BREATH TAX

 

Tax That Terrorism

Everyone knows we're in a war, a bitter war, a vicious war, a no-holds-barred war against a ruthless enemy, the Weather. You see, what happens is this. Thanks to man-made Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, fragile planet earth is shrouded in CO2 and heats up like a greenhouse, which melts the glaciers and floods Vanatu and Martha's Vineyard. Disaster.

So Not Satanic

Polar bears die, sad, and multi-million dollar mansions get washed away in the flood of rising sea water, tragic. Awful, and it's all down to Carbon Dioxide being spewed out by us, humans. So to save the planet we must stamp out Carbon Dioxide. Yes, you may even have heard the slogan, NET ZERO. That means no more. Absolutely zero CO2. The venerable if shrinking Church of England's all in favor of this, obviously, but here's the thing.

Note Bear

Humans produce CO2, Carbon Dioxide, it's a function of breathing, and accounts for 0.1% of the UK's Gaia destroying carbon emissions says the Sceptered Isle's Daily Mail. This is a problem, to put it mildly. Here at the Compound we propose a solution, tax the air. Here's a song:

On topic, don't you think?

LSP

The War On Cash

 

Everyone knows Cash is King but what happens when the Man comes around and bans it? So what, you say, gleefully tapping your cheery little plastic digital id on the nearest Starbucks payment scanner. So what? So a lot.

Say, by way of wild conjecture, that you're a Canadian trucker who protests against the government in Ottawa, which is a kind of town in Ontario. The government doesn't like this and tells your bank to freeze your account. Hey presto, all of a sudden that happy little card doesn't work any more and guess what, you can't buy anything. No, don't even think of cashing your paycheck because you can't, there is no cash. Look at you, unperson.

Again, try to imagine a scenario in which you're a political figure in England, say, Nigel Farage, and you're saying things against the ruling political class, let's call it the Uniparty. How very brave. Sorry, buddy, Coutts & Co. have debanked you and good luck paying for anything with all the paper you've hidden under the mattress, traitor.

You get the point, whether you agree with the truckers, Farage or anyone else, and the point is this: A cashless society opens the way to tyranny and it's just a step away from CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) in which all your spending is under government scrutiny. Of course we all know that'll be utterly benign.

On point, I was shocked last time I was in London (UK, not Ontario) to see how hard it was to purchase anything with cash. Notable exceptions were Cordings in Piccadilly, who loved it, and a  coffee stand outside Embankment station, Blues and Royals, I think. More shocking still was the reaction of some of my friends, erstwhile and present anarchists no less, they didn't seem to see the issue. Scotland was better, but still.

I tell you, we're sleepwalking into something bad here, a tyrannous digital cattle pen. Perhaps Texas needs to issue its own gold backed currency by way of leading the world to freedom and fiscal sanity?

Just a thought,

LSP

Bankster Wipeout?

The dominoes keep falling, SBX, Silvergate, SVB, Signature NY and on, with many bank stocks halting trading Monday morning after spectacular Stuka-like nosedives. The issue? 

Banks being heavily invested in US Government bonds, a safe have when interest rates are low, toxic underperformers  on the reverse side of an apparently risky coin. And lo and behold, interest rates have risen from near zero to approaching 5%, net result? 

Underwater balance sheets. You see, when interest rates rise bond prices go down leaving their owners subpar and scrambling for liquidity, cash. And that's hard to get when you're fire-selling assets and depositors are withdrawing funds for greener pastures.

Long story short, select banks were/are out of cash and got shut down. Woe to Oprah, Harry & Meghan and all the rest but that's not all. Has the entire financial sector become infected, is US Government debt effectively a toxic security?

Zerohedge thinks so, it's long but worth the read. Here's an excerpt:

Fifteen years later… after countless investigations, hearings, “stress test” rules, and new banking regulations to prevent another financial meltdown, we have just witnessed two large banks collapse in the United States of America – Signature Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Now, banks do fail from time to time. But these circumstances are eerily similar to 2008… though the reality is much worse. I’ll explain:

1) US government bonds are the new “toxic security”

Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers. Whereas Lehman bet almost ALL of its balance sheet on those risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.

According to the bank’s annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet “only” $74 billion in loans.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but banks typically loan out MOST of their depositors’ money. Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $1.38 trillion in deposits. $955 billion of that is loaned out.

