“BECAUSE WE’RE HERE LAD” – M-Pox – Market Turmoil – RIP Bob Newhart – FBYC – ME Crisis – African Great War – SA Off-Grid – SA Inflation – Living Wage - Letter from South Africa - [09-14-24]

NOTICE TO READERS – POST DELAYED DUE TO HOSPITALISATION ON SEPTEMBER 3, 2024.

Bob Dylan - Let Me Die In My Footsteps (Studio Outtake - 1962 - Official Audio) – There’s truth in a song:

TODAY’S WORLD HEALTH ORGANISTAION (WHO) WORKS FOR THE PANDEMIC INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX  (Big Pharma).

That’s Why ‘Monkeypox’ Is a Public Health Emergency [Guest Post by David Bell]. About 500 people died from mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this year, over 80% of them under the age of 15. In that same period, about 40,000 people in DRC, mostly children under age 5, died from malaria. [by Brownstone Institute -August 20, 2024]

So, a problem in a small number of African countries that has killed about the same number of people this year as die every four hours from tuberculosis has come to dominate international headlines. This is raising a lot of angst in some circles against the WHO.

While angst is warranted, it is mostly misdirected. The WHO and the International Health Regulations (IHR) emergency committee they convened have little real power, they are simply following a script written by their sponsors.  The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which declared an emergency a day earlier, is in a similar position.

Mpox is a real disease and needs local and proportionate solutions. But the problem it highlights is much bigger than mpox or the WHO, and understanding this is essential if we are to fix it. Source

• Today’s WHO Works for the Pandemic Industrial Complex — That’s Why Monkeypox Is a Public Health Emergency   https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/08/22/todays-who-works-for-the-pandemic-industrial-complex-thats-why-monkeypox-is-a-public-health-emergency/

THE SOUTH AFRICAN ‘VACCINE INJURY MEDICO-LEGAL STUDY GROUP‘ (SAVIMS) have declared that they do not support the African CDC and WHO declaration of a global health emergency for monkeypox.

In a statement issued on August 18 they challenged the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) proposed Monkeypox vaccine rollout after an emergency declaration was issued.

The statement said: “We are deeply concerned about the recent announcements made by Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya on 13 August 2024 and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on 14 August 2024. It is important to address these announcements openly to the public” The group also warned that the current Monkeypox vaccine may resurrect the eradicated disease of Smallpox.

InfoWars reports: The group’s statement listed several points which counter the emergency declaration and the Monkeypox vaccine’s safety, efficacy and necessity.

First is that the current ‘Monkeypox’ vaccine being shipped out is actually just a Smallpox vaccine that is known to cause serious side effects and is not effective in combatting ‘Stage 1’ Monkeypox and may even resurrect the Smallpox disease.

The second is the potential use of mRNA technology in future Monkeypox vaccines, a technology, the group as well as many others, have found to be extremely harmful following the Covid mRNA vaccine rollout.

The third is the unlikely ability for the target population to receive informed consent, specifically, the ‘informed’ part, due to the target demographic’s characteristics. The fourth is the fact Monkeypox is spread predominantly through sexual intercourse, chiefly gay anal sex, making a population-wide vaccination campaign unnecessary.

The fifth and sixth points regard the lack of reliable evidence if there is even a Monkeypox pandemic in the first place.  A caller to the Alex Jones Show recently reported that Monkeypox vaccine is being shipped around the US as well.  Monkeypox Vaccine Being Secretly Shipped Around The Country, Warns Trucking Company Owner pic.twitter.com/YYXep54UQr [Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) August 27, 2024]. South African Vaccine Injury Group Say Mpox Jabs are dangerous, ineffective and unnecessary   - Source

• The South African ‘Vaccine Injury Medico-Legal Study Group‘ (SAVIMS) have declared that they do not support the Africa CDC and WHO declaration of a global health emergency for monkeypox - via #planettoday: https://www.planet-today.com/2024/08/south-african-vaccine-injury-group-say.html

NEWS FLASH – INTERNATIONAL MARKETS IN TURMOIL - (spoiler alert – this is financially technical!)

Charting the Plunge and Rebound in the Nikkei Versus Nomura and Citigroup; the Correlation Is Frightening!   [Hat tip: Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 8, 2024]

Do you remember the " Quiet Repo Crisis" on September 16, 2019?  If not check out the link, it was kept very quiet! The Federal Reserve had to jump in with both feet and make billions of dollars in revolving emergency loans each weekday to the megabanks on Wall Street when Wall Street On Parade was the only media outlet that named the banks that got the money and graphed the largest borrowers when the Fed released the granular loan data two years later?

