, and then they use those to issue loans and levered up to rebuild and recapitalize Europe. And the term euro dollar stuck, but it's really just all offshore dollars. We're talking about dollars that are in Hong Kong or Singapore or Zurich or, you know, in Brazil. It doesn't matter where they are. As long as they're not, It's offshore dollars and onshore dollars.

No different that onshore you want and offshore you want, right? Like they're cleared through different, there's different clearing houses for this stuff. It's all, you know, it just understand that in general it's onshore versus offshore. And the offshore market is, and it's, and it's U.S. dollars. It's not, it's not Euro's actual United States dollars. Absolutely. These are dollars sitting in foreign bank accounts. Yeah.

That can then be used to be able to be. lent out to do business improvement loans or speculate on the markets or whatever they get people who are using them for. Like that's where all this foreign, the number that will, that shocks people and why the dollar is still, everybody who's a dollar bear keeps making the mistake of forgetting that while there's a whole lot of U.S. treasuries out there, there's a whole lot of U.S. dollar denominated foreign debt. Because what do you think you get when U.S. dollars are being sold by the Federal Reserve and

the Treasury, you know, for no interest, right, at zero at the zero bound, where you can get 10, U.S. 10 year money at 1.6%, right? Like, dude, it's practically free. So, or you can get two-year money at, you know, 0.5%. Right. It's, it's practically free. So you can take a business loan or a credit revolver against your business with the bank in dollars for two points over the Fed funds rate, or you can take it for five points over the Turkish lira rate, which is currently like 22%. Clearly you're going to buy dollars. You're going to buy that debt in dollars.

You do your revenue in dollars. You know, you do most of your business in dollars, especially if you go like a Turkish exporter or a German exporter or whatever. Like that's what you're doing your business in. So of course you would hedge your currency risk and there's no reason to use your local currency. So with the Fed raising interest rates dramatically, it's changing. the leverage, it's reversing the leverage of all of these dollars. Because those dollars are levered up and loaned out eight, nine, then times, just like they are

here. The whole classic fractional reserve monetary system. There's fractional reserve domestic dollars. Well, there's fractional reserve international dollars. And those are, those are an order of magnitude, two orders of magnitude, bigger than the domestic dollar on. That's the, that's the thing that's vulnerable here with the Fed raising interest rates. Yeah, and I'd like to add just to make things a little bit simpler for people who are not quite as deep into this analysis as you are, Tom, is that basically what happens when the Fed raises interest rates is the value of the, first of all, the cost of debt in US dollars goes up and the value of the US dollar goes up. So it means that everybody abroad has to work a lot harder to acquire those dollars in order to be able to pay back those U.S. dollar debt. Exactly.

And because that's so effectively loan servicing costs go up. That means profitability has to go down. That means there's less consumer spending. That means there's less industrial reinvestment. That's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And again, if you've ever had a margin loan, guys, make it really simple. You make 40 grand a year and you have $10,000 in credit card debt. You're in trouble.

You've got a 25% of your annual salary is being, you know, you're paying 13% on. What if that, or even if it's, even they got good credit, it's 9%. Now it's 13% by the way. Or your HELOC that you took out against your quarter of a million dollar home. That last year was 2% is now 6. Your loan servicing costs just went up. They tripled. Now you have less money, disposable income.

You have to, you have to augment your, you have to shift your budget from, you know, your payment being, I don't know, so let's pick a number from $500 a month to $600 a month because the interest portion of that loan went up in order to pay the same amount of principal every month. You got to, you know, you got to kick the payment up. And that's what a variable rate debt is all about. Well, you know, in in in Europe, the thing about it is is a lot of these offshore dollar loans are direct bank loans. And then they're hedged and they're in this.

Then there's interest rate derivatives and all this stuff to hedge the the the currency risk and all this other stuff. And that's the big quadrillion dollar derivative pile. And it's all sitting on a few billion dollars or a few hundred billion dollars worth of actual dollars. and if Jerome Powell takes those away, then the whole thing starts crashing down. And it's far worse in overseas markets than it is here in the United States, because in the United States,

we mostly issue corporate debt. Right. So when Apple wants to expand the business, Apple's a bad example, but take a mid-tier fracking company. If tomorrow Joe Biden was allowing everybody to frack again, well, then the Permian Basin guys would go out and they'd buy, and they, you know, they may or may not take a bank loan or bank credit

revolver. They may turn around and go, you know, we need to expand. Hey, we're going to drill some new wells. Who wants to buy that equity? Or who maybe we'll issue a corporate bond, right? Because we know what the cash flow stream is going to be off of these properties because we've already done all the exploration work. You know, shipping companies operate the same way. Pipeline MLPs work exactly the same one. They met, they always either, they like to issue debt when the cost of the, they issue shares when the, when the cost is high, when the share price is high and buy debt when the share price is low. So in the top of a bull market, that's when you'll see, you know, midstream players like, you know, any pick a pipeline company, mid-Americans, whatever, it doesn't matter, right? And they'll all just,

they're all trying to push the share price up so that they can issue corporate debt. Or because they no, if worse comes the worst, they can, if the loan goes bad, they can just dilute the share, they can just pay the bondholders back by diluting the company, but it never goes to the bank. It doesn't become a bank problem, right? In Europe, it's all bank problem. Every bit of it. You know, there's no, there's no Italian can only make care out there issuing corporate debt to expand his business. He went to Unicredit and got a, you know, $50,000 loan to start another franchise in Milan as opposed to Rome. Like, you know what I mean? That's what's going on.

And those are the guys that are in trouble with the energy bills, with the stronger dollar, they're getting, they're getting hit from both sides. The higher energy bills clear costs a good sold problem and higher debt servicing costs from the fed side. So where do you see, where do you see this leading towards them? Like where, if you're looking a month out, two months out, I don't know what the time frame is. No one does it.

Fair. No one knows what the time frame is. Right. But where do you see it leading then? If they're getting hit from all sides, you're going like these guys are in trouble. Where does it go? I'll give this one. Alex knows exactly what's going to happen next.

Go ahead, Alice. God, you know, now you put me on the spot. Of course, I don't know exactly what's going to happen. But what I think we're seeing is, first of all, wholesale destruction of small, small and medium-sized businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses worldwide provide something like 70% of employment. They are the engine of economic growth. They are the engine of innovation. This whole process is a war on small and immediate size businesses, and I think it's deliberate. it. So what that does is that you're going to end up with severe social uprisings.

Because people are going to be out of jobs, they're going to become dependent on the state. And I think that the state already has plans in, you know, like to, you know, maybe they're going to introduce CBDCs, which I don't know if they will, because I don't think they're ready. They're going to be conditioning your access to services, to food, to, you know, food stamps, stuff like that, on this and that, that they decide. And so I think that what we're looking at is an attempt of creating like a Soviet style, Soviet style, I don't know, shall we call it tyranny?

Shall we call it? Yeah, something like that. Technocracy is the best way of putting it. Yeah, you can call it a technocracy. But you know, like, technocracy almost sounds nice, you know, like it's like nice. Well, you know how I feel about that. I don't like technocracy with Germans

because, you know, then there's no room for, you know, everybody must stand in line and, you know. But I think that these people are very, seriously evil. I mean, I hate to even use that word, but you can't, you can't really get away from it. So everything leads, everything leads back to W.E.F. Like, essentially, is that where we're at? Well, yes and no. I mean, one of the things I, I just wanted Alex to just like go through the basics here, which is, and you're right. And where Alex went, he went to the end game. The immediate thing is that we're looking at, as he said, a destruction of the middle class, which was very clear. what the whole purpose of this thing is. The demonization of energy producers for making money after they raise the price of oil by starting a war.