That means Wells Fargo has made loans with nearly 70% of its customer’s money, while SVB had a more conservative “loan-to-deposit ratio” of roughly 42%.

Point is, SVB did not fail because they were making a bunch of high-risk NINJA loans. Far from it.

SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors’ money ($119.9 billion) in US GOVERNMENT BONDS.

This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.

US government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most ‘risk free’ asset in the world. But that’s totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value. And that’s exactly what happened.

Most of SVB’s portfolio was in long-term government bonds, like 10-year Treasury notes. And these have been extremely volatile.

In March 2020, for example, interest rates were so low that the Treasury Department sold some 10-year Treasury notes at yields as low as 0.08%.

But interest rates have increased so much since then; last week the 10-year Treasury yield was more than 4%. And this is an enormous difference.

If you’re not terribly familiar with the bond market, one of the most important things to understand is that bonds lose value as interest rates rise. And this is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.

SVB loaded up on long-term government bonds when interest rates were much lower; the average weighted yield in their bond portfolio, in fact, was just 1.78%.

But interest rates have been rising rapidly. The same bonds that SVB bought 2-3 years ago at 1.78% now yield between 3.5% and 5%… meaning that SVB was sitting on steep losses.

They didn’t hide this fact.

Their 2022 annual report, published on January 19th of this year, showed about $15 billion in ‘unrealized losses’ on their government bonds. (I’ll come back to this.)

By comparison, SVB only had about $16 billion in total capital… so $15 billion in unrealized losses was enough to essentially wipe them out.

Again– these losses didn’t come from some mountain of crazy NINJA loans. SVB failed because they lost billions from US government bonds… which are the new toxic securities.

2) If SVB is insolvent, so is everyone else… including the Fed.

This is where the real fun starts. Because if SVB failed due to losses in its portfolio of government bonds, then pretty much every other institution is at risk too.

Our old favorite Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $50 billion in unrealized losses on its bond portfolio. That’s a HUGE chunk of the bank’s capital, and it doesn’t include potential derivative losses either.

Anyone who has purchased long-term government bonds– banks, brokerages, large corporations, state and local governments, foreign institutions– are all sitting on enormous losses right now.

The FDIC (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, i.e. the primary banking regulator in the United States) estimates unrealized losses among US banks at roughly $650 billion.

$650 billion in unrealized losses is similar in size to the total subprime losses in the United States back in 2008; and if interest rates keep rising, the losses will continue to increase.

What’s really ironic (and a bit comical) about this is that the FDIC is supposed to guarantee bank deposits.

In fact they manage a special fund called Deposit Insurance Fund, or DIF, to insure customer deposits at banks across the US– including the deposits at the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank.

But the DIF’s balance right now is only around $128 billion… versus $650 billion (and growing) unrealized losses in the banking system.

Here’s what really crazy, though: where does the DIF invest that $128 billion? In US government bonds! So even the FDIC is suffering unrealized losses in its insurance fund, which is supposed to bail out banks that fail from their unrealized losses.

You can’t make this stuff up, it’s ridiculous!

Now there’s one bank in particular I want to highlight that is incredibly exposed to major losses in its bond portfolio.

In fact last year this bank reported ‘unrealized losses’ of more than $330 billion against just $42 billion in capital… making this bank completely and totally insolvent.

I’m talking, of course, about the Federal Reserve… THE most important central bank in the world. It’s hopelessly insolvent, and FAR more broke than Silicon Valley Bank.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

In a word, everything. Note well, I’m talking, of course, about the Federal Reserve… THE most important central bank in the world. It’s hopelessly insolvent, and FAR more broke than Silicon Valley Bank.

Got that? Smart people are liquid (does this mean loading up your safe with gold, diamonds, silver topped canes, flawless emeralds, DOGE$, worthless fiat and ammo? -- Ed.) and thinking themselves fortunate on being upside Krugerrands. That said, maybe everything will work out just fine as Biden and the Genius Patrol reassured us this morning.

See you on the other side,

LSP

WOLF

That is all. And yes, MONGOL ROCK is key.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

War

 

We've pulled out of Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, a happy day for looters, and an outward and visible sign of the end of our 20 year war in that country. Did we win that war? Apparently not, the Taliban look set to take over, which raises a bigger question. Why do we keep fighting wars we don't win.

Korea and Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, not exactly victories. It's curious, we're obviously up for a fight but we're not prepared to close the deal, and actually win. Why? Big question. Money, war is a racket, political chicanery, lack of will, the list goes on and we can parse the issue till the Eschaton, but I will say this.

If we're going to fight, we should fight to win, 100%, sure of the rightness of the cause. Anything less is a betrayal of our soldiers and the people they're supposedly fighting for. To say nothing of the betrayal of our country by its rulers, and the people whose lives they've catastrophically ruined.

Is the problem fixable?

Your call,

LSP

Putin v. Biden Throwdown

 

By now all the world knows that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has challenged America's President, Joe Biden, aka the Old Corpse, to a live debate throwdown, without "any delays."

Putin issued the challenge after the Corpse accused the Russian leader of having "no soul" and being a "killer." But the Russian leader wasn't slow to reply on State TV, "It takes one to know one" he quipped and, "I hope he's in good health," before issuing his famous live debate challenge:

I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it’s called, without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion, it seems to me that would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States.

Not Corrupt. No, Not For a Second

 

Joe Biden, at 78, is America's oldest ever president as well as its most popular, winning many millions more votes than any candidate in US history. Which is a remarkable achievement because he didn't campaign and barely spoke in the run up to the election. The trend's continued. Surging on his unbridled popularity the Old Corpse hardly speaks now and when he does seems bizarrely out of touch and confused.

Note adorable Shiba DOGE$

Vladimir Putin, now 68, is well known for his love of animals, marksmanship, bikers, martial arts, fishing and the Church. He frequently gives live interviews in the Russian press and media. A former KGB Colonel, Putin is famous for locking up the female punk act Pussy Riot and for standing firm against the West's ascendant new religion, the Rainbow Cult.

So who will prevail, the Corpse or the Strongman? Will the Corpse get into the debate arena, for that matter, is he even capable of doing so? Here at the Compound we doubt it, Joe's too old and demented, but will the oligarch, bankster elite behind him launch into Russia in a bid to bring the dissident power into line.

It's been tried before, several times, with resounding failure, and let's hope we don't see a rematch. In the meanwhile, we wait for the Old Corpse to rise to Putin's challenge. Do we wait in vain?

Your Pal,

LSP

Who 's Gonna Pay The Troops?

 

Rightist jaws are crashing in consternation with each new Executive Order. How many so far, 44? More, at least, in a couple of weeks than in the whole of 45's presidency. My God, what is this, a fiat government tyranny! Well yes, it is, protected by a few thousand National Guardspersons of dubious loyalty.

Regardless, no one's talking about this, and perhaps they should. The US debt is what, 27 trillion and counting? What does this mean? That $USD, which is a debt instrument at interest to the privately owned Fed Reserve, is essentially worthless? Something like that.

Now, do the math. All you political philosopher economists (PPE) crunch the numbers. Figure out the end game. When our hollowed out, rotten, fake money implodes, which it inevitably will, who's gonna pay the soldiers? 

But let's hope we don't go there. Who knows, maybe magicke will heal the US Dollar and all will be well. Don't count on it. Smart people are buying $DOGE at the dip and loading magazines.

Your Pal,

LSP

Debtstar Rising

 

Do you remember the debt? No, not your paltry burden, but the US debt, standing at a mighty, earth shattering and climbing 27 Trillion, at interest, and rising every second. It's a vast, almost unimaginable amount of money and, as with all debt, the people who lent it in the first place want their money repaid.

That's the nature of debt. Take out a loan to buy stuff, like votes, how very awesome, but you have to pay it back, it's part of the deal. Now, how do you pay back 27 trillion bucks and climbing?  You can inflate your way out of it and make your money worthless, or you can can blow off the debt, and make your money worthless.

What a conundrum, and I'm glad I'm just an inconsequential kebab vendor on the information superhighway as opposed to the kind of banker who feels forced to throw himself off a balcony at the age of 57 despite being a multi billionaire. But let's get down to brass tacks.

Note Optic

Our money's rotten and waiting to implode, it's a matter of time. When it does, and it will, who's going to pay the soldiers. Seriously, what's going to happen when the people under arms don't get a paycheck? No one's talking about that, and maybe they should.

But no, they're just sending soldiers off to sleep in carparks as they celebrate the political theater of a stolen election. That'll endear you to the soldiery you have to pay to protect you and who, notoriously, voted for you in the last election. Except that they didn't.

Your Pal,

LSP

BREXIT DAY

Some said it'd never happen, that the European Union globalist, bankster, New World Order superstate and its bought and paid for elite shills would keep Great Britain under the heel of its rainbow wellie forever. 

Oh look, a racist

It sure seemed that way, with Theresa May and assorted NWO stooges sabotaging Great Britain's biggest ever democratic vote. And in the name of "democracy," all hail doublethink. Then Boris Johnson happened, the Millionaire Socialists got wiped out at the polls and Britain left the God-hating, nation-erasing, banker-enriching, corruption-dealing EU this evening. 

BREXIT Girls Rock

Americans on both sides of the political divide can find this perplexing. On the right of things, we tend to think of the Sceptred Isle as a kind of roll-over-and-die Sweden, a country fast and irretrievably in the grip of replacement strategy multicultural enrichment, and lesbian theatre workshops in Tower Hamlets. On the left, consternation, fear, loathing and gnashing of teeth as England asserts its sovereignty as a nation.

Typical UK Street Scene

So be it. To the Comsymp, pinkoid Left, suck it up and stop pretending that resistance to your corporate sponsored deconstruction of Christian culture is some kind of fascist trick. On the contrary, the reverse applies. And to the right? Don't underestimate the power of hearth, home and the spirit of the British people, to say nothing of our own here in the New World.

Independence Day

BREXIT/MAGA? Howling from the people who support infanticide up to and including the point of birth. Loud cheers from everyone in favor of solidarity and subsidiarity, that nations and their people should be sovereign.

And note this. Remarkable, isn't it, that a populist movement should be, you know, popular. Unlike the BBC. Let's see a landslide MAGA 2020 in the Fall.

Gloria,

LSP

Macronite Armistice Day

As world leaders met in Paris for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that brought an end to the Great War, French President Emmanuel Macron took the opportunity to blast nationalism.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” stated the unpopular French leader in an apparent attempt to boost New World Order globalism.

Look How The Globalists Hate Putin

Macron, who is a despised Illuminati puppet, is tanking in the polls with a miserable 19% approval rating. He used to work for the enormously powerful Rothschild banking cabal, and presumably isn't impressed by the fact that patriotic Americans and many others died to save his nation.

Thumbs Up

Just think, all those misguided members of the French Resistance who betrayed their patriotism by loving their nation. Such traitors!

But seriously, if you're an unpopular Macronite who hates nationalism but loves patriotism, then what are you patriotic for, what's your patria? It's obviously not your country or nation because that's evil, so what's left?

Behold Your Rulers

How about a borderless European secular superstate, complete with its own army and ruled by unelected MillSoc mandarins in Brussels. And guess who pays for that, at interest.

Surely not the Rothschilds.

LSP

Hypersonic Debt

Now that Dallas has removed its infamous statue of General Lee, we can safely assume that everyone's going to be better off and a brave new world of tolerance, diversity and equal opportunity can begin now that institutional racism is finally erased from our parks. But not so fast, readers.

In your excitement over statues you may not have noticed that we're $20 trillion in debt and climbing at a rate of around $1.1 trillion a year. That's something like $34,880 a second or if you picture it in terms of the speed of sound, which is 1,125 feet per second, our debt is flying at over Mach 30. Eat your heart out, Chuck Yeager.

This means that the US is hurtling towards bankruptcy at hypersonic speed and looking somewhere down the pike at a Grecian-style sovereign debt crisis. So how do you resolve a >104% debt to GDP ratio, with a $19 trillion economy and a $20 trillion debt overhang?

Through tax cuts and economic boosting? Good call but not enough. You solve the problem by devaluing the dollar, by inflation.

Jim Rickards, at Zerohedge, suggests this can be done by the Treasury inflating the price of gold, from around $1,330 an ounce to $5,000 through the use of a Gold Certificate issued to the Fed. It's been done before, in 1934 and 1953, under the Roosevelt and Eisenhower administrations respectively. And sure enough, inflation ensued.

Problem? Solution, except that your dollars will be sadly worthless. Of course there's another option which perhaps goes hand in hand with the first, war.

You can read all about the debt here and here. Or obsess about statues in parks, your call.