Well, guess what. Two of the financial firms that played a starring role in the Repo Crisis of 2019 appear to be part of the cast in the current trading debacle in Japan that’s spilled into global markets, if their share price performance is any indicator.  The graph above shows that the Japanese financial firm, Nomura, and the giant US megabank, Citigroup, are trading in eerie correlation to the trading debacle in Japan.

The graph below shows that Nomura was the largest borrower from the Fed in the 2019 Repo Crisis, borrowing a stunning $3.7 trillion in term-adjusted revolving loans, while Citigroup ranked fifth.  Citigroup ranked as the number one largest borrower of emergency loans from the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis, taking $2.5 trillion in revolving loans from December 2007 through July 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Much of the blame for the recent stock sell-off has been characterised by the media as the unwinding of the “yen carry trade.” (Clearly, geo-political factors are also playing a role.), providing false comfort to investors, Bloomberg News had a top headline that declared that “JPMorgan Says Three Quarters of Global Carry Trades Now Unwound.”

Unless JPMorgan Chase has an omnipotent crystal ball, it has zero chance of knowing what every global hedge fund is doing, what its megabank competitors are doing, what international asset managers, life insurers, and sovereign wealth funds are doing.

Recall in the spring of 2021 when the supposedly smartest trading houses on Wall Street didn’t know they were being conned by family office hedge fund Archegos until it blew up in their face, leaving some of the megabanks with billions in losses? (See Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)

Or how about the $6.2 billion in losses JPMorgan suffered in the London Whale scandal because it couldn’t keep tabs on what its derivative traders in London were doing?

Or what Bernie Madoff was doing in his business account at JPMorgan Chase? Or what Jeffrey Epstein was doing in his multitude of related accounts at JPMorgan Chase as they facilitated an international sex-trafficking operation.

The problem with attempting to analyse the unwinding of the yen carry trade and who is getting caught up in a destructive cycle of selling securities to meet margin calls is there are a vast number of ways that large traders could be losing money and an equally vast arena of related exposures. There could be related currency losses; related derivative losses, related stock portfolio losses, and related unstable counterparties.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that traders had made wrong-way leveraged bets on the Japanese yen or US Dollar or US tech stocks – or all three. Attempting to unwind that tangled mess is unlikely to be resolved in only a few weeks.  This might rumble on anyway-which-way in the coming weeks.

According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), as of March 31 this year, JPMorgan Chase Bank held $966bn in spot foreign exchange contracts; Goldman Sachs Bank USA held $952bn, Bank of America held $523bn, and Citigroup’s Citibank held $442bn.

Those four commercial banks’ holdings of spot Forex accounted for 90% of spot Forex at all 4,568 federally-insured commercial banks and savings associations in the United States at the end of the first quarter, according to the recent OCC report. (See page 17 at this link.) That level of concentration is equally frightening at taxpayer-backstopped financial institutions.  Sources

• Let’s say, hypothetically, that traders had made wrong-way leveraged bets on the Japanese yen or U.S. Dollar or U.S. tech stocks – or all three. Attempting to unwind that tangled mess is unlikely to be resolved soon. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/08/we-charted-the-plunge-and-rebound-in-the-nikkei-versus-nomura-and-citigroup-the-correlation-is-frightening/

• Related Article:  A Nomura Document May Shed Light on the Repo Blowup and Fed Bailout of the Gang of Six in 2019

FUN TIDBIT – Bob Newhart RIP

Bob Newhart is one of my favourite comedians.  He does it all on his own, with magic monologues like his classic ‘Driving Instructor’!  Most of us have been there learning to drive, and I am sure you will relate to Bob’s monologue:

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK – IS SOUTH AFRICA THE PLACE TO BE?

I think SA is the place to be and I wrote about it in my ‘Letter from South Africa’ six months ago: "EASY LIVING in South Africa" when I scribbled: “When compared to my dismal experiences at 50 Degrees North it’s a no-brainer!  It’s not generally understood that Britain is positioned close to the Arctic Circle with only the Gulf Stream to maintain a temperate maritime climate during June – August (called the 'summer' season, LOL)!”