Typical cost, Straussing and two-step of synthesis, emphasis, thesis, synthesis, the goal is to blame capitalism for everything. And because, you know, all the greedy speculators. But the big thing here is that you're going to. going to see Europe be the ground zero for the economic collapse that they're hoping will actually take everybody along with them. Right. They want to, they're, they there's this, there's this need on their part. And I, I'm going to, and the they is very easy here. It's the old European money. It's the old, it's the old money that's behind and the old power structures behind all the European banks that are, that are now being torn apart, right? But they,

They wanted some of this, but they wanted it on their terms, right? And Powell's doing it on his terms. Putin's doing it on his terms. And they're not happy. And so things are happening far faster than they're ready for, speaking to Alex's point, about not being ready for central bank digital currencies. And, you know, what they ultimately want is the United States to fight a war with the Russians and leave the Europeans out of it and destroy the United States.

States politically in order to make Europe look attractive from a cat relatively speaking be the the cleanest shirt and the dirty laundry right that's what they're that's what they're hoping for it's not going to happen what's going to happen is europe is going to collapse because the united states commercial banks figured out what was going on and the russians figured out what was going on the chinese figured out what was going on the saudis figured out what was going on the indians figured out what was going on. Turkey even finally, as Alex pointed out earlier, even figured out, look, I can't be a guy with my,

I can't sit on two chairs at the same time. I got to make, I got to make a choice. Because these two chairs are being pulled in opposite directions. So, you know, the choice here is, these choices are clear. Europe is the one that's in the most trouble. You got Christine in Lagarde,

the president of the ECB comes out a couple days and goes, inflation just came out of nowhere. Like, yeah, can you believe that she said that? Yeah, no, I guess I can. I mean, I can't. And that, Alex, honestly, that tells you everything you need to know how out of, just out of touch, not out of touch, how little control they know they have. That that's the, that's the talking point they put out there. Yeah, that's like, that has got to be the dumbest talking points among the dumb talking points.

and like the competition is cutthroat. I'm at this point where I've got to get my partner, Dexter White, to make a meme of Christine O'Garred. I've now got her in the dog mean, this is fine with Christine in Lagarde substituting out for the dog with the house on fire. Now I've got to put her in the Baghdad Bob uniform. So now it's got to be a three-layered meme.

Yeah. Because that's what we're dealing with. With the neck scarf. Next scarf, Baghdad Bob, the beret. house on fire, this is fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where we are. That's how bad that statement was.

She went, that was her Baghdad Balin moment, just like Joseph Borrell had his Howard Kosell moment about the garden and the jungle and all this stuff the other day. They are so out of control. They are so not capable of not showing their disdain for the rest of the world, rest of humanity. They just think we're just this stupid that we'll just believe. anything they say and that they don't doesn't matter because they have control you know they just stole they just stole another election in brazil like you know they just believe that they can they can do anything that they're the masters of the universe and they can then sell us on the dumbest stuff imaginable

stuff it's crazy we're like you do to realize we can see right like we can realize that that toto's literally pulling the the pant leg and the curtain's been drawn back and you're just like you're just like a weird old man you know pulling levers like you you You get this, right? I mean, even the flying monkeys are sitting there going, dude, what are you talking about? Like, it's crazy. I can take the Wizard of Oz thing, like all the way to Tai Eid on this one. I'm going to apologize one last time to the followers of Tom and Alex, right?

If they popped on here. And, but this is the last time I'm going to do it because I sit here and I remember having my conversation with Tom. And I say, how do you, you know, like, how do you get to where Tom is? And Tom laughed and said, you don't. You just follow me. and I'll try and disseminate some of the things. Basically, I'm paraphrasing. Okay.

I'm paraphrasing. That's what you spend 70 hours like Alex and I, we spend our entire lives doing this. And we have a passion project for 20 years. I'm going to ask some very basic questions then on some of the things you guys have said because I'm like, hmm, I don't, you know, like obviously Brazil. I saw that there was election. I saw that, uh, what, what's his pick, uh, Silva is, thank you is now. But I want to go back first. You talk about turkey.

You talk about repercussions of Turkey's choice. That was Alex's words. What choice did Turkey make that has been, has put them on the out or has shown their cards or however you two want to explain it? And Alex, I'll let you fill in the blanks on your words. Go ahead, Al. Yeah, sure. I do think this is a very interesting discussion.

And then it's again, another one of those things that you have to read between the lines and try to connect the dots. Yes. But I think that the Turks have definitely pivoted. So Erdogan, as I said, has been trying to sit on both chairs. I know that the British have tried to seduce him into this military pact with Ukraine and Poland and Britain in order to confront Russia, in order to surround Russia and to. you know, try to drag Russia into a Guagmire in Ukraine and to weaken Russia and defeat her.

And ultimately, regime change it and then to partition it into five small Russia's. I mean, various people have actually been explicit about this goal. The guy, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. They always going to say it. And we know this because for years, during. the interregnum between taking Crimea, between Crimea and 2014 and today, the Turks have been there selling the Ukrainians by Ractor drones and doing and, you know, talk and Erdogans talked out about the Crimean Tatar's in in Crimea and saying that, you know, the Russians were wrong

to take Crimea, blah, blah, blah. This is, these are the things that he's done and said and he really did support the mobilization and the arming of Ukraine for the last eight years. He is a member of NATO. and he was seeing an opportunity. I know who's going to win, so you go on, yeah, so you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you know, like, I, I think that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Turkish were, uh, kind of offering to, to, to Erdogan was to, to, to extend his sphere of influence across this thing that's called the, the great Turania, you know, like all the, all the, all the, of the, regions all the way to the Caspian and beyond where, you know, Turkey would be the predominant player.

But I think that something changed after the North Stream 2 attack. And so I think that the Russians waited a little bit, and then they made it known that one tube, of the North Stream 2, because apparently they built 2, not 1, was intact. And so they basically let the Germans know that we can still provide you the gas if you want it. And the Germans being idiots, they said, no, thank you. We don't want your gas. And after that, so there was a meeting in Astana, or I forget now, very recently there was a, there was a SEO meeting.

And it was at Samarkand and Uzbekistan. Samarkand, yeah. And so the Putin apparently offered Erdogan for Turkey to become the main natural gas hub for Europe. And so this suddenly puts Turkey into the driver's seat as a major player in Europe. You know, now the Turks have gas and the flow of refugees from these. So they have two very powerful levers in their dealings with Europe. So now suddenly Turkey, well, Erdogan quickly accepted this. And his statements after this meeting where, like, you know, we're like this,

we are super tight with the Russians, we're friends, we're allies. and so it was clear that they are they have definitely chosen the chair to sit on and so this whole yeah go ahead go ahead I was going to say Alex is you can take it one step further all of a sudden Turkey stopped backing Aleev's play out of Azerbaijan over Armenia

all right the Nagorno-Karabakh situation right the Russians did that that because the whole goal there was to was to cut Armenia off from Iran, right? Because there's that little sliver of Armenia that cut that has a that comes down to Iran. They want to, you know, the, the character for Putin to Erdogan for years was to bring an oil pipeline, as opposed to one having to go all the way around Armenia into Georgia, right? From Baku to Georgia to Georgia to the capital of Georgia.

Jesus. I can't buy the Baku to Saan. all right that whole tbilisi to say to say on they could just go run another one straight across but they have to take that southern area of armenia and the turks there's no love loss from the armenians and the turks clearly um and so all that that was also on the table as well alev has clearly in azerbaijan has clearly chosen you know the the money coming in from the u.s and the brits started up another conflict in Nagorno-Karabak, the disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan,

and Erdogan was getting involved in that three months ago, four months ago. Today? No, that thing is done. Putin put his foot there. Yeah, so, yeah, so exactly. We have a major change in the security arrangements, and I think the longer term,

okay, so now, I think that this now gives additional reasons to Russia to go all the way and to take all of the Black Sea coasts. So now what we've been suspecting for a long time that they were going to go for Edessa is, I think, damn near a certainty. Yeah, it has to be. They're going to go for Odessa, and they're going to control the flow of Danube into the Black Sea. I think longer term, because now if the Turks and Russians are allied, longer term, they might be able to squeeze NATO out of the Black Sea. Completely.

Turkey is part of NATO, but I don't. But they had the Treaty of Montreux in their back pocket. Erdogan is trying to create Canalesan Bull to get around the Treaty of Montro so that he can control what ships go through. There's all this stuff going on there. There's one other thing to think about. There's two things to think about. One, George Webb brought up the other day, and I hate to quote George on anything because he's just, he's so hit or miss.

But I think he's right about this one, which is that Kissinger is deeply involved in trying to get a pipeline into Europe through Odessa, which is why he went to Davos this year and said, which is why he came out to Davos this year and said, we have to super peace. Because if we don't, then the Russians are eventually going to take Odessa. and he's involved in trying to get a pipeline, you know, out of Israel, up through Turkey, and through the Black Sea or whatever, whatever they're going to do. But it's clear that they want to bring a pipeline into Odessa and understand that what everything Alex is talking about about the gas hub means that all those old Ukrainian pipelines will finally be sunset and all the new capacity will go through Turkey. Here's the fun part.

Then there's the other announcement that was the other day, which is that Iran and Turkey are now talking about a pipeline. And remember this. Everybody forgets this. Let's go back to 2016. And the coup attempt. The only reason Erdogan is alive is because the Iranians, because Putin tipped him off that this coup was coming and the Iranians smuggled him out of the country.

Now, I have that on authority. I've had that in my back pocket for six years, that when Erdogan on the night of the coup was talking on his iPhone telling his his security forces in in in an kara to stand their ground he was in iran and oh i didn't know that and the coup was run out of inserlick the american air base out of insolk by the brits and the americans oh wow i i didn't i didn't know that i talked to iranians about this directly wow at this now this was was when I first started back in 2016. So yeah, no.

And you can see it in the way Iran and Turkey have diplomatically, you know, cross paths over the years, even during the Trump administration. And I will never, ever, ever forget after that happened when Erdogan went to Moscow and hugged Putin publicly, hugged him. Not a firm handshake. hugged him for saving his life. Okay. These are at a certain level,

all of this stuff is about the people and all, you know, and everything we've seen, we've been seeing out of the, out of NATO, vis-a-be Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, all this. It's all rear-guard actions since the moment the Russians moved in in October of 2015. Everything has been a series of rear-guard actions

to, you know, keep a position, but you're still losing ground, you're still losing ground. Like, you know, the Erdogan has vehemently ticked off with the Americans over supporting the Kurds and Kurdish independence against him, but

everything else, he's still nominally of matter. I mean, he's also crazy. Like, you know, he wants half the, he wants to, you know, he believes that he has, you know, he has rights to half the Eastern Mediterranean, for Christ's sake, including, like, Greek islands, which is just nuts. But,

ignore all that stuff. Like the big stuff here is that he can easily cut NATO out of the Black City. And this grain deal thing is just another, yet another example of them playing games. Yeah, yeah.

What's the significance of the green deal? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. What's the significance of the grain deal? Obviously, food supply. But I mean, you know, sitting over here in North America, you read the headlines talking about it.

And I go, okay, well, you two fine folks. What do you make of Russia pulling from the Ukraine-Krain deal? I'll let you go, Alex. What do you think? I have some ideas. That's why I want to hear what you. Okay. I'll tell you my ideas, but I could be wrong because I haven't looked into this very closely.

But given that most of the cargoes with grains going from the Black Sea ended up in Europe, I think that it's Europe that's going to find itself with a major problem and food shortage is even worse than what we knew was coming. And then, you know, food inflation worse than what we knew was coming. So I think that's the main impact of it on Europe. I suspect, I could be wrong because I don't know how fast this can be developed, but I suspect that the right. Russians will be able to re-root the grain flow through the Caspian and down this north-south international corridor so that the grain might eventually be able to find its way to the global south. But again, it's the Europeans that are going to have another self-inflicted wound. from my perspective i was thinking about this the other day and i wrote something actually yesterday

morning for my uh my patrons i haven't found public with it but i'm kind of probably work it up into a public post a couple days i see this as yet another attempted at a PR campaign to um try and turn the people of the west against the evil russians for stopping the grain flow it's a typical MI6 thing um from that perspective while they were smuggling weapons in to Ukraine in these boats as they were showing up in Odessa. Like, and the Russians knew this the entire time. They have to close the border at Odessa. The grain deal is all, it's like, I called it the granitania yesterday.

Like, I think of it like the Lusitania. Like, it's yet another Winston Churchill style British false flag incident to turn public opinion against the new Hitler. First it was the Kaiser, then it was Hitler, and now it's Putin. Okay. And everything Alex has said plays into that. To me, this is, you know, the downstream effects of this are very clear.

And I even look at, you know, the whole, the Russians hacked Liz Truss's phone. Notice how it's the Russians. I have, I can make an equal opportunity case here, an equally valid argument that it was the Russians who leaked this information in order to tell everybody that the British, you know, were involved in North Stream 2. And I can also see MI6 leaking it in order to be able to control the narrative on it to say, look, the Russians hacked the Liz Truss's phone, just like they're about to hack the election in the United States, because they need to invalidate it so that they can then gin up more war propaganda because now I'm going to go all the way back to the Federal Reserve because they need

the incoming GOP, the leadership of whom are just as warmongering as the freaking Democrats, if not more so, in order to justify trillions of dollars in war spending that they couldn't get through with build back better and the infrastructure bill and everything else, the force the Fed to monetize trillions of dollars of debt that the world doesn't want and that would weaken the dollar, that would undo, that would undermine the Fed's monetary policy and basically it's CARES Act version two, except this time it's world, it's, you know, it's Dr. Strangelove. You might as well just call it the Dr. Strangelove Act.

And I think that's where we are. And that's what I see is the significance of this grain deal when I start really doing, you know, I really start analyzing the way these people operate because they're not clever. They do the same shit over and over and over again. And they think they're smart and doing it. And the Russians are like, you know, that's cute. Erdogan.

close the Bosporus. We're closing the frigging, we're closing the corridor. And now that we've moved all of our new recruits to the front line to stabilize the lines, and we've wiped out

Ukraine's ability to, oh, I don't know, generate electricity. When most of the trains in Ukraine run on, as Doug McGregor put it the other day, run on electricity with no electricity, no trains, no trains, no reinforcements,

no Western weapons make it into the country and those that run on diesel fuel well they can be specifically targeted there will be no Ukrainian response here and now the Russians they're see interestingly enough and this is like I again hate the hog the microphone or anything but I was thinking about all of this stuff kind of comes to you in a flash so I read a great article by a guy by the name of a big surge if you read a big surge the substack a big surge you did a great article about Russia and von Kauswitz about about a month ago and you explain and told everybody, this is the way the Russian army is organized. Russian army is organized in the small BTTs or battalion tactical groups,

not very large, 600, 800 men. These are the professional soldiers that do 90% of the work and, you know, under the cover of artillery and tanks and, you know, EW and all the rest of it, right? And the most of the rest of the army is conscripts and reservists. Well, the partial mobilization after the after the bombing of Nord Stream 2, which was the dumbest thing that Brits could have ever done and then followed it up

with the Kurtzstraight bridge bombing. All you did was give Putin everything all the reason he needed to do the partial mobilization and next the next legally the four oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Now he legally, under Russian law,

can move all of his reservists into these four Ukrainian oblasts, into the Donbass, into Kerson, into Zappar, into Zaporizia, freeing up his professional army to take Mikhailiev, Karkoff, and Odessa. And what he did when the Ukrainians attacked this summer to get their PR campaign wins that they needed in order to keep the money flowing, they just seeded ground that they knew they couldn't hold. And they didn't want to hold.

Like Doug McGregor's gone over the battlefield strategy of this, and I'm like, it's really obvious. just, oh yeah, we only have a thousand guys here. We'll just leave. Let you take all the territory. And then we'll bomb your, you'll bomb your supply lines, your ability to reinforce and resupply behind you, and now you guys are trapped.

And now we're going to kill them all. Okay. And then we're going to bring, and then we're going to move 10,000 troops back in, and we're going to take the whole thing right back. Like, this idea that the Russians are completely inept at war is stupid.

I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes. Not saying they haven't made a lot of mistakes. Putin should have went in and done this from the beginning. That was a mistake. But that's over. Those mistakes are done. Yeah, but Tom, you know, to be fair, first of all, you know, like all these talking heads in the West who are,

can't get enough mocking Russians about how inept they have been at conducting this war. like didn't you just get your asses kicked in Afghanistan by a bunch of goat farmers? I mean, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, fair enough. Dude, I'm terrible at war.

Seriously. When was the last time the West won a real war? You're like, it's one thing to ransack Libya. It's one thing to prevail over Argentina, over a few little islands. But a real war where you've taken territory the size of half of Great Britain. Right. And accounts for 80% of Ukraine's GDP. Right.

And they've done this against the second largest, best equipped, best trained army in Europe. Right. It's like a real thing. It wasn't just like bombing a bunch of nobody's. Right, with NATO intelligence, NATO intelligence, U.S. satellite services, all of it. We just have a slight delay between you and Alex, Tom. Yeah, no, I understand.

And it could just as easily be me. Ah, okay. Is that what is it? Okay. You know, like, Putin also has two major concerns in conducting this war. So, A, you know, he doesn't want to create bad blood between Russians and Ukrainians, because Russians are playing a long game. Yes.

And they want to have good relationship with Ukrainian people, right? They don't want like history to be full of these tales of war crimes, abuses and ugly shit, because that stuff never goes away. You know, like the Turks massacring Armenia, that's still with us today. Things like this never go away. and they always provide like the, how do you call it, where something you can, you know, you can have new conflagrations over this.

So that's one thing. The second thing is that he's very careful about the conduct of war with respect to Russia's allies and partners and the whole of global South and everybody. They have to show that they're, conducting this war with utmost scruple, that every move they make is justifiable, and that it has some legal basis. Agreed.

So, you know, like, if you just said, like, okay, so we are more powerful than these other people, let's just run them over. They could do that. But, you know, from Putin's point of view, it's not just the military conquest. They have to do this in a way that. can be justified and defended both before the Ukrainian population and before and before the Chinese, the Indians, the Iranians, the African countries, South America, everybody. So that when it's all over, the people can say like, okay, we accept the new borders.

we're done we we recognize russia in its new borders yes i i i agree with you completely i've understood that dynamic and i've understood those nuances from the beginning it doesn't the problem is that you're dealing with people in the west who are insane and you're you're dealing with psychopaths at at you know in britain in brussels yeah so yeah no i i get that completely and And I've been, I just want to make sure that, you know, I'm fair in my analysis of what's going on here. I really, I'm, and I'm only, I have my biases here. I mean, don't get me wrong. And I think that the Russians are, they're doing what they have to do.

And I get all of those little nuances. The, it's why I've always thought that they're, that they had to do this this way, which I think was also whiteboarded. in the West is the problem, right? My problem is, or not my problem, but the way I can analyze this is that clearly it was whiteboarded in the West this way in order to then get us to this moment. And every time the Russians win a little bit, well, we're just, you're just forcing them into a tighter and tighter Chinese finger trap. And then we'll eventually get them and we're going to wind up with World War III, which is what we wanted in the first place. That's the thing that, that scares me more than anything else. When you talk about whiteboarding,

you're talking about they drew it up this way, Tom? Is that what you mean? Absolutely. That's what I mean by it. So, drew it up on the whiteboard this way. So is there any way we escape World War III or do you see it as like, man, it's inevitable. Like it, we have just taken, you know, you talk about Nord Stream, you talk about all these different things.

You go, you just see the, the, the, when I listen to you talk, I just see the chest pieces, just aligning themselves up. And it's just like at this point, you know, back in World War I. It was like it was a Tinder box and everybody knew it. And when you read the history, you just see the match was going to be lit and all it took is one little spark away and way it went. This, when I listen to you two talk, I hear very similar things. It's just we don't know or are we a day away or two years away. I mean, when we sit there, is there any way we avoid all this or it's come?

The people who have whiteboarded this want it. there are other countervailing forces, I firmly believe, watching it all play out, that are trying to stop it. The question is, are they powerful enough, strong enough, to make it happen? I don't know. I have to bracket for both. I'm hoping that they're winning.

I try to lay out where in the theaters or the idioms, or this is another word for those like hands of escaping me. where they are winning, right? But then the counter moves are always, well, we escalate further. So when I see the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates to try and drain Europe of all of its money, then no shock that I see the Brits trying to escalate the conflict in Ukraine because, again, how do you neutralize the Fed? You force them to monetize debt, get them to go back to the zero bound, which then lets Europe

off the hook and will allow the Eurodollar markets to be full dollars again, which is the source of all these people's power, City of London, what I call Davos, they're all the same thing. And then the crazy neocons in the U.S. foreign policy, which are mostly, frankly, captured by the Brits, you know, British foreign policy as American foreign policy, has been for 100 years. You know, who do you think stabs the State Department? Who do you think stabs the DOD? Who do you think set up all the frigging think tanks? Who do you think, you know, where do you think these endowments to, you know,

all the best schools are and all this stuff? Where do you think that money comes from? It's all those European money. So the big question here is, and as I alluded to earlier, and hopefully we'll get Alex back, I alluded to earlier, is that the situation as it stands right now

is, has the U.S. financial system and the U.S. The U.S. first, the America first, oligar class. There's an oligar class

that's Europe first. There's a part of the oligar class in the United States. That's Europe first. There's Britain first and possibly Europe first. Then there's the European first. There's the European first.

There's the British firsters. And then there's the American first. And that the American firsters are actually winning, then, you know, we'll know after the midterms what it's going to look like. But I'm seeing a lot of signs right now, little things, the Paul Pelosi incident and some other stuff that tell me, cool, hopefully we get Alex back. Yeah. As Tom's talking, we've lost Alex, but I see him. He's hopped back in. So, you know, I'm saying.

seeing things happen here that tell me that we have that the wrong people are losing very specific and important little battles. Here's one for you this morning. I got a text from my partner, Dexter White, this morning, saying, John Roberts just blocked a lower court order saying that, you know, Donald Trump's, they can subpoena Donald Trump's business records over this, you know, whatever. And like, in some context. And he was like, don't know what's going on there.

I'm like, I'll file that under things that. don't make any damn sense. I'm like, oh, no. This is clearly Wall Street winning. And they put the pressure on John Roberts to say, that's enough. Because John Roberts, as the chief justice of Supreme Court, it's been a pivotal figure, one of these guys that we've seen with a black eye, right? In the past, Roberts just stood up for the rule of law.

Because I got news for you. Trump and Wall Street have already, I think they've already worked out the plan. They know what they're going to do. going to roll how they're going to roll these people you have to start seeing the turn against where you know all these election cases these all these election law cases that have gone against the democrats they've lost in court like 25 times this year some great crazy number like all of these things are real they all mean something they mean the oh no by the way you're not going to steal the election you're not going to steal this race you're not going to steal that race what

when when you talk to him about 25 uh times they've lost Democrats in court. What are you talking about specifically? I'm talking about things like challenging election law, challenging election reform laws in Arizona, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and other places like that. We've seen so many of these. And what are they trying to do?

They're trying to, they're stopping the boat harvesting, they're stopping the, they're declaring the dropbox is illegal. They're going to all this stuff. These are these little things that are, that pop up, And then they go away. And they're going, oh, look, there's one. We'll file it. That's a win, small win, another small win.

And then you look and you see the polls and how they're shifting. It's very clear that Barack Obama would not be called out to support somebody, you know, to support Michigan or Pennsylvania or wherever. To then show up, start doing his thing with this fake Southern accent, his fake, you know, fake homeboy accent, right? To then get shouted down by a crowd saying, screaming Joe Biden and him getting angry. And him trying to like cut the feed so that it can't be sent out on, you know, Elon Musk taking over Twitter two weeks before the election. Guess what?

You know what Elon Musk? You know what Elon Musk bought Twitter for? Have any idea? No. Fire away. the database of all the journalists DMs and how they coordinated with

Pelosi and the and you know and the intelligence agencies and everything else you don't think you don't think that they didn't he went right in and got the backup of the data and the first thing he did was he fired all the the engineers brought in his Tesla software engineers and that

you know and all they said was let's see the database where are your backups let's go and note how many of these blue checks are running around going I'm quitting Twitter how all of a sudden stuff's getting reported that shouldn't be reported that would normally be memory hold yeah because these people are all as compromises members of congress and now musk has got you know counter blackmail material on them oops why do you think musk should have held twitter in court for six months and paid half the price

price just to prove that the valuation is fictitious, the user base is fictitious, and all of it. He didn't. Now, normally you would say, oh, well, they don't want it. He didn't want, no one wanted to go to discovery. No, no, no. Musk said, you know what? The hell with it. It's just money.

It's just money I got from a fictitious valuation on Twitter on Tesla in the first place. Cool. Then we find out from Bloomberg last night that three of his big investors are Qatar, Prince Salaheed of Saudi Arabia and Jack Dorsey. Clearly, they said, you know what? The hell with it. It's just money. We have a bigger problem here.

These people are trying to meme us into World War III. We need to stop this. And we're going to do it right here, right now. And they're not going to be able to cheat. They're not going to be able to steal the election. They're not doing it. And they're freaking out. All I see from the American, the old American political oligarchy is freaking out at every

level. They've lost control of the narrative. They've lost control of the of the megaphone. They don't have an amplification. They don't have an amplification of one side and a deamplification to the other. They don't have it. It's gone. Twitter was the biggest house was the biggest control mechanism they have. Pillar of their control system they have. Next to the New York Times only has still has power because of Twitter. So then I would just, you look at Elon Musk and what he's done to Twitter as a great thing then. Absolutely. Alex, are you back, you finally back with us?

Yeah, man, I keep getting cut out. You know, like I listen, then the line breaks off, then I lose the video, and it seems the only way I can fix it is like exiting the meeting and then coming back in. So I missed a little bit of what you were saying, but... I was mostly just saying that I think that everything with everything surrounding Musk and Twitter is a means by which for the good guys to have counter, to have counter, APO research on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on the on on the on the on the on the on the on the okay yeah yeah there's there because he got

access to the DMs and then you can you should be able to fill it in from there right and I noticed another thing that now those pro some of those pro Ukrainian accounts now have Ukraine state affiliated media that's a win yeah yeah so yeah so yeah very very extremely interesting. Hey, I wanted to mention another thing because we were talking about the Caspian and I just came back from Baku, where I was

invited to speak at a Eurasian Economice Eurasian Integrations Forum that was held on the 27th and 28th last week

of October. And I wanted to mention that just for it because like my biggest impression of the event was the optimism of it. And it wasn't anything stated. Nobody was up there going like, well, it's going to be huge, you know, like anything like that. It was just obvious to me because we in the West are slowly drowning in pessimism. like everything seems gloom and doom over there so at this at this event there were like very

high caliber people there was like the former italian prime minister prodi there was serget glaziev there were a number of like high-level executives of from central banks commercial banks large enterprises and so forth. And all the talk was actually about real solutions to problems of energy, infrastructure, food production, technology,

and the kind of like the underlying gist to everything was almost unquestioned optimism about the future of this Eurasian emerging world. And, you know, there was no talk about ideology, about war, about the West. In fact, there was like an American guy there who was also speaking. And he told me that the organizer specifically asked him not to be critical of the United States in his speech.

Yeah. So anyway, you know, like just now in this Valdai forum, Putin said that we are already in the post-hegemonic world and that the changes are irreversible. And you really got a sense of that there. And I think it really feels that way. It really feels that these changes are very real. The discussions were surprisingly sophisticated,

very intelligent discussions. And I think that this marks, really a shift, a shift, not just for Russia, but for humanity. And I think that when the wet, I think that we in the West are now at the stage

of like a toddler throwing a tantrum. It's not going to work. And I think that eventually the toddler gets exhausted of throwing a tantrum and gets nothing out of it. And I think that eventually

we're going to have to sober up and join the caravan, you know. Alex, you're, thank you. That's really, really important. It's a really, I'm glad you, I'm so glad you went. Like, that's like the excellent, because I saw something similar this weekend in Miami at a small investors conference with mostly Americans and some people from overseas, but for the most part. And we were talking about, you know, we kept saying over and over again, the theme.

was, don't we, do you see what I see? And in terms of how Wall Street and everybody was talking about, and yeah, we all know that Wall Street is eventually going to die and they're all coming to Florida and everything else. And it's amazing what's going on. I hate to do this, guys. You guys keep talking, but I've got a couple of things. My wife needs the car and I have to unload the feed and the hay. And I need about two minutes. So Alex, you and John talk for a couple minutes. I'll be right back. And then we, and then we can, otherwise I have to, otherwise I have to go for the day. Man, don't keep the wife waiting. Exactly. She needs to go because she needs to go and work out and this is very important. So I'll be back in a couple of minutes. All right. Yeah, it sounds good,

Tom. You know, it's been a fun little go here. You know, first, Alex gets kicked out of the conversation multiple times. And then now Tom is is off and helping the wife. I mean, it's always interesting when you put a couple guys in different time zones, all three of us, into a conversation on a Zoom call to see what's going to come. I mean, we got different things going on. We've talked about a whole lot today, Alex.

I didn't know if I got your thoughts on, you know, the World War III, you know, you see all the different pieces moving. And, you know, lots of people saying this is the closest we've been to, you know, since, you know, the Cold War and different.

and things like that. I've seen different numbers putting troops from all over the place into France, into Britain, into Turkey, like just different things going on. And I'm just a layman. I sit back and kind of just,

you know, I can't fret about it that much. And that's henceforth why I bring you two on. What are your thoughts on the different pieces that are being moved? Do you see it as irreversible or is it the two sides, jockeying back and forth. Well, I think that we can't take anything for granted. However, I think that the Russia prevailing in Ukraine is probably a foregone conclusion.