Midas Touch,

LSP

Rule Britannia!

Remember the old song that says Britons never, ever, ever shall be slaves? Well it seems that that the Britons do, following their decision to walk away from their transnational elite, secular rightleft overlords in Brussels. 

What can we say? Rule Britannia, despite the best efforts of the bankster NWO puppetmasters and their Illuminati stooges in the Boom Town Rats.

Whether millionaire socialist celebrity Bob Geldof's disastrous performance on a boat in the Thames influenced this positive outcome, is presently unclear.

And you'll notice that the progleft shills in the so-called objective press are all saying that democracy's a bad idea.

Right. Who knows, maybe Great Briton will rebuild its Navy.

Carry on,

LSP

Hillary Sachs Clinton Street Art

Presented without comment, via Zerohedge.

LSP

Audit the Fed

Andrew Jackson had this to say to the Bank of the United States in 1834:

I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, I will rout you out.

The Fed, which creates our money and loans it to the government at interest, ponder that, doesn't want to be audited. Well that's really weird.

You might want to read this, at ZeroHedge.

LSP

Ukraine War

There's something pretty close to a full-fledged civil war going on in the Ukraine and the U.S. is backing one side, the pro-West, pro-NATO, IMF side. Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin, is backing the other side, obviously.

Now, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the anti-Christian, socialist, gay West attacking the Christian, traditional values, anti-comsymp East, why aren't our media reporting this war?

Seriously, there's a war firing up on Europe's threshold, people are dying, helicopters are being shot down, the Vostok Brigade's in motion, cities are under siege. VERY BIG NEWS.

Why isn't our media reporting? Maybe lying about the VA scandal and releasing terrorists is more important? Or covering Pride rallies and Carbon Footprints?

Not Newsworthy, Not At All, Move Along

Or maybe there's just nothing to see and we should all just move along peacefully into the paradise prepared for us by our Overlords.

And remember, the government is your friend.

God bless,

LSP

Sort it Out!

not too bad...

Any LSP worth his salt likes to go for a ride on Thursday after Morning Prayer and lately this means charging about on a 100 acre field on JB. It's fun, clears the head, helps keep up a basic level of fitness and further trains horse and rider, which is an ongoing project -- you never stop learning.

Ride over, and trying not to melt in the Texan sun, I was busy congratulating myself and horse when I looked at a couple of pictures of the progress. A salutary lesson, because there I was with my feet pointed out at an angle from the horse. Bad error! Why?

what a shambles, but good looking horse.

Because it takes your leg off the horse, destabilizes your seat and gives inconsistent leg aids to the animal.

make like Iceland

In other news, I liked this from ZeroHedge:

We have no doubt that everyone is tired of bad news, but we are compelled to review the facts: Europe is currently experiencing severe bank runs, budgets in virtually every western country on the planet are out of control, the banking system is running excessive leverage and risk, the costs of servicing the ever-increasing amounts of government debt are rising rapidly, and the economies of Europe, Asia and the United States are slowing down or are in full contraction. There's no sugar coating it and we have to stop listening to politicians and central planners who continue to downplay, obfuscate and flat out lie about the current economic reality.

Advice? Learn to ride, shoot and grow your own food.

LSP

Drive a Stake Through its Black Heart

Old news I know, but MERS is dead, thanks to Judge Grossman, which is a good result if you're looking down the barrel of foreclosure in Florida and elsewhere.

For some reason bankers are resigning by the bucketful. 116 of them as of today, apparently.

Now why would that be?

Stay on the horse,

LSP

Mark Of The Beast II

Following alarmist end-times reporting on the turbulent state of the market and with the caveat that "numerology is a mrk (sic) of the truly loopy!" I feel it's only right to point out that the Bank of Italy believes it can bear an 8% yield. Many would argue that this absurd and superstitious obsession with so-called "mystical numbers" is little short of insane.

But an Ontario reader has this to say:

"Worth remembering though – it wasn’t long ago that no Government could borrow for as LITTLE as 8%. The modern era of low interest rates is quite a recent phenomenon, and it’s one of the things that made the huge superboom from 1992-2008 possible. No-one would have borrowed money for sub-primes at historic interest rates. Ironically low IRs followed from low inflation... and everyone borrowed, Texas consumers to Italian politicians alike..."

Interesting. