The Duran Podcast - The Holy Grail For European Integration w/ Tom Luongo Live

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

The Holy Grail For European Integration w/ Tom Luongo Live

Okay, gentlemen, we are ready to go. We are live. Hello to everyone that is watching us on Rockfin, on Odyssey, Rumble, YouTube, and on Locals, the Duran. Dot Locals.com. Great to have everyone with us. A big hello to our moderators as well. Zaryel Hisham Valley S Thank you for that super chat Valley S Reckless Abandon

Who else? Peter Good to have you with us, Peter And I think those are our Moderators And we have with us The one and only Alexander McCurs How you doing, Alexander? I'm very well

I'm very well very delighted to be on this program today Very hello. Say hello, Alexander. head we have with us. I'm saying hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. We have with us the brilliant. Tom, Longo, Tom. How are you doing? I'm very well, guys. It's good to see you. It's been a while since we've chatted. I know you guys are really busy. And before we get started this morning, I really do want to say, I'm really pleased for both of you that I know how hard you've worked to build the Duran to where it is. And I know where it came from because I was there with you during the dark days. And it's great to see the success that you guys are having.

And the effect that you're having on the zeit guys, I think it's really, really important. So thank you for, you know, give me the opportunity to catch up and all that. More than anything else. I don't really, you know. Likewise, likewise for you as well, Tom. And we are going to talk about Tom's latest analysis and some of the work that he has been quitting out there, which is very relevant and very interesting.

So, Alexander, I think we're ready to go. Let's begin, Alexander and Tom. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a brilliant article that Tom has written on his own website, which I think we need to mention and talk about. And it's been repartments. All the links of description box.

All the links below. Absolutely. Absolutely. We thought it was so important and so good that we've already done a program about it, talking about the ideological aspects of this. But of course, we can't just do justice to an article like that ourselves. So we're very delighted and very privileged to have Tom himself here explaining this article very well. And of course, it's about Europe.

It is about what is going on in Europe now. And it's not just Europe and the attempt of some people to construct Europe. But it is also about the pressures that this project is. coming under pressures that Tom has been talking about for a long time ever since the Fed started to raise interest rates in the United States and part of the agendas that the Fed is pursuing. And we're starting to see the effect of this and the fact that this is having, the crushing effect that this is having on the people who are running the EU project and the financial institutions which underpin the EU project and the very, very troubling and sinister, and

dare I say it, straightforwardly illegal moves that they're planning to take in order to address these various problems. So it's all about Eurobonds, but that's only, you know, part of the story. I think the first thing to do is to go over to you, Tom, and perhaps you can explain. the points that you were making that article. Sure. Thank you, Alex. I appreciate that. The, uh, what's really, yeah, and it's not like the law means anything to these people, only when it, it matters to them to advance their agenda. Otherwise, the law is just something and it's an inconvenience. Um, so the goal here is, oh, the biggest problem for the EU has been

something that Martin Armstrong had to educate me on 10 years ago, which is that the euro is a currency of contrivance because they don't have any, form of integrated tax and spend authority. They have 20 member central banks issuing euros based on different debt profile, different debt validity profiles. Like, you know, you've got, you've got people like Greece and Italy and Germany in the same union and they're issuing debt at different rates and different risk profiles and all the rest of it. And so the, the European Union has been able to, construct itself as a political union assiduously, almost like these people are running Microsoft Project as a Gant chart, like, we're going to do this on this date, we're going to do this here,

and we need to do that there. But the fiscal integration that is necessary to make a political integration that they've achieved stick has to come in the form of giving centralized tax and spend authority to the European Commission. Alex, you and I talked about this years ago during COVID, when they issued the sure bonds. So that's why I brought it up in the article. I brought it up back in an article I wrote back on Halloween. Actually, when Lagarde was out there, ECB president, Christine Lagarde was out there screaming that,

hey, it's time that we create an index for these euro bonds to up their profile so we can get investors to buy into them. Well, yeah, but they were trading at 55 cents on the dollar at that point. So, and that's when I went into that whole thing. And I educated myself on where that was. I remember the beginning of the story. hey, let's get the camel's nose under the tent to start giving the EC, the European Commission tax and spend authority.

But, you know, okay, so what's the project actually look like? And of course, it looks like the typical created market, which is that there is no market for these things. They shook down the member central banks to buy $200 billion of these shore bonds, and now they're sitting on 45 and 50% losses on them. But they still want to keep going forward. So now they're using the war in Ukraine as the means by which to do the next tranche. And they put it in, of course, the mouth of the highly rusophobic and highly, you know,

WEF adjacent, Kayakalis of Estonia to say, we need war bonds to pay for the reindustrialization of Europe and the remilitarization of Europe to fight the boogeyman of Putin. Putin is clearly nothing more than a political thing for the European. I do not believe that that's the case for the Anglo sphere, for the British, and American, or conservatives who see them in a fundamentally, see the Russians in a fundamentally different light. So there's that tension, right?

And that tension exists within NATO. But the goal here, as always, has been, if you think about the overarching plan, has always been to morph NATO and the European Union and the American Empire and roll it all up into the UN. It's always been the goal. I don't think it's a good goal.

I don't think it's an achievable goal, but that's, the project. That's the, that's the, that's the Gant chart, right? And all the people who put this thing together are dead now, right? So Jacob Rothschild was one of them, and he died, and he died on Monday, right? And Kishinger's gone. And Versinsky is gone. And they're all gone, right? So now you just have the flying monkeys running around, the project manager is running around doing this thing and trying to shoehorn this into the future and they can't get it done. Because they're standing back and they're being, they could do it, or they could have a better chance of doing it. And they could have a better chance

of doing it, have the world been able to stay at zero percent interest rates? And they were selling the idea that we had to stay at zero percent interest rates because of climate change. So they were selling us on climate change and cars and electric cars and all this stuff. And the guards out there saying, we need to spend trillions and trillions. And the only way we're going to spend trillions on this is, of course, to stay at the zero bound in order to make this affordable. And then there's the Fed going, yeah, that's nice. No, five and a half percent. You get to do at 5.5% you don't get to do it to 0%. And of course, at 5.5% the whole project is

completely on economic. And now we're starting to see the cracks in this. But they keep pushing forward because they don't have any other options, guys. What else are they going to do? Admit defeat. This is the European Union. They don't admit defeat. They just

double down. And you know, like, you know, people that, you know, vampires don't cast reflections in a mirror. That's who these people are. So that's that's the, that's the core of the arguments the core of what I was talking about. And they just, they're, and we can get into the, the other implications on this, which is, of course, why NATO is so important to them. Because NATO is part of the longer term plan to push this whole project forward to turn NATO into the global

police force for global government. That's their, it's their idea. And it's a dumb idea. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not even advocating that they can pull it off. Because there are too many other forces around the world going, yeah, we don't want that. And all they really have to do is just sit back and say no. And you let the Fed raise interest rates and the Russians keep an OPEC or now BroPEC with Brazil keeps oil prices above $80 a barrel and, you know, and they're just getting drained of all their collateral and it's just all going to collapse. And that's where I think we're closer to that than we've ever been before.

No, it's just good. Thanks for all of that. Now, let's get to this question of Euro bombs because he goes, directly to what you were saying about the artificial nature of this entire structure. Because if you, if you're going to be a borrower and you go to a lender and you ask to borrow money, a responsible at lender is going to ask you the very first question, what is your cash income? What is the cash flow that is coming to you? Now, if you are the EU, the answer straightforwardly is you don't have one because you're not drawing directly through taxes from the people that you are governing because you're not a state, you've got no consent, you've got none of these things.

you are entirely dependent on funding that you are getting from the various states that make up the EU. So that is the problem as I see it that you have. And that's the underlying problem with the whole Eurobond idea. It's also the whole problem with the whole EU structure. because if you're talking about a currency, what makes a currency strong? What makes a currency in fact, ultimately, a proper currency? It is that it is the expression of the economy,

the material wealth, the structure of a country produced by the state which governs that country through the institutions of that state. Of course, again, the EU isn't a state. never has been. So you have a currency which functions in a completely different way from every other currency because it is not underpinned by a Treasury Department, a economic policy, there isn't a proper, at least no disclosed economic policy, nor can there be. There is none of that. And that, again, points to the artificial nature.

of the whole structure. So am I correct in saying, Don, that one of the points you're making essentially is this. You can do all of these things. You can issue Euro bonds. You can issue, you can run single currencies like the Euro. But of course, what you can't afford to have is costs. You can't have costs because as you have no secure money flow,

you can't, you can't, you can't operate it. You haven't got, uh, uh, the structure that supports an economy. And you don't have the cash with which you can pay back your loans. What it, what it comes down to, Alex, is you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, it's about the risk profile of the bonds that you're issuing. So I'm going to give you a perfect example of. So the EU is trying to turn itself into a government, right? A, a, a pan European government, it, it, it, it needs, it, it, it, it, it needs to give you

to have it needs to be able to sell these bonds to investors it needs to have the cash flow it needs to be able to have provable cash flow and provable political will to to to tax their people to pay back to pay the coupons right so this has been this was this was alexander hamilton's argument about why the 13 colonies you know after the revolutionary war needed a singular debt structure we needed u.s treasuries we didn't need new york bonds and georgia bonds and massachusetts bonds or in the case of the United States today, we don't have Mississippi, Iowa, and Alaska issuing treasury bonds, which is what we have in Europe today.

We have the Treasury Department of the United States and the Federal Reserve working together to issue the debt that the market wants. And as long as the central government of the United States has to prove to the market that it can get the cash flow necessary to pay the bonds, then the bonds are going to go off and are going to be sold and traded at a yield that is reasonable. The EU wants to form, wants this to come into being, and they want to prove that to the world, which is why, by the way, for example, why were they so insistent on Victor Orban giving out, giving them their cookie on 50 billion euros worth

of Ukraine aid? It had nothing to do with the 50 billion dollars for Ukraine. It had everything to do with ensuring that Victor Orban, one of the smallest countries in Europe, could not dictate policy to the rest of the EU. They had to come down hard on him. They had to threaten him with basically sanctions that they've already tried to place on Russia. But literally, they threatened him with that. But it was because they had to prove to the market

because they knew they were going to come to the market with trillions of dollars with the euro bonds. And they want to be able to sell those at the lowest rate possible. And that means that you have to have show the most political solidarity in order to get that done. Conversely, let's let's, let's, just a, put an even finer point on this. If we go through a political breakup here in the United States,

which is a different topic for a different day as to whether that's possible. But just let's say that it happens. Then we would have like Florida declares independence. I can look at Florida's balance sheet. I can look at his income statement and his balance sheet and everything else. And I can go, yeah, we could become the Sunshine Republic of Florida and go out tomorrow and sell to the market with no problem, 30 year of debt. at 3%. Two and a half percent. The European Union wants to sell it at that rate and they can't

get the rest of it. There's no way. The market wants seven or eight percent and the European Union can't afford to pay seven or eight percent. And that's the issue here. So what they're trying to do is, so conversely, so outside of the of the purview of this problem that they've got, now they're trying to manipulate events around them in order to get the rest of the world to follow them back to where they need interest rates to be, which is why I firmly believe that we have the Biden administration, especially Janet Allen, working with Christine Lagarde to cap U.S. interest rates in order to try and run the clock out, force the United States into a recession to get Powell to pivot and go back to the zero bound. In some way, matter of shape, reform to create a crisis big enough that everybody goes back

to the zero bound like we did during COVID, and then they can do what they did during COVID. issue a couple hundred billion dollars worth of sure bonds, which are, as I've said at the top of the show, trading in right now at about 40 cents, 40 cent, 40 percent haircuts, about 60 cents on the dollar. So, and when I say trade, I'm being very generous here. They, there's usually one trade a week, by the way, on the Frankfurt market for these things. There's no, there's no liquidity in them whatsoever. If they were a real market, they would trade every day. And we get a, we get a real bid-ass spread on the, on the trades. And, you know, it would look like a normal market. It doesn't. This is,

clearly of nothing but a political, um, uh, construction. And politically constructed markets are very brittle. And they're in, they're in, they're not markets. But, you know, we live in politicized, hyper politicized markets as well. So it's a very, this isn't a weird moment in time. And then you've got to ask yourself, okay, well, I know a lot of people believe that like

the West is one big monolith. Well, when it comes to like destroying Russia, sure. But when it comes to. to all the other projects that are going on, though, everybody's got their own agenda that they're running, and it's a big bend diagram of everybody's incentives. And on certain issues, the bend diagram crosses. And yeah, they, so we get, Victoria Newland

agreeing with Manuel Macron that we need to send troops into NATO. But at everything else, they don't agree. Like, so, and that's the issue. And that's where the, and that's where the idea, there's no way that the American banks are going to allow the Europeans to issue Eurobonds at point. 1% or 0.2% when America is running

a $34 trillion debt load. There's no way. It's not going to happen. I'd like to get to the US and what they're thinking and what the Fed is doing shortly. But let's focus again on Europe because directly after your article appeared and I said I wonder, frankly, whether it was partly also provoked by your article.

an article appeared in The Daily Telegraph by actually a rather intelligent writer there on economic matters, a man called Matthew Lynn. And he was talking about the fact that the European central banks are in crisis. They are all losing money, including most worrying of all, the Bundesbank. The Bundesbank is in a very, very bad position.

And the deterioration of its position has been incredibly rapid, apparently. It really started to go wrong when Mario Draghi said that he will do whatever it takes in order to maintain, to preserve the euro. And they went off on a massive bond buying enterprise, buying government bonds, the Italian government bonds, the Greek government bonds,

all those government bonds in southern Europe. And just to repeat again, your point, each country in Europe issues its own bonds. This is the nature of the European structure. So this is what he said. And he made precisely the point that you have made, which is that it was possible to go on doing this to get the European Central Bank,

to create money, to buy bonds, up to a certain point at least, whilst interest rates were at zero. the moment interest rates in the United States started to rise, that has become more and more difficult. And he was talking about the fact that the Bundesbank in Germany might need to be bailed out, and that the German government might have to face the prospect of doing that fairly soon,

and he was debating what the political effect in Germany of that would be. And he did also make the further point, that the European equivalent of QE has been much bigger than what has happened in the United States. So tell us a bit more about this. Why are the European central banks so short of money? Why is it that all the bonds they've been buying are putting them in this terrible position? And how does the rise in the interest rates affect this? Okay.

Yeah, it's like you're asking for the primitives. I keep going like all the way to the end because that's this is the way I. I know. I know. I know. But, you know, it's no problem. Alex, I have to remember, remind myself to slow down every once in a while. Thank you.

So like, I need to think of it this way. When a bond is issued, right, it's issued at par. And we call par 100. So it's it trades at, you know, $100, right? The quoted price of 100. That's at that particular coupon. Right. So let's say it was issued at negative point.

6% like Draghi was doing on short-term interest rates in the Bundesbank. And Germany in particular was vulnerable to this because they were the ones who were able to issue the most debt, most negative yielding debt originally. So they issue these bonds at basically they issued them at nearly 0%. Interest rates are pushed, you know, market interest rates are pushed negative. And that means that pushes the price of the bond above 100 because, you know, people are willing to pay, willing to forego, they will take the, they will offset the coupon that they're getting paid with the, with the price rise. And that's part of the bond calculation. So when,

when bonds rise in price, they fall in yield, because they pay a constant yield. So let's just like backup and let's talk about a normal bond. You've got a bond that pays a 4% coupon, right? Every year, it's going to pay you 4%. Well, that's at par. If the price of the bond rises to 120, that means that means that the yield you're now paying $120 for $100 worth of bond. That means that the yield, you're still getting 4% on $100. So, but you paid $120, so you get to subtract that $20 out. And then, you know, so it's now a 3.2% bond or whatever the number is, an effective yield. And that's the, those are the prices that are quoted every day is what the bond is, is trading at.

And this is the hardest thing for people to wrap their brains around because bond math is completely opposite of everything else. So when bond prices rise, that means that yield falls. And conversely, when yields rise, prices fall. Because now it's the same thing in reverse. You had a 4% bond. You paid $80 for that $100 bond. You're now making 5% on your capital on your capital that you invested.

You invested $80. You're paying, you're getting a 4% coupon on $80. That's a, you know, do the math, right? That's 5%. So that's the problem here. you have all of these European sovereign bonds that were issued at the zero bound. 0.1%, 0.2%, German 10 years at 6.6% or 30 years at 1% or whatever.

And now they're all trading much higher than that. So they're all, everybody who has those in their portfolio, their portfolios, even if they haven't sold them, the value of the portfolio is underwater. And so this is affecting the value. of commercial real estate, of bond funds, of leverage loan CDOs, and this and that, and all this stuff that we talk about. It's all predicated on the fact, like, this is the big story that we have here in the United

States, that we have all these regional banks that were forced to buy treasuries at the zero bound in order to offset their, their deposits. And now they've got impairments on their balance sheet, but they've got all these deposits, but they don't have the assets on their balance sheet, the bond. portfolio to that would match the deposits and now they have a cap now they have a hole in their balance sheet um because again bank balance sheets are completely opposite of your balance sheets right loans or assets deposits or liabilities so again and guys this took me years to learn like this is not easy stuff right so understanding that that's the situation so with the fed going to five and a half

percent and staying there despite the protestations and the and the wailing and gnashing of teeth of literally the entire world they're staying there and while at the same time domestically doing all sorts of things that i could spend an hour going into as to how it's offsetting um the effect on the american banking system okay whereas it's cushioning the blow for american banks but leaving everybody else to hang and this is what's known as killing off the put where the Fed is not going to come in and bail out the world if the world gets into trouble because the Fed went into five five and a half percent and Europe is the most vulnerable to this because Europe went negative at one point during COVID there were 14 trillion dollars at its peak

of European sovereign debt that was trading in a negative nominal yield not the coupon yield the nominal yield meaning they were trading at 130 140 percent You know, they're trading 130, 140. And now they're trading at 60. And this is why in, with the minute Powell sort of raising interest rates rapidly during the summer of 2022, Lagarde came out and went, I'm creating the transmission protection instrument, which is otherwise, I like to call it the toilet paper initiative because it's what it's going to turn the euro into. But it was a program to say, look, we are going to manage the spreads between all of the different sovereign bonds.

And everybody at the time said, they're trying to manage Italian bonds, which were blowing up versus German bonds. No, no, no, no, no. It's been to manage U.S. bonds versus German bonds and maintain those spreads because of the structure of the market. You use, you manage those spreads in order to then, by extension, manage all the spreads. Okay, because the U.S. treasury market, like the U.S. 10 year and the U.S. 2 year are the rates that everybody keys their rates off up. because we're the reserve currency of the world. And if the reserve currency is saying, nope, higher for longer, y'all need to deal with higher for longer.

And so now it's, you put the ECB into a box. And I, you know, from the moment this started, I went there and said, the Fed's doing this on purpose. And they're trying to break the offshore dollar banking system. I hate to say this, but I've been right about all of this. I'm not busting my hand patting myself in the back. I'm just, we're here we are. two and a half years later the fed hasn't two years later the fed hasn't pivoted yet and now the market

is finally beginning to realize that the fed's not going to cut because it doesn't have the ability it doesn't can't cut we're at full employment and we're at three percent in rising inflation again there's no way the fed can cut rates so everybody is now stuck in amber and what you're seeing especially today we're doing this on the final day of february and as a as a market watcher as a guy who watches markets technically, I can tell you that what's happening in the market, literally as we're speaking, is them what we traders like to call painting the tape. They're banging the clothes in order to bring the numbers down into the end of February so that the monthly closes look good.

So that and then in March, everything is going to snap back in the other direction. And I see this as plain as day, but again, this is 25 years worth of market experience watching the manipulation of these markets and how they can be and how they're manipulated in order to try and hold everything together. I think the best metaphor for this is that literally it's a little, Lagarde is just a little Dutch boy, and there every day another hole springs up, but now she's run out of fingers.

And she's run out of spackle. And she's run out of, you know, and the dam is breaking around her. And the Bundesbank is the key, because the Bundesbank is what funded through Target 2 and OMT and all these, these,

these alphabet facilities that Draghi created. The Bundesbank is the one who took all that money on is the one that did all the finance all the QE and all the rest of it. And so their balance sheet has been the one that's been hollowed out. Now you've got to ask the question. And this is where the conspiratorial side comes. Did they do it on purpose in order to collapse the Bundesbank in order to, in order to create the collapse necessary to get the fiscal integration that they so desperately need and turn

the keys to Europe over to the European Commission and the European Central Bank? that's been that's been my thesis for these people for years and george soros has told you that's what the plan is and you know others have said the same thing and legard has effectively said the same thing they can't really say it all directly they have to talk around it and then you can know them by their policy so that's i think the the situation and then you get bruno america out the other day the the french finance minister go why haven't we stolen the $35 trillion worth of savings from the European people in order to fund climate change. It's like literally a project manager reading the Gant chart going,

we were supposed to have done this by now. It's, in 2024, we were supposed to do this last year. They can't do it because the Fed went to 5.5% and stayed there. That's the long and the short of it. Well, as a matter of, as a matter of your anticipation my next question, because I was wondering whether perhaps all this talk of Eurobonds now, all of these problems with the central bank, the German central bank, the way in which we keep the war going isn't partly intended to make it easier to sell the idea of setting up tax, direct taxes,

and creating a Treasury Department in Brussels and doing all of those things. Because, you know, if you have a sort of big financial crash across Europe, as a result of all of this, it's not very easy to sell to the European public. Well, you know, we've got to actually start taxing you even more at a central European Brussels level in order to bail out the euro and, you know, the whole euro project.

I mean, in Germany especially, they would never buy that. But tell them that it's all about Russia and it's all about war. And, you know, we've got to do all of this because the bear is on the move. Well, suddenly, it becomes easier. And of course, could that be, you know, but I think you've already answered this question. I mean, could that actually be the agenda?

You get, you bring this everything to a point of crisis. You talk up the Russian threat. And then you, first of all, you go for the Eurobonds. And then you say, well, we got the Eurobonds. We now need to complete the structure. We've got to create the treasure. Department, the finance, the tax systems, all of those things. And we've got to do so fast. And of course, we can't have any debate about it because if we do, then the emergency is so

pressing and the danger is so great. And with the Russians at all, we can't really talk about these matters publicly at all. Anyway, I think you've answered the question. No, you're absolutely right, Dallas. That is, this is, well, you know, again, I, you know, I put on my evil, my, my, my, I put on my Sith robe and I start thinking like Emperor Palpatine and I go, how would I do this? Like this. And, and, you know, it's, that's what I, you know, and the thing about these people is that they tell you what they're going to do. They've written all the unreadable white papers imaginable to explain all this. When they go to conferences where they don't think they're being filmed, they talk about this stuff openly. It's not like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

This is not, this really isn't even a conspiracy. It's just a matter of, well, you know, it's just not reported on by the media. What I find really interesting is that I don't know, I don't know how the telegraph maps politically within the UK. Like, I know that the WAPO, that the Washington Post works for the CIA and the New York Times works for the DNC. And I know the, I know the map here in the United States. I don't know how the British papers play out. I find it really interesting that he was allowed to write that article explaining all this in England. at this moment in time because the English are getting squeezed out of NATO.

Because let's bring now NATO into all this because NATO's very, the future of NATO is very important. Who got floated this week as the replacement for Stoltenberg as General Secretary of NATO? The soon to be deposed Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutei, who was Mark Rute? He's literally one of the, he's like the Tony Blair of the Netherlands. He's an important cog in this globalist thing, machine, to get these things done. So he's going to leave, you know, they can't hold Peter Vilders out of office for forever. They'll pass every terrible law imaginable on their way out the door. Then they'll leave him with the cleanup job.

And then they'll blame him for everything that goes wrong in the Netherlands because they saddled him with a whole bunch of poison pills. Meanwhile, Ruta goes to NATO. and that's telling you that the European Union is making a bid for the power structure of NATO. After Joe Biden last year put the kbash on former defense minister of the UK, Ben Wallace to take over for Stoltenberg. And knowing that Biden is a proxy for Obama and Obama is the American version of Tony Blair and Mark Routé and it all tracks. They're moving NATO this way. And it's and it's why everybody went to Munich and said the same thing over and over again.

Our sacred on duty to NATO, NATO is eternal. We have to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was all about NATO. And because NATO is the means by which to justify, as you pointed out, Alex, that we have boogeymen out there we need to be protected from and we need to rearm. And again, but these arms that they want to rearm with aren't being going to be pointed at Russia. They're going to be pointed at the European people. That's the point of all this.

So that Germans police, Spanish and Spanish police, Dutch and Dutch police, Italians, Italians, police Italians, Germans, because the French would never allow the Italians to police them. Then we get into like the Treaty of Cirenol that was signed that allows French troops onto the Italian soil. And there's all this stuff going on behind the scenes, folks. This is exactly what they're trying to do. And they're doing the same thing here in the United States by leaving the border open. They're going to put all these men that are coming across the border. They're going to move them into the military.

And then they're going to use the military. Then they expect to be able to use the military in the United States as a kind of national police force and turn the whole country. And turn the whole thing into a John Carpenter movie. I'm like, I got news for you. We got 800 million guns that ain't happening. But I don't know what you guys are going to do. I love what I'm seeing out of the French, like the German farmers, right? And I saw just before I came on this morning, I saw a video of a massive protest in Bayern in Germany, people screaming.

It's time for you to go, just leave. Just leave. And that's exactly the right message, by the way. It's not we're going to string you up and, you know, feed you to dogs or, you know, guillotine you. Just leave. We're done with you. We don't want you around anymore. And I hope that that, that, that, I hope that that brush fire.

that's forming in Europe catches fire in a way that is one non-violent, too, you know, and to substantive in order to stop what's happening. That's what I'm hoping for. We'll see what happens. By the way,

by the way, I think I can say that we both agree with you about the EU army. And I mean, it's very interesting, again, that we see some people in Europe are talking up the European army using again the threat from Russia to justify accelerating its creation and of course we had Macron who's a committed European

trying to get talking about sending troops to Ukraine but of course he's a general along has been to create an EU army and you mentioned Mark Ruta of course he is more than anything else he has been a pillar of the European Union for a long long time I mean, he's somebody who's more thought of as a person within the European Union, actually, up to now, up to recently, then there's a key figure within NATO.

So that's all very, very, very interesting. I should say quickly that I'm unfortunately more skeptical than you that all this bushfire is going to change anything because the one thing that they don't, they're not talking about, by the way, is central election. for the Central European institutions. Nobody so far is proposing that. Why is the United States doing this? Why is the Fed taking this approach? Why have they done this? Why have they raised interest rates so high?

Why did they not bring down interest rates more when it seemed like inflation was falling? Lots of people are asking that question. You read it every day in the European media, by the way. So why did they not do... what the Europeans wanted them to do? Well, this is the core of what I've been saying for a couple of years. And I know that when I first presented this, everybody was skeptical of this.

But the reality is that when you start to think about what their agenda is for how they're going to replace the current unworkable monetary situation in Europe that we've gone over. They have to replace it with a centralized digital Europe. I can't even bring Apple into this, which is why the EU wants the ability to civil. load apps onto the iPhone. It's because they want to install their surveillance software directly and on the backside. I firmly believe that that's what this is, that, that's what that story is about. I'm getting to why. So my, my argument has been from the beginning.

When you think about this, we have a two-tiered monetary system. We have central banks issue money to, to make loans to commercial banks at a lower rate. And then the low, and then the commercial banks make loans to the general economy. and it's a two cycle monetary system. So there's money that flows between the commercial banks and the central bank, and then there's money that flows between the economy and the commercial banks. Well, a central bank digital currency, a digital euro, collapses that. We don't no longer need the, we no longer need commercial banks.

So my fundamental thesis in the beginning, when I don't want to look at that, I said, yeah, I don't buy that the American commercial banking system is going to go along with this. They're the most powerful commercial banks in the world. And they have been for decades now, and I just don't see James. Jamie Diamond and John Solomon and the rest of them going along with this. I just don't see it. Like the American empire, for lack of a better term, was built through commercial banking. Okay.

The American engine of growth of the 19th century was built because we had a mostly free banking industry, which was then, over then, you know, subverted over time with the formation of the Federal Reserve and then the consolidation of the American government and blah, blah, blah, blah, and everything post-1913. as that's you know but you go before that and you look at at that i've been arguing for years and murray rothbard wrote uh i think still the the best um book on this which is the you know that and effectively saying that the history of banking in the united states is the history of the united states and so why would the fed do this well to preserve itself and the commercial banking interest that it represents and who are the shareholders of the federal reserve like it doesn't it

It's not more complicated than that. You have a bunch of committed globalists who are, who believe fundamentally that we need to get rid of commercial banking and do away with the private formation of capital through the commercial banking process. And we have commercial bankers who don't believe in that. So we can either have public formation of capital with controlled interest rates and and fully, and fully locked down markets that are based on a social credit system, access to capital, social credit. as opposed to the, as opposed to investment risk and economic desires of, which comes directly from the economic desires of the people that make up the economy. And that's what the commercial banking sector ultimately, that's who they ultimately serve.

That's whom they ultimately work for, right? And it's their job to accurately assess the risk of the things that, stupid things that we want to make businesses, make into businesses, and they then put an interest rate on it, on that loan and they're supposed to do that. We've completely short-circuited that process, both with the centrality of central banks, setting interest rate policy and risk profiles,

and pushing interest rates globally to the zero bound over the last hundred years. And the reversal, this is, once you hit the zero bound, like the natural snapback is to go in the opposite direction. And the commercial banks are like, yeah, we're not committing Harry hearing. We're not committing ritualistic suicide for a bunch of, frankly, European communists. We're not doing it. And, you know, you just put it in like those bold terms because that's the way I see it happening at, you know, the cigar bar on the Upper East Side. When these guys all get

together and they turn, they put their phones, you know, at the, at the coat check and they go into the, and they go into the, into the room where that's been swept and they all sit around and, you know, have their talk. This is what they do. Like, could you, can do, can do? Can you, can, you, you see that I can't see it any other way even if there was and they were willing to go along with it for years when they were making money off of it and they had no other opportunity to do anything otherwise like you know they're not I don't see any of these people as anything other than sociopaths in operating in their own best self-interest they are operating on enlightened self-interest right that's it but that makes sense

to me. And so for right now, they're pushing back against this. And I think they also have tremendous political power here in the U.S. And they have the ability to communicate to other world leaders into other world business leaders, what's going on. And then our goal now is to watch inferentially read the tea leaves of all the things that are happening to see if we're, if that thesis plays out with inferential data. Because you'll never get the, you'll never get Jamie Diamond to stand up on see NBC and go, yeah, we're trying to bankrupt the ECB. He's never going to say that. But you have to watch for the policy that may support that. And then you go, oh, yeah. And then you get Powell come out and go, yeah, we're going to stay at five and a half percent. So they did it in order to protect themselves

in an order for the Fed to get to regain control over monetary policy by collapsing the offshore levered up what's known as Eurodollar system, which is another, you know, 15 minute rant on my part, in order to explain the mechanisms of that. But once you see it that way, it's really hard to not see it that way. And the day that I hear, I see data points that contradict that, I will be happy to come on the program and go, well, I was wrong.

And that'll be the end of it. But I don't, but so far I don't see that. What I'm seeing actually is that politically downstream of all this, we're seeing exactly what we should be seeing if this were the case, which is we're seeing, congressional Republicans stand up, depose a globalist speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, put Mike Johnson in power, stand up to the Biden administration, say no more, no mas, no more funding for Ukraine without stopping the border, no more this, no more that.

And he's trying to do his best to slow things down. And then the old guard, the Chuck Schumers, the Mitch McConnell's, the Mitt Romneys, and whatnot are continuing to try and push this down the road. Janet Yellen came out yesterday and said, we should seize all of Russia, the Russians foreign exchange reserves and hand them to Ukraine. That would destroy the United States, as we currently know it, as a financial super center. Why would Yellen do that?

She knows what that would do. She'd take $40 billion in hand, of Russian foreign exchange reserves, hand it to Ukraine, and then the tens of trillions of dollars in global trade that have done in the dollar and with U.S. banks would then immediately that money, like you're a Turkish, you know, you're a Turkish symbol salesman. And you sell me, so, you know, some new 15-inch crashes from my drum set, right? And I, and then you deposit that money that I pay for those symbols in an American bank. What's the first thing he's going to do?

He's going to take that money. He's going to move it out into a different currency and get it out of the American bank because the Americans may seize that money tomorrow because Erdogan said, you know, didn't tow the line. Like, it destroys the American superpower, which is the validity of you can do business in the dollar. and your money is safe. Like, so she effectively wants to default on bond, which we've never done. And she wants to destroy the ability of, she wants to destroy the security of doing business and dollars. And this is the American Treasury Secretary.

People tell me she's not a traitor. She's either that or she's just dumb. And I don't think Johnny Ellen's an idiot. I think she's not smart, but I don't think she's an idiot. So, like, this is what's happening. I mean, anybody talking about this in the United States, there's clearly a traitor and clearly working for foreign interests. I pick your, pick your boys in those to which foreign interests they work for. I don't care.

But as far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense otherwise. You know, this is because the whole business of the Russian assets has been obviously a big topic. Can we just go back to the United States? From what you say that the Biden administration, for it's, for it. is not signed up to this policy of the Fed at all. Is that why they are so resistant to it? And is that why also they are, because putting down their foot on the fiscal accelerators to the extent that they are. Is it that they're trying to mitigate what the Fed is doing? Yes, they are spending, they are trying to spend as much as humanly possible in order to blackmail

the Fed into lowering rates. This is why Janet Yellen issued 83% of the debt that she issued in 2020, was of one year maturity or less in order for all of that debt to be rolled over, oh, pretty much next month in order to try and blackmail the Fed into going lower so that she can reissue that debt at lower rates. It's, again, it's all part and parcel of the same strategy. And Powell's like, nope, sorry, you're going to have to deal with higher interest rate payments. And, you know, and to my financial brethren out there, there that are calling out the deteriorating fiscal situation in the United States, you're right.

We can't afford to pay for $34 trillion in debt at five and a half percent. I agree. So with current spending, but I also know that you could cut spending in the United States back to 2018 levels and it would change the dynamic completely. And the market in general would look at that incredibly favorably. it wouldn't solve the United States as problems, but it would signal, oh, you're serious

about this. Oh, okay. Yeah, we'll put our money here as opposed to Europe. And then that's when the day that happens, the day they actually get any spending cuts through of any significance, and I mean real spending cuts. I don't mean slowing the growth of spending as was the previous plan. Here's our current budget

and we were going to grow, I don't know, health and human services by 5%. It was only cut them by, we'll only raise it by 2% a year. And so we've cut spending by 3%. That's what they do normally. That's how they sell this nonsense. No, give me $500 billion worth of actual spending cuts where next year's budget is $500 billion smaller than last year's budget. You do that and you'll see trillions of dollars flowing into the United States. The euro will drop from $1.08 to $0.90 overnight. And that's why Chuck Schumer won't budge on any of this stuff.

That's why Mitch McConnell won't budge on any of this stuff. It's why Nikki Haley is still in the presidential race. This is all an operation to try and get through. They will run this out all the way to November. Nothing is going to change in the United States politically until November for this reason. And then the question is, okay, are the forces that I'm talking about, are they powerful enough to actually get Trump across the finish line and into the Oval Office by January 2025? That's the outstanding question on all of this. If I'm right about all of this, watch Trump and all the lawsuits and all the other things that are going around him, because if so, if all that stuff keeps falling,

and we get through each of these major steps, the primary Super Tuesday, the next Fed meeting, the GOP convention, all of these stupid lawsuits that are pending against Trump, we actually get to the election and Trump wins and they don't kill him between then and now. And Nikki Haley is not his running. mate, which is clearly why she's running, still in the race, then we may be looking at a much different world in 2025. Do I put high probability on any of this happening? I think it's going to be

worse than, I think we're going to be treated to the worst version of this show that we could possibly imagine. But I'm giving you what the path looks like to get to the end game, what the game, how bloody the game is between now and then. I'm, I'm, I'm expecting. bad. I'm expecting very bloody. And I'm expecting false flags to try and upgrade Ukraine. I'm expecting more, you know, histrionics and whatnot out of Israel in the Middle East. Like, you know, I'm expecting it all. And I mean, last month for the newsletter, for the last month for the newsletter, just to give you guys an idea, the title of the newsletter was demoralized nation. And the title of my first, my lead article was, will we be spared nothing? And my conclusion was

that they're going to run Hillary versus Haley. in the end. Couldn't you imagine? What would be more demoralizing for Americans than having to choose between Nikki Haley and Hillary Clinton? I hope I'm wrong. You know, Tom, you have a habit,

you have a habit of anticipating my questions because I was actually going to ask you a question about the U.S. election and where Trump fits into all of this. Well, to a great extent, already asked it, but who's the last? last question I'm going to put, is this really why, is this the real reason

the Europeans are so terrified of Trump winning the election? That they're not really worried about NATO because nobody really thinks that Trump is going to walk away from NATO. It's that they lose a friend in Washington who is trying to counter

what the Fed is doing. Is that really what is unnerving the Europeans at this moment? it is that i think i think it's i think that's i think that's i was i say Alex i think that's i think that's slightly the wrong frame but in essence you're correct right what i think is Biden was selected and put in power for the to do exactly what he's done and he has failed

at every major turn in terms of getting the fiscal stuff through that needed to get through build back better and the infrastructure bill and all that stuff was supposed to saddle the Fed with six to eight trillion dollars with the spending over the over the next two years up until this election that would have forced the Fed back to zero the zero bound because the Fed would have been forced to monetize all this debt go back to QE and the zero bound power is like no we're taking QE and and and and zero bound rates out of our vocabulary like get that through your head you know and I think the I think that Trump doesn't understand this. And if he does understand it, he's playing dumb. I think that he hasn't

quite had the talk yet from the Wall Street guys, that this is the plan. And we're going to cut rates after you're in after you're elected. And you're going to be able to ride heard over the, the first six to nine months of your of your presidency. You're going to be dealing with an expansion where rates are now in the fours. And that's going to be good for you. But we need to hold this at five and a half because we need to bankrupt. We need to put. Europe back under our thumb, for lack of a better term. Hate to put it in those terms, but that's the way I see it. And we need to put them back in the box and we need to break Europe.

And Europe is trying to break us before we break them. It's a race. And they're racing to the election day. Tom, one very last comment from me, not a question. I mean, Trump doesn't like the Europeans. And Jamie Diamond has recently said some nice things about him. And of course, Trump will know these Wall Street bankers. It's the kind of people he probably does know.

That's my guess anyway. I'm going to finish here. I was going to say about Diamond. Diamond, remember when Diamond first came out and backed Nikki Haley, everybody got it wrong, including myself. What Diamond was saying to his who lean left and generally vote Democrat, Wall Street, brethren, it's okay to vote for to back a Republican. Now he shifted towards Trump because the, because, you know, Haley is clearly not running as a Republican.

She's running as a Democrat. And she's clearly got money coming in from Democrats and from Soros and other and other sources. So that's, that's why I can see Diamond and I can see that alliance, not alliance, but I can see them moving back towards each other. And eventually I think there's going to be a very nice conversation between them at Marilago with the phones off. And, you know, then Trump is. going to run the Trump show from here on out. And then it'll be interesting to watch to see how that plays. That'll be my final comment on that.

Go ahead. Tom, I know you're up against the clock a bit. I've finished my questions. And I wanted to say thank you for this incredibly illuminating discussion. Alex, maybe you've got one or two things to ask. Sure. Yeah, Tom, if you have five minutes, maybe answer a couple of questions directed towards you. And then Alexander will answer the rest of the,

questions that came in. Tom, what about the Bradbury Pound? Two questions. The Bradbury Pound. No idea. That's the first I've ever heard that term. I hate to be, I hate to, you know how much I hate not answering your question, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't know it either, but yeah, it's I don't know. Do I? You don't know it either, Alexander. Okay. Zaryel asks Tom, why are all the big deals selling all their stocks on Wall Street, like that? Ryan Rothschild, et cetera. Okay. I'm going to start with Diamond because Diamond is easy.

At the end of last year, Jamie Diamond put forth his succession plan for when he's no longer CEO of J.P. Morgan. Interestingly enough, in that succession plan, the snake in J.P. Morgan's garden, Mary Erdos, who's the one that actually handled all of Epstein's accounts at J.P. Morgan, by the way, was not part of that succession plan that I could see. She was also on his arm at Davos this year because I think that's a keep your friends close and your enemies closer kind of thing that she couldn't be running off to cut up background deals around him. I think Diamond is getting set up to step down as head of JP Morgan. Remember he had that a section a few years ago. He's old.

It's time for him to move on. So he cashes out $146 million with stock. He needs cash. Everybody else. That's a signal to me that, oh, we need to top tick the market and get out of here because we're going to get we're not going to have anything because this is all going to collapse on us Facebook and Google and all the I that I read that as the rats leaving the globalist sinking ship I'm telling you I the more I read the tea leaves

the more I really do believe that this is what winning looks like but it's really hard for us to feel like it's winning because the people that we're fighting against will never break character going back to Janus Ferapakis and the Swedish national anthem thing when he was Greek prime minister. You know, you present all this stuff to the European Commission and they go, well, that's nice. They look at you like they just, you just sung

the Swedish national anthem at them and then they go back to doing whatever they were going to do. They'll never break character. And, you know, the hours late, Soron's forces are already moving, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, it's going to be a very, very difficult fight to claw our way out of the situation

that we're in. They have, you know, it's late fourth quarter, you're down by 10, you got four minutes on the clock, you know, that kind of moment that we're in. But I think, but we're only down by 10, we're not down by four touchdowns like we were at half time. Like that's where I think we kind of are. And that's why I clearly see that these guys, and that's one of those signposts. If they're cashing out with markets at this moment, yeah, then that may be, that may be a way to read that. I'm not, I'm not saying it's the only way to but it's clearly one of them. Okay. Commander Crossfire says with the loss of Russian resources, cheap Middle Eastern

oil and free minerals and labor from Africa, a consolidation of Europe may be the only solution to hold the ruling establishment together. Yep. Yeah. And they're going to, I think honestly, here's the thing. I think their European project is more important to them than tyrannizing Russia and subjugating Russia. I think for other forces that are, that's a different story. For the Anglo-American sphere, it's far different. When the Trotskyites that are the neocon conservatives, they want to subjectate Russia that this is an existential thing and a psychological and ideological thing for them. I think the European Union folks, whatever you want to call them, the Eurocrats, they're ideologically

committed to the European Union and they are more than happy to cut a deal with Russia in the short term and oil imports from Russia in 2023 will statistics give you that number, right? That they, that the Europeans bought more oil from Russia in 2023 and they did in 2022. Guess what? They're going to do, they're going to buy a lot more in 2024. They'll just break the sanctions. They don't care. That's more important to them.

Because it's more important to them, you know, they'll try and deal with Russia down the, and trying it down the line. And if necessarily, cut a deal with them because what are they going to do otherwise? I think they're more committed to destroying the United States. than they are committed to destroying Russia. That's, I think, the split. Because the United States represents something legally and structurally that is anathema to their plans, right?

Our federalism, our rule of law, the Constitution, nominally that the Constitution puts the people sovereign over the government. All those ideas, we can reclaim all those things from the corruption that exists in the United States today. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but we can do it, right? Those ideas are still very deeply within the American psyche, and they can come out again. Again, something you and I, Alex, used to talk about three, four, five years ago, right?

About why the United States is different. And I think that's why they're, they're, that's why they're so focused on, they can't, Europe can't survive with the United States in its current form. There's no way. The United States is too powerful. they have to bring it. They have to bring us down. And so they either get us involved in a world war that we can't afford the fight or they bind us down with political traders that, you know, hollow the country out from within, invade it through the border, yada, yada, yada. That's clearly the plan. All right. Two more questions or one question and one comment. From seven, South Florida would break away from independent Florida to form the Republic of Miami in a heartbeat. I saw this question earlier and I was like, yeah, that's kind of funny. But we're okay. with coming along with you up here in North Florida. It's okay. The Sunshine Report

about Public of Florida, we can we can we can you know postcards at the border on I-75 and I-95. We're good. We know what to do. We have more guns up here guys. We know how to, and we know how to use them. Trust me. All right. One final question and we will let you go. Tom from Arunas says the West is built on financial ivory towers. It must end by necessity at some point as you can eat digits on a screen. Will Bricks be in time with a viable system to save us. Save? I don't know that that's the right frame for that.

But are the bricks forming an institution, a series of institutions that can protect themselves from the self-immolation of what's going on in the West? Yes. And maybe that's the best we can hope for in the next 10 years. You know, I know, just look for nodes of stability, folks. And and I mean, and all of this, everything we talked about today is fractal in nature, right? From the bricks versus the west to you versus your county commission or your local city council or whatever, your local town council. It's all the same process.

Be nodes of stability for the people around you. Start there and every, and that's the easiest and best and most effective way to beat these people. And just by saying no and doing business locally and doing business outside of their purview. And are it's the phrase that's been that people have been using a lot recently is intentional communities. That's what the Duran is. That's what gold goats and guns is. That's what these are all, we have virtual intentional communities. We leverage them and their power out as best we can.

And we do it here in a commentary purpose of, basis on a daily basis in order to try and disseminate the information necessary for you to do it in the real world in meat space. So we do it out here in Flatland and then we take those ideas and those lessons and we should be applying them in the real world and what I like to call meet space. And we do that. We have all the political power in the world. Every freaking bit of it.

And I, you know, I have a fundamental belief that humanity is far more resilient then we want to give it credit for on our worst days. And I'm not saying that, you know, it's going to be easy or it's going to be fun or, but, you know, Alex now has three young children. I've got a daughter that's graduating high school this year. Like, this is, these are the, this is what drives us. I know this is what drives us. And it should drive you.

Let's make this, let's let's let's let's let's, let's, let's just, silly. And at the end of the day, we can just sit there and go, yeah, that's nice, but we're not doing that. So let's just do that. Fantastic way to end the show with Tom Lungo. I have all of your information in the description box down below. And I will also have it as a pinned comment as well. So definitely follow Tom.

Check out his amazing articles and his analysis. And Tom, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, guys. And all the best. And we'll do this again soon if we can. And I'll drop off now and we'll see you, sir. Absolutely. Take care of Tom.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye. All right, Alexander. Great, wow, great stuff. I'm kind of rooting for the bankers in the U.S. now. What a wild world.

Jamie Diamond. Jamie Diamond. Jamie Diamond. I never imagine. The world is very straight. The world is a certain. The world is certainly a strange. place in some ways. Oh, boy. Yeah, a fantastic show. All right. Let's answer the questions that we have

left, Alexander, and we will sign off for the day. Valley S, thank you for that super sticker. Robert, welcome to the Dran community. Elaine says, very happy to wait for the brilliant Duran. Thank you, Elaine. Robert says, my first live in a long time, so glad to be here on on the only places to find truth. Joe and our games, welcome to the drag communities. I'm here. Thank you for that. Super chat. Klaus says, Happy birthday, Gonzalo, not forgotten. Yeah, not forgotten at all. Brilliant piece about Gonzalo, by the way, in Mint Press,

comparing the coverage his death got with Navalny's and reminding everybody of the point made by Chomsky and Herman in their book was constructing consent, which is about worthy and unworthy victims, which is this concept that, you know, the media follows, that there's some people who deserve to be honoured and others who don't, and it's got nothing to do with whether they're good people or not good people.

It's got nothing to do with the way in which they've been killed. It's just purely how it fits in with the ideological framework that the media and the powers are following. It's a brilliant piece. I highly recommend it. Lana says I finally caught Duran live. Hello, Lana, Zoltan, thank you for a super sticker. Lana also sent a super sticker.

Mosqueva 1825 Alexander, do you believe that the SMO exposed collective West's weakness emboldening countries in Africa and in Palestine to seek independence? Yes, it has. There's no question about it. I mean, it's exposed a huge amount of weak. And also the opposite, of course, of the West's weakness is Russian strength, which was completely unexpected. And if you were watching my program yesterday, I sort of got a bit emotional at one point. And I was talking all about this huge operation, the CIA was running in Ukraine. And I said,

what good did he do in the end? It didn't make the West stronger and it didn't make us better informed about Russia. We didn't learn anything about Russia from it because we got the whole situation there completely wrong. And you're absolutely right. It has emboldened countries in the global south and you are seeing it every day or the global majority as I noticed people are increasingly starting to refer to it. They're starting to stand up and they're pushing back and I know that it's causing great concern amongst people in Washington and London. London especially. The global majority, you said.

That's the word that you used. Global majority. That's the word. That's the expression. I've started to see it being used, and it's beginning to spread. I recommend everyone watch Alexander's video from yesterday, and the end of your video, you read a tweet from David Sachs, which was a fantastic.

It's tremendous. I know he watches us every now and then. I know he follows us, but that was a fantastic tweet. I wish we could find it. I'm going to look for that tweet. Yeah. I mean, it left me speechless. That doesn't happen very often, can I say?

I mean, it really did. It said everything about the war in Ukraine in just a few words. Everything. It was all that. Everything was brilliant. Yeah, brilliant tweet. A good way for you to close your video yesterday. So, yeah, definitely watch Alexander's video and definitely look for that tweet.

Black Tie, thank you for that super sticker. Commando Crossfire says Russia just held the games of the future, fitting for their outlook, looking to a new era while Europe reaches back to 1939 or 1984. Have they actually been held yet? I think I thought they were just starting. But anyway. I don't know. Maybe they were held.

It looks like they were held. But I haven't been following that story too closely. No, I haven't, I happen to be honest, but yeah, yeah. I wish the world, by the way. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. NV. Stormy says, good day and many things for all you do. Thank you very much. Robert McNerere says, is there any truth to the story that Ukraine intelligence tried to car bomb Tucker Carlson?

I don't know. I don't know how me, what the Ukrainian intelligence would do. I mean, if they did, they would have been absolutely idiots to do a thing like that. That's my personal view. But then, who knows? with someone like Budanov in charge. Even, you know, the New York Times article tells us that he's an unpredictable and dangerous person. I mean, they might have done.

I mean, I haven't heard about it. I doubt that they would do it, actually. Tisham says, happy birthday, Gonzalo. I miss you. Ralph says, let's please remember Aaron Bushnell and family. The video is on the new Atlas. Absolutely. It's absolutely haunting.

Great video. So it was a really extraordinary thing, very powerful statement. And again, by the way, complete radio silence about the whole story in British media I noticed. I mean, in the big mainstream newspapers, I didn't see any mention of it at all. Of course, everybody, lots of people in Britain know about it because people go to the internet. But the media here doesn't really want to talk about it. Giuseppe, thank you for that super sticker. DW. Welcome to the Duran community. Scott Elliott says, over under coup against Zelensky in a month.

Zillusioni takes over and withdraws to the Denebr to defend MacMales West with bio-weapons, remember the labs to enter war to push Russia back. That's one possible. I mean, we can all construct a possible, plausible, entirely plausible ways that this ends. We'll just have to wait and see. I mean, at the moment, all one can say, is the Russians are pushing forward. Tish M says Justice for Gonzalo Lira. Agreed. Tish M. Jeff, thank you for that super sticker. Joe Public says, what about the Bradbury Pound?

A lot of questions about the Bradbury Pound. I'm going to look that up. N.V. Stormand. Yeah. Welcome to thank you for the Duran membership. Envi Stormen. Alex Glans, thank you for that super sticker. Omar says, how much has NATO been weakened after the Russian military operation?

and will it be able to recover? Wish you all the best. You know, actually, since we're talking about David Sachs' tweet, he talks about that. It's been significantly weakened. All right, they've got Finland and Sweden into NATO. But if you're looking at the position, the condition of NATO armies, which is already, it's clear, pretty fragile, they're in a terrible state. I mean, they're having, again, I discussed this in my program yesterday. The Europeans are now scrounge around Africa and the Middle East looking for shells because they can't produce any. And they're on to any in their inventories.

And the American inventories are so short that presumably they're not prepared to sell any to the Europeans. Jane Spear, welcome to our community. Donald Smith, thank you for that super sticker. S.H. 906. military coup a la Europe. Evan Ritz, welcome to the drag community. Complicated, complicated thing to happen, actually. SHH906 says, do you think Bricks Plus

could throw a wrench in this plan? The EU's plan. If everything that they want to do happens, if they are successful, is everything that they're trying to do, then it will deepen the crisis and stagnation in Europe. So the Bricks are not there to help Europeans. They're not there to help Europe.

They will capitalize on Europe's stagnation and weakness and developing crisis. And it is for us in Europe eventually to sort this out. We shouldn't look to outsiders to come to our rescue. Yeah. I found the tweet. Is it the war of lies? The war in Ukraine is based on lies, lies about how it started, how it's going, and how it will end. Yeah, let me put that link in the chat. I found it. Okay. Evan Ritz, welcome to the Duran community. Tatiana Karmich, thank you for that super sticker. Robert, thank for a super sticker. Elsa says, guys, I have no idea what you were talking about, but I've learned that the Euro bonds are evil and the Duran community will save us. Thanks. it is a technical subject, but it is pretty evil. Completely evil.

It's also, if I can say mad, and those are other problems. When things are mad, they're often difficult to explain. Sanity is simple. Madness is very complicated. Yeah. Tabernak says monetary systems and ideologies change, but not war. You're true enough.

What's said? And Nigel says, Cheers, lads. Thank you, Nigel. Robert McNamara says the story was on Next News. On Aaron Bushnell, I imagine, is what... Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Tapato Matato says, is it worth even asking about the Russian elections? Have the Communist Party put forth their own candidate? What are the races besides presidential? Well, I mean, it is a purely presidential election. Russia has presidential and parliamentary elections. at different times and local elections at different times also.

So the parliamentary elections are some way off and they always happen in the autumn. And the local elections also tend to happen in the autumn, the regional election. So this is purely presidential elections, but absolutely the communists have indeed put up a candidate. His name is a man called Ivan Haritonev. He's one for the presidency before, for the third. Communist Party. He's a veteran member of the party, so they'll be backing him. He was previous to joining the Communist Party, a member of an entirely different Russian party, the Agrarian Party, that got folded into the Communist Party. He's probably going to be the strongest candidate against Putin.

But everybody, every single opinion poll survey of opinion in Russia, they all are united in agreeing that Putin is going to win a landslide. About 60 to 80%, somewhere in that massive range, but it's going to be huge. Okay, peace right now says Tom's great because he helps us to recognize those moments when we're winning. True. And Unigen says thank you for all your hard work, your team. I've followed your content nearly two years. I'm amazed at consistency and substantive content.

Thank you for that. Thank you very much. And we have one more, Alexander from Sophisticated Caveman. Not a fan of the America as a victim narrative. The country is collapsing in on itself because our people's excessive self-centeredness and ignorance, not Europe. Problems are far away elsewhere. I don't think he was exactly his Tom wasn't talking about him being a victim.

What he was talking about was a power struggle, in fact. between the American financial community and the European one. I think it's very, very careful not to, you know, say this side is good and that side is bad. I think the difference was one side is bad and the other is worse. That was basically, if I got his point. But he did say, he did say, and I think, I think he's a fair point, that, you know, there are things about America, which Europe doesn't have, It's got its constitution, it's got its history of democracy, which the European Union has nothing like that.

It never has done. I mean, it's been an entirely constructive elite operation right from the outset. And, you know, there is perhaps more hope that one day the Americans themselves could find a way out and, you know, get their democracy back. I think that is what he did say, but he wasn't saying that, you know, these people in Wall Street are victims. He wasn't talking about them in those terms in any kind of way. All right, Elsa says all people working in the German industry tell that their biggest problem is to find qualified workers and Ryan Meadow pretends to start production in Ukraine where the situation is even worse.

Well, absolutely. I mean, the whole situation in Germany is terrible. I mean, I'm not going to start about Ukraine. but just the other day, I'm sure lots of people have heard it. Mila, the people who make all that kitchen equipment is an absolutely rock solid Mitelestein company, one of the great flagship family businesses of Germany, is relocating production out of Germany. I've even been till the Porsche is doing the same. I'm not sure about Porsche, but Miele definitely is.

That is a shock. I mean, people in Germany are stunned. and it's a sign of the speed now with which deindustrialization is happening. All right, two more that came in and we're signing out. Alexander from Tabernak, it's harder to submit an opponent then to defeat him. And I can't read the name on this one, but it says David Sachs is awful when he's talking about China. He wants Taiwan to be close to the West, just like Ukraine. He should know better.

Well, he wrote, I think one of the great, greatest things ever about Ukraine. And on Ukraine, he's been an absolute voice of courage and sanity. And heaven's knows, we need lots of those. All right. We will end it there. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on this live stream. Thank you to Tom Lungo. Once again, I have all his information description box. It will be as a pin comment as well when we end this stream. Alexander, any final thoughts? And we'll sign out. This is a most interesting situation, but I really do wonder what the EU is going to do. I think there is panic growing there.

One point I don't agree with Tom. I think they're absolutely terrified of Russia, actually. I don't think they want to cut a deal. But they're also very frightened about what is going on in the US. And the possibility that there is much afraid for the EU, more of them. for the EU than they are for NATO, I think it's a real one. So lots to think about with this. And we will see whether or not this Euro-Bond project takes off.

And if so, when and what comes a bit. Yeah. All right. Thank you to our moderators. Valies, Reckless Abandon, Tish M. Peter, Zareel. And I think that's everyone that was moderating today. Thank you very much, moderators. everything that you do. I think I got everybody. And thank you to everyone that was watching us on

Rockfin, Odyssey, Rumble, YouTube, and our amazing community on locals, the durand.com. Take care, everyone.