I think that the West already lost, and I think that nothing but a miracle could reverse that. And so as I see it, the recent actions of the of the British have been kind of driven in the way that, you know, like, provocations in order to provoke Russia into responding, into retaliating against a NATO ally. Because then the calculus could change if they could say like, all right, this is an attack on NATO. Now we all go, you know, not just Ukraine fighting there and then the West kind of moving around by proxy, but to actually orchestrate a united front against Russia

and try to destroy Russia in that way. Because, you know, obviously the objective of the war is not to preserve freedom and democracy in Ukraine. Nobody gives a damn about Ukraine's freedom and democracy. democracy, the objective is to try to defeat Russia. And so far nothing has worked. You know, the nuclear sanctions in March were meant to sink Russia's economy. Russia's economy is recovering, whereas the economy of the European Union is sinking, and

Britain and the United States. military, other than Russians withdrawing from a few regions since August, there's no realistic possibility of Ukrainian army defeating the Russians. I think that all this talk about nuclear false flag, about the provocations, the Kirk Bridge attack, the drones attack in Sevastopol, the North Stream 2, North Stream System attacks. I think that all of this is meant as attempts to get Russia to retaliate in a way that could give pretext to NATO to unite and to say like, right, this is war. We're now we're going to go to war with Russia and in that way to get the World War III scenario going. But I think that Russians understand, first of all, they nobody really wants that war other than maybe the Brits and the Poles.

Even within NATO, most countries other than Poland are not interested in going to war with Russia. and Russia itself understands that if it took any of these provocations and actually retaliated against, you know, like now they could say like, okay, Britain was behind the attacks in Sevastopol and Britain was behind the attacks on North Stream 2. So now we're going to, I don't know, sink a British ship. that would be the best gift that the Russians could give their adversaries in the West. And I think that the Russians perfectly understand this. And I think that that's the reason why they're not going to take any of these provocations. So the Western side is going to have a lot of difficulty

getting that World War III going. Because the, you know, like the willingness is not there. The sense of urgency is not there. You know, like Russia, Russia is not Soviet Union. Putin is not Stalin. Right. It's not Hitler either. I think that...

He's the moderate. In the West is kind of getting off the rails. It's, you know, like, it's no longer, if it ever was credible, it isn't anymore. And so I think that while World War III scenario is plausible, I'm not sure that it's probable. I actually think that it's not likely. I hope so. All I'm going to say, Alex, is that they're taking away as many of Putin's non-military options as possible. And that's the problem.

And you're dealing again with people who are implacable and just refuse because they need to have, it's not just that they need Putin as a scapego. They also need the United States as a scapego for the destruction of Europe, right? Yeah. They need, they need both scapegoats in order to justify bringing Europe into the centralized rubric of fiscal consolidation under the ECB and political integration fully integrated, excuse me, under the European. commission with tax and spend authority and all the rest of it and to do away with all of national sovereignty and i think they only get that right if um they only get that um if they can somehow figure out how to get the PR war justified to the point of saying all right here we are he's Hitler no really he's bombing civilians he's starving yeah he's starving everybody and and i know that's what

they're trying for. I don't know that it's going to be successful. But it's clear that that's what their current goal structure looks like. The Russians are perfectly aware of all this stuff. I agree with you 100%. The problem is whether or not they actually

the Brits have already tried to kill Putin once. They're going to try again. They know that if they can get rid of the moderate, the guy who understands the chessboard and put a Russian hot head a Slavic hothead in his place, they're going to get their war. Yeah. And that's the problem.

That's the thing that Martin Armstrong is going to bang on about. I've been banging on about this we all have because we can see the setup here. So Putin's not going to give him that war. Now, here's something that we discussed in the last month's newsletter that my partner, Dexter White talked about. And he and I have been discussing behind the scenes is where does Russia have. have on the ground asymmetries and how can they respond to the provocations in the West that leave Putin not wounded militarily or politically at home keep the attack dogs at bay but also let everybody know that you can stage 101st airborne three miles you know inside the the Romanian border but you don't have have any idea of what we'll do to you if you go any further. And it's very simple. The Russians

still have sub-kilat-ton nukes. We don't. We don't have battlefield nukes. You know, 50-ton throw-weight, 100-ton throw-weight. The Russians still do. We got rid of them all. They're just too hard to, they're too expensive to maintain. We only have big ones. We have the tactical, there's battlefield nukes, then there's tactical nukes, then there's strategic nukes. we only talk in terms of tactical and strategic nooks because that's all we have the russians still have they can still set off they can still set off one bomb with 50 tons worth of ammunition a white out of a city or better yet an entire military column okay and now it got let out now the doD just let it out today or the white house let it out today oh yeah there are americans on the ground in ukraine again these are

ripwire troops. Why? Yeah. Because now they're daring the Russians to kill them. Yeah. We know that there are Brits on the ground. The Brits have already committed an act of war. And the Russians have publicly told the world that the British and the American governments

were involved in an act of war to blow up a Russian pipeline serving civilian infrastructure international waters. So, yeah. Like the Russians are fully justified. Biden now under international law. How are, how are, how are the lawyers at the European Commission and the White House supposed to spin? Well, we're not at war with Russia.

We're just, and we're not combatants here. We're just supporting Ukraine. You got people on the ground. Yeah. You got, we, we know who we have British POWs. Oh, they're just mercenaries. No, they're not. Like, we now have Polish troops and Romanian troops in Ukrainian uniforms in Ukrainian uniform.

fighting on behalf of the Ukrainians. Like, all of this is bullshit. Every last bit of it. And the Russians just keep cataloging and documenting, just like they always do, especially under Putin, document every crime, send Nabanza to the UN, and explain it all to everybody.

And you're right that we're acting like a bunch of, you know, we're acting like a bunch of children having a tantrum and they don't seem to care which is what's just scary more than anything else I also think that Russia has the benefit of time on their side I agree

because the the Western political financial economic systems are imploding at an accelerating rate and there's going to you know like I think that the West is you know the

I think there's still the United States is the pivotal power and the only way that this whole Western block functions at all is thanks to the Biden administration that's still coddling

these crazy neocons yep he's working with I think that sorry he's working with them he's doing their bidding yeah

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, like, if you go, if you go Donald Trump back into the White House, game over. I mean, game over. And so all of that is possible, you know. Maybe the Schultz government falls in Berlin. Maybe Macron government falls in Paris. I think Macron is more, I think Macron is more likely. The no confidence vote last week.

Apparently, Macron is full on himself in depression. Apparently, that's... I haven't heard that. But I have to have that between... He's suffering depression because everything's going wrong. And so, you know, like a lot of these things, a lot of these fallouts and social uprisings and political changes in the West could ultimately... lead to an improved relationship with Russia.

And so this whole desperate hope to orchestrate the World War II is itself going to start to collapse. I can only hope. Yeah, I also hope. And I think that the Russians are probably going to try to wait it out. And the same time, you know, they're taking. taking care of Ukraine, and they are on all cylinders working these Eurasian integrations where there's real economic development, real prosperity, real future that people feel

and that people are excited about, and that we should be joining the sooner or better, rather than, you know, anyway, I will publish a short report about my thing in Baku, I thought I was very impressed with the phone. Yeah, no, I can't wait to read it. So are you kidding? The thing that I found, and clearly my dog, Camina, she agrees with you. So, she's awesome. So, yes, you are.

I agree. So the, the, the, I can't help myself. It's just the best joke imaginable. All that you just said is exactly correct. The big one here is, again, I come back to the Federal Reserve. Why this is accelerating so quickly is because with the Fed aggressively raising interest rates, we're doing this on Tuesday morning the day before the next announcement from the Fed, even if the Fed were only to raise 50 basis points tomorrow,

it's still an historic rate hike on the eve of an election. They're not. They're going to go 75. I wish they would just go 100. I wish they would go 150 and just rip the band-aid off. But, you know, that's just me. But, you know, I hate globalists. You think they're going to do 75?

I think so. Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt. I think the Guard and company are trying to meme them into only going 50. Okay. Tom, I have a question. Something I don't understand. Why isn't there more hysteria against the Fed in the media?

There is. I think there's tremendous amount. But you remember, they can't yell at the Fed too much because the Fed's a political line. Because that's American media. And because Wall Street has got a lot of these people by the balls. What happened to my? Oh, there it is. I had something my microphone cut out for a second.

I really do think that my read on the major U.S. money center banks, the Morgans and JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup. Again, I was talking with ultra high net worth investors in the United States over the weekend, explaining all this. They're like absolutely right. It's Wells, Morgan, City Group, Goldman Sachs, and now Morgan Stanley's most likely switched sides. The Bank of New York Mellon is still in Davos lands,

both us, same way. Everything you're starting to see is they're all saying, look, we're going to be in charge. Shut up. Okay. The Fed's doing what they're supposed to do. The Fed's still ultimately, and if Musk has got control of the, this is why we found out that, oh, the DHS and the CIA and, you know, the FBI, we're all working with Facebook, Twitter, all these groups, all these. social. That's the biggest news of the week that they were all working together. Oh, by the way, that's illegal. Y'all are going to jail.

Tom, just, hold this for a second. The biggest news is FBI was working with. Can you explain that? Just go a little deeper on that for a second. No, seriously. They're not supposed to be doing this. They're not supposed to be coordinating with journalists and social media platforms to put their thumb on the scale. what we're allowed to talk about, a private, supposedly private company. Is anybody like, it's like Biden standing up in Independence Hall

with the Marine standing behind him, while he gives a political speech demonizing half the freaking country. Like that's a clear hatch act violation. Okay. This is, this is, I mean, from an American's perspective, all this is completely wrong. Like, and everybody is now freaking out

and trying to figure out how they can, like, And they're all going to start turning. So they're either going to write the right headlines or they're not going to, they're not going to say nasty things about the Fed because they can't. Because they've all been told. Oh, by the way, new sheriff in town. His name's Jerome Powell. You're going to shut the fuck up.

Pardon my French. Very important. You can bleat me if you want. I don't care. Like this is important. New sheriff in town. Powell's in charge. This is what we're doing.

We're taking this thing back. And again, as I've explained, the last time I was on the show, Sean, and I'll explain again, City of London no longer controls our debt markets. We control our debt markets. Sofer is the Declaration of Independence for the U.S. banking system from the European and City of London banking system. That's why they're able to get away with what they're getting away with. The people I was talking to over the weekend, again, I kept mentioning they are, I tried,

I was sitting there, and I had it in my speech. I'm like, how many think the Fed's going to raise by 50? How many think they're going to raise by 75? How many only want the Fed to raise by 25 or not raise at all? And I was shocked. No one raised their hand. They all wanted to rate, they all wanted the Fed to go to 100. They all wanted the Fed that has ripped the damn Band-Aid off and get rid of the globalists.

So this is American investors. I mean, there wasn't a big crowd, but still, and yeah, it was a vaguely libertarian crowd, but still, they get it. they understand what the problem is. They understand how this works. And then when I just laid it out and said, yeah. And I'm sitting there laying all this out. And they're all like, and they're like, yes, we get it.

This is. That's amazing. I must say that is amazing. Because you have to get, you have to get why. Yeah, because you know, if you're an investor, you know that the Fed raising interest rate is going to crash the markets. Yes. And you're still voting for that. Then there's a higher agenda.

And if you know what the agenda is, then you can be in favor of it. Yes. And oil is going to $200 a barrel. How do you break Europe? Why did the Saudis go along with the rush? Why did this, why did it? MBS is turning out the crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, turning out to be the most pivotal player in all of this.

Yeah. Because him and Putin together speak for OPEC. And when Biden went to MBS a month ago and said, I need you to hold off until after the election or whatever you're going to do. And MBS has looked at him and went

no. Oh, you won't. We were only going to cut production quotas by a million barrels a day. And MBS did what I would have done. Said, oh, really? You looked at me sideways? Two million. barrels. Look at me. Complain again, and it'll be three. Keep going. Like, this is serious mafia stuff going on here. You've got to think about, you know, like, we're all sitting here chatting

Amy, Amy, Billy. Part of the reason, aside from like weird and wonky internet that I've had for the last couple of months, I really like doing these on my podcast on my back porch with a cigar in my hand, lean him back, got the, I got this look going on as opposed to, you know, Trying to look like a good talking head. I'm doing this on purpose. Because I'm aping the body language of the guys. They've already had all these conversations. They got a whiskey over here.

They got a cigar in one hand. All sitting around at a hotel, you know, at a rooftop hotel somewhere, pick a spot. They've already had these conversations. They've already had Trump in the room. This conversation has already happened. Model their behavior. Think like they think. And all of a sudden, everything makes sense.

So Diamond and Solomon. All the rest of them are like, I don't know. We're not going along with any of this. This is why Janet Allen's trying to do an end run around the Fed to have the U.S. Treasury Institute yield curve control. Are you kidding me? What do you got? $400 billion to play with? The Fed can counter her in five seconds by going, you know what?

Let's raise the RRP rate 10 basis points over the Fed funds rate. Game over, Janet. Gone. Like, look at me sideways. go ahead, do it. Common. I think it's coming. But the Fed is in such a complete control at this point of the situation.

They've got two point something trillion dollars in dollars. They've got a whole bunch of treasuries. They have complete control over the international flow. I said this last year. They have complete control over the international flow of dollars and U.S. treasuries around the world. And they've got the B.O.J, the Bank of Japan, acting as their wing now. while Europe is standing and you're going, this is fine.

I need my $2. Christine O'Guard is literally, you know, the kid on the bike, the paper boy from Better Off Dead, I need my $2. Like, you know, you're not getting anything. You get nothing.

No, actually, and I guess the Fed gets to be Gene Wilders. No, you stole trillions of dollars from us. You get nothing. You lose, sir, you get nothing. Everybody's seen Willy Wonka. You know, everybody's seen the, you know, the original Willy Wonka, right? That's what we're talking about here.

Yeah, I haven't, I'm afraid. Oh, okay. Well, I absolutely recommend, Alex. It's a, it's a perfect piece of Americana in that moment where Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka says you stole fizzy lifting drinks, you get nothing. It's just beautiful. And like, it's a, it's a, I know, you're, I. I know you're European

like understand American mindset it's like right there like but Sean knows what Sean gets what I'm talking about I do get what you're talking about I have seen the original Willie Wonka boys I don't want to hold you here all day although I've

thoroughly enjoyed the conversation going back and forth at times I feel like I'm treading water or maybe gasping for air might be the better one as I try and hold on to Tom and Alex going back and forth but in saying that, is there anything you want to make sure the listeners hear about, talk about? Is there anything on the top of your mind that we haven't got to?

Because if there are, obviously I have more time for as long as you guys are willing to give me. Is there other things that you want to talk about? You know, we've talked real extensively of Russia and Ukraine, the Fed, a bunch of different things going on. is there anything else that that's of the top of mine today before we, you know, let you get on with your days? Ready? I have one for you. So let's go all the way back to the beginning of the conversation. Alex brought it up originally, Turkey and the gas hub.

Ready? Who benefits from that the most? Italy. Because all those gas lines, Turkstream, all feed in to the gas, the southern portion. of the gas pipeline system. Remember, Turkstream, the Russians laid it out. They said, hey, we can send a leg of Turk stream into Turkey, into Italy. We can put four trains in.

If Turkey becomes the gas hub as not going directly into Germany. Nord Stream is all about German control of the European gas distribution. I said that from the moment that Nord Stream 2 was announced. I'm like, oh, this is how the Germans are going to, could hold the whip hand over the Germans and the Hung areas and everybody else by having control over the backflow of gas through the oval pipeline and other things. Well, your Serbia is now between, is now going to be the gas hub distribution center for the Russian gas and even the Azeri gas and the Iranian gas coming in through the new Turkish hub

and they can distribute it wherever they want. Guess what? It's going to go to Italy and Italy gets to be the distribution center for Germany and France, who needs a lot of Russian gas, who needs a lot of gas, by the way. And that allows Italy to declare energy independence. This is why Georgia Maloney is sandbagging everybody. It's saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, we support Ukraine. We, no, absolutely, we'll send weapons to Ukraine. She's being told to. You don't make Mateo Salvini, Mr. MiniBot, Mr. I want to leave the euro deputy vice

deputy prime minister if you don't if that's not one of the long term goals I think she's just biding her time waiting for the collapse to start and waiting for everything else to mature and then she can very and I think she's being coached on this

I don't think she's that smart people I have in Italy don't believe she's that smart but I think that she's being coached that this is the long term goal because Italy needs the gas and North Africa and bringing Libya back online and all the rest of it. There's, when I understand, I was talking to somebody this weekend, there are, there's an immense amount of gas.

The wells have been drilled, they're ready to go, and the EU has forced them to be capped that would supply 30% of the gas that Italy needs, just sitting there waiting, not allowed to be brought online. Italy, they are desperately trying to hold Italy from becoming the gas hub, the gas distribution hub and become more politically powerful within the EU. That's why they're desperate to try and accelerate this. They've got to crash the system first. They've got to crash Italy.

They've got to liquidated. Alex, I've been wanting to say this for an hour, Alex, since you brought up the Turkey gas hub, which just hasn't been able to. Oh, excellent. Listen, very interesting. And I, you know, like, perhaps after the Russians, the biggest group on this Eurasian integrations forum in Azerbaijan. were Italians.

There was like a trainload of Italians there. Seriously. Very, very interesting. Yeah. I asked them about Melonia and they saw it. They all thought like, no, no, she's for real. She's with the Aspen Forum and all this. But I tend to agree with you. I think that she's either being coached or she's sandbagging everybody

because she also has Sylvia Burgosconi in the cabin. And Sylvia Burgosconi, his political career was ended when he said, like, we're going to go out of the EU. Yeah. Yeah, he floated that idea. That was the end for him. And now he's backing government. Yeah. Like, come on.

And she'd tell them, shut up. Don't talk about this stuff. Even on a lot, even privately, shut up. Yeah, exactly. They saw what she just, she saw what they did to, to the list trust. Liz Trust tried to create energy independence for the UK and she lasts 45 days. Yeah.

Well. Oh, and she got her phone hacked by Russia. You know. Yeah. Which is really bad. Not like Angola Merkel having her phone hacked by the United States. Yeah. You know, that's good.

That's the good hacking. Okay. But anyway, you know, like, I think that the current, new cycle is almost like a brain overload. So I think if our, if somebody listening to this feels like they're gasping for air, yeah, I also feel like I'm gasping for air. There's too much going on.

Too many dots that you can't work out how to connect them. It takes, you know, like it takes time. It takes research. But if there's one thought that I'd like to leave, this podcast with is that I would like for people to feel optimistic about the future because we are now perhaps in the darkest period but it's always darkest before dawn and I think that we are at that point where changes are accelerating and all these all these dark agendas that a very small group of really sinister people are pushing is losing traction.

And it's looking uglier and ugly not because they are suddenly appearing, but they're coming into sight. They were always there, which just didn't see them. They're coming into sight. And the more desperate, they get the less time they have to worry about coming into sight. so they're starting to do things that are plain to everyone and it's being increasingly rejected and so I think it's going to fall and it's probably going to fall very soon you know within within the next couple of years so you know like we need to all buckle up it's going to be

bumpy but I think that it's going to be way way better when we come on the other side and we will. Yeah, I tend to want to believe that as well, but unfortunately they've unleashed forces that are hard to control. And I just want everybody to bracket that as much as there are very powerful people trying to stop this

and that we still have, and we still have a tremendous amount of real power as people. the more positive you stay, the better chance we'll have of winning. Because if we acquiesce and just say, oh, they just keep winning. You know, you can't, if you give up, you're never going to win.

Because they're not going to give you your power back. You're going to have to take it back from them. And you take it back from them by, well, you know, finding your own way to be ungovernable, finding your own way to circumvent their system and cost them more money that the Fed, is no longer printing blue. Yeah.

And every dollar that you stop them from accruing and that they have to spend, every extra dollar that George Soros has to spend on a ballot to try and steal an election is a dollar he's never getting back. Okay? Yeah. So we got to look at it.

It's that simple. You're increasing their loss due to friction in physical terms. When you understand that, and you understand that every day, the coefficient of static friction of just doing nothing becomes harder and harder and harder for them to overcome to push us where we need to go.

And physics, the static coefficient of friction is bigger than the dynamic coefficient of friction, right? To get the thing moving to start the pump, to turn the, you know, to get the pump moving is harder than keeping the pump moving. That's why your car, you know, it's like, it's why your gas mileage sucks

while you're accelerating and then it steady stays, right? They want to be at the steady state. You just have to keep saying, you know what? Nope, putting the foot on the break. Nope. No. No. Yeah.

And I think that we're in a better place, thanks to this, than we've ever been, because, you know, up until now, we've always depended on printed news, on radio, on television, and the narrative could be controlled much, much more easily. today there's been like a quantum leap like a phase change in the way we get news we get to figure out what's going on and react to it and so you know like a conversation like this couldn't have happened 20 years ago and today as we speak there's probably thousands of people having these conversations and millions of people scrolling on Twitter on Facebook or whatever.

And you can, you know, like, for all the vitrials, those social network platforms get from people, they don't, they can't censor content as fast as we can create content. So I think, I think this is turning into a tsunami that's going to wipe them out. and I really believe that we are going to wipe them out. Well, I appreciate both of you coming on and doing this with me. Certainly it's been always a bit of a learning, a steep learning curve for me on this side as I sit and listen to you two, go back and forth.

But I do appreciate you giving me some time this morning. We've had our difficulties with, you know, tech as it's booted a couple out. We've had, you know, a man have to leave to go do some hay and everything else. a dog and it's been an interesting couple hours. But either way, boys, I appreciate you coming on and doing this with me. You know, as things progress, we might just have to do it again here in the future. Happy to. Anytime, Sean.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Tom. It was a pleasure to connect with you too and very happy to do it again. And just this small, shameless plug. Alex and I are going to be doing another one of these with Gonzáal Lira. Thursday? Yeah.

Thursday. So in two days, we're going to be doing another one of these. So that should be fun as well. Yeah. Right on. Well,

I'll make sure in the show notes to plug your podcast, Tom. That's always been a wealth of knowledge for me and some very interesting guests and conversations that you've continued to have with different people.

Appreciate it. All right. Thanks, boys. Take care, guys. Take care.