There is no substitute for the average 300 days of sun in Cape Town to which I thankfully returned after a self-imposed exile in the land of my birth. Even the short Cape winter offers several mild and sunny days”.  Source

• As a lifelong yachtsman, I have had to be a 'Prepper' all my life; “forearmed is forewarned”.  The serialisation of my book “The Financial Jigsaw – Part 2” is all about surviving and prospering following a gradual transition away from our unsustainable 'consumerist' economic model based on debt and materialism to a 'less-is-more', localisation economic model.

BREAKING SOUTH AFRICAN NEWS – WILL  INCREASED TENSIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST IMPACT SOUTH AFRICA?

I have written about the logistical shortcomings of the West in a WW3 scenario for some time now.  At the top of the list will be manpower, just as we have seen in Ukraine. This is why we have been hearing military and political officials calling for a new ‘draft’ (aka Conscription) over the past two years - they know what’s coming.

A draft to fight for Globalist causes is unacceptable. I’m not going to delve into debate over whether it’s right or wrong for Western countries to throw their weight behind Israel.  Frankly, I don’t care about that argument. I don’t have anything invested in either side of that conflict, but I do care about my fellow South Africans.

I also know that making the US military the “go-to solution” to the Middle East problem is going to end with a lot of dead people, military and civilian.  Additionally I know that the expanding crisis will make certain special interest groups (Globalists) very happy.  As I noted last year with the wisdom of Sun Tzu:

The Western Establishment is particularly obsessed with convincing US conservatives and patriots to participate in their chaos; there are a number of Neo-cons, and even a few supposed liberty media personalities, calling for Americans to answer the call of blood in Israel. Some have described the coming conflagration as “the war to end all wars.” (Ed: we’ve heard that one before!)

I believe that the real war is yet to truly start, and that is the war to erase the Globalists from existence. They want us to fight overseas in endless quagmires in the hopes we will die out; the age-old strategy of “Divide & Conquer”, hence there will be no one left to oppose them and their utopian vision of a New World Global Order.

The trap has been set. We will have to wait and observe the scale of the response from Russia, Lebanon, and Iran but I do believe the worst case scenario is at hand. There are multiple powderkeg events in progress around the world right now, but the Middle East/Ukraine situation looks to be the most disastrous in how it will affect the US/NATO, UK and Europe oligarchs.  Sources

• These photos capture 100 days of agony in an unprecedented war between Israel and Hamas https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-100-days-photo-gallery-b37dd435701fa583b8f857e024dc39a5

• The Trigger For WW3 Just Arrived – What Are The Implications For Americans?  https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/08/03/the-trigger-for-wwiii-just-arrived-what-are-the-implications-for-americans/

AFRICA IS HEADING TOWARD ANOTHER GREAT WAR, AND SOUTH AFRICA IS VULNERABLE: (Justice Malala - 31st July 2024 Hat Tip, Editor BizNews)

World leaders are scrambling to avert a full-scale war between, Russia & NATO, Israel and Iran/Hezbollah. However there is another war, on a scale perhaps unimaginable to many, they should rush to prevent this one too.  It’s a repeat, like Israel-Hezbollah in 2006, of a war that raged between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda between August 1998 and July 2003.

By the time it ended, nine African countries and 20 rebel groups were involved.  At least 5.4 million people died through fighting, disease and malnutrition. Seven million were displaced.  Africa’s World War, or the ‘Great War of Africa’, as it came to be known, was the world’s deadliest conflict since WW2.

Today, conflict between Congolese and Rwandan leaders has sharpened dangerously, peace initiatives have collapsed, an arms race is underway, and deadly clashes between both sides and militias aligned to them are frequent; these are all the warning lights are flashing for a repeat of the 1998-2003 war.  For South Africa’s Congo deployment, the Rwanda conflict is a serious risk.

Tensions have been simmering for years, with frequent reports of serious cross-border clashes in the eastern provinces of the DRC. War-talk and violence had ramped up in the run-up to the DRC elections in December 2023 and have intensified over the past seven months.

Weeks before the poll, DRC president Félix Tshisekedi said Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame was behaving like Hitler and had ambitions to expand Rwanda into eastern DRC. “I promise he will end up like Hitler,” he warned. Rwanda said Tshisekedi’s words are a “loud and clear threat.”

[ED: And this is where the last UK Tory government wanted to send their illegal immigrants  because it was “Safe & Effective”… WHAT?]

On July 9, a United Nations expert report confirmed widely circulated accusations that Uganda and Rwanda are backing the powerful M23 rebel group in eastern DRC. It warned that the crisis “carried the risk of triggering a wider regional conflict.” Rwanda’s government spokesperson Yolande Makolo responded that Tshisekedi had “consistently threatened to declare war on Rwanda” and that her country “will continue to defend itself.”

The reasons for the fighting are decades-old and complex, yet currently boil down to various players’ bid to dominate the DRC’s abundant mineral resources. After the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which one million members of the Tutsi ethnic group were killed by mainly Hutu ethnic groups, militias implicated in the murders fled into the eastern DRC.

The Rwandan army pursued them, arguing that it had to arrest perpetrators of the genocide and destroy their networks. This happened again in 1998, triggering the Great War and spawning a web of vested interests involving neighbouring nations and armed militias, mercenaries, mining companies, local and regional politicians, China, the US, and other global powers seeking a toehold in the region. Large parts of the DRC have since been “occupied” by ruthless armed groups profiting from illegal mining.

The DRC produces nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt, while the Great Lakes Region is rich with tin, tantalum, tungsten, lithium and gold, all of which are key components of electric vehicle batteries, cell phones, refrigerators, jewellery, airplane parts, cars, and other goods.

As of 2020, Chinese firms owned or had stakes in 15 of the 19 cobalt producing mines in the DRC. Between 2022 and 2050, demand for nickel will double, cobalt triple, and lithium rise tenfold according to the International Energy Agency.

A conflagration will potentially affect or draw in other countries. Apart from the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, a plethora of armed groups are already in the region. The 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission (which goes by the French acronym MONUSCO) was supposed to leave the country by year-end, but has been asked by the Congolese government to stay on indefinitely.

South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania already have troops in the DRC as part of the Southern African Development Community’s peacekeeping mission deployed there in December 2023. The DRC’s neighbors Angola, the Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia could be drawn into the fighting. An East African Community Regional Force exited the DRC in December 2023 and may be drawn back into the conflict.

That’s not all. The ‘Global Centre for the Responsibility To Protect’ says there are at least 120 armed militias operating in the region while mercenary groups, such as Russia’s Wagner Group, have been contracted by various role players. Worryingly, the DRC has been stocking up on arms. The country’s military spending had the highest increase in the world in 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Spending on armoured vehicles, drones and other military equipment more than doubled in a year to $794 million.

The 1998-2003 conflict ended because strong continental leaders intervened through dialogue. In 2000, African leaders adopted the 'Lomé Declaration’. which expressly outlawed coups, thus giving the African Union the authority to stand up to belligerents.

The current political climate, called “an epidemic” of coups by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, makes it harder to intervene. Continental leadership of the type of the early 2000s is also lacking.

In its last meeting on July 12, 2024 the African Union, its authority already undermined by swaggering coup leaders in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and others experiencing democratic backsliding failed to even place the Great Lakes crisis on its agenda.

Attempts to strike a new peace deal have floundered. On July 27, 2024 DRC President Tshisekedi told a meeting in Paris: “There are two processes. There was the Nairobi Process driven by Uhuru Kenyatta which, unfortunately, was subsequently managed by the new president William Ruto. He managed it very badly. The process is almost dead.”  The second initiative, the ‘Luanda Process’ led by Angolan President João Lourenço, has made little headway after a disastrous meeting in February.

What now?  At the request of the US, the belligerents have been observing a humanitarian truce for nearly a month, but clashes have continued. This truce should be used by international leaders, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admirably been heavily involved with Angola’s President Lourenço, to encourage the DRC’s Tshekedi and Rwanda’s Kagame to dial down the rhetoric and come to the negotiating table.

China, which has sold arms to both sides this year and is the dominant foreign economic player in the DRC’s mining sector, should do the same. Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates (both of which have mining interests in the DRC) should also be acting. Crucially, regional leaders such as Angola, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya should be taking a leadership role alongside Angola’s president to avert a deterioration and assert Africa’s interests.

7.2 million people in the region are already displaced (700,000 of them in just the first three months of 2024), further escalation spells disaster for the continent. Source

• Africa is heading toward another Great War, and SA is vulnerable: Justice Malala  https://www.biznews.com/africa/2024/07/31/africa-great-war-sa-vulnerable-justice-malala

SURVIVAL MONITOR - OFF-GRID LIVING IN SOUTH AFRICA

In this interview, Alec Hogg speaks with Tsitso Setai of Lokshin Auctions and GG Alcock, a Kasipreneur expert, about the innovative concept of auctioneering in South African townships. GG Alcock highlights the underreported entrepreneurial activities in townships and challenges conventional unemployment statistics, suggesting many people are engaged in informal economic activities, which I have been saying for years, and is one way for localisation to offer quality of life under the radar – SARS are conspicuous by their absence!

Tsitso Setai explains the motivation behind Lokshin Auctions, emphasising the need for affordable second-hand goods in townships where new items are often unaffordable. He discusses how auctions provide a platform for community members to buy and sell assets, thus supporting local entrepreneurship.

Setai shares his vision of expanding auctioneering services to more townships and gaining support from asset-based finance institutions and large corporates. He points out the potential benefits of localising auctions, including creating circular economies and reducing waste.  GG Alcock adds that township auctioneering can revolutionise the way repossessed and second-hand items are handled, making them accessible to those who can repurpose them.

Alec Hogg concludes by recognising the transformative business potential of this model and its capacity to foster economic inclusion and sustainability in South African townships.  Source

• Kasipreneur Tsitso Setai of Lokshin Auctions – turning forgotten assets into cash, in one location after another.  (Hat Tip: July 24, 2024 by Alec Hogg)   https://www.biznews.com/good-hope-project/2024/07/24/kasipreneur-tsitso-setai-lokshin-auctions

INFLATION  - South African Inflation Rate is Steady at a 4-Month Low of 5.2%

NARRATIVE BATTLE –  WHAT DO YOU NEED TO EARN TO LIVE A ‘DECENT’ LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA?

Is the new living wage of R15,000 average per month enough to live a decent life?  A living wage is not the same as the national minimum wage that employers must pay workers according to law that rarely satisfies their fundamental needs. By contrast, employers are encouraged to offer a voluntary living wage instead.

The living wage is a wage that is sufficient for a worker to provide for themselves and their families with the basic necessities of life and save something for the future or to cover unforeseen emergency expenses.

Ines Meyer, a spokesperson for the Living Wage South Africa Network, says. “The National Minimum Wage is R27.58 per hour, R220.64 for an 8-hour day and R4,633,44 for an average 21-day working month.”  The new living wage was announced at a meeting of the University of Cape Town’s SARChI Chair in Creation of Decent Work and Sustainable Livelihood.

FINALLY – A THOUGHT ABOUT THE ABOVE – Noting the ‘average’ wage, there are always “lies, damned lies, and statistics” to fool you!  WHAT’S THE TRUTH?  (Hat Tip Karl Denninger https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251815  (lightly edited for SA)

A sustainable economy must have the average person able to afford the average thing, but the use of an arithmetical average rather than median to deceive is very common in statistics.  Thus, if there are 10 people with alleged jobs, one has a million rand per year income and the other nine have ZAR5,000, nine out of ten are starving; they do not in fact have ZAR104,500 in income each as the “arithmetrical average” would claim.  Thus the use of an“arithmetrical average” alone is only valid if there are no extreme outliers, but of course this is almost certainly not the case (as depicted above). [Ed: Check out Pareto’s 80/20 rule]

The lies about “improvement” in everyone’s standard of living only go so far and when young people are increasingly excluded from having a decent life, and repeatedly have their fingers burned when trying to climb the social ladder, those with the intellectual capacity, soon reach the conclusion that any child they bear will have a more defective life than their parents (Ed: for the first time in history!), so they will decide not to play the game.

This can’t be changed by force, and attempts to “substitute” for that decision are ridiculously foolish, because it is the median that has to be able to afford the median of “things” and if you depress that median in capacity for earnings, intellectual capacity, or otherwise then the overall median of what can be produced also goes down over time.  It doesn’t happen immediately but it declines gradually over a long period. Source

• Henry Ford had a thing or two to say about this: “In order to have a sustainable business the people who build my cars have to be able to buy them.”  Well, yes, it makes sense  https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/08/07/so-on-the-market/

COMING NEXT:

• BOOM Weekly Global Review - Tuesday, September 17, 2024

• The Financial Jigsaw Part 2 - Chapter 6 – GLOBAL PROXY WARS – Saturday, September 21, 2024

REFERENCES 

• My Book: “The Financial Jigsaw” Parts 1 & 2 Scroll:   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358117070_THE_FINANCIAL_JIGSAW_-_PART_1_-_4th_Edition_2020   including regular updates.

• BOOM Finance and Economics Substack (Subscribe for Free) - also on LinkedIn and WordPress. Plus Covid Medical News Network CMN News  and BOOM Blog -- All Editorials (over 5 years) --  BOOM Finance and Economics | Designed for Critical Thinkers — UPDATED WEEKLY (wordpress.com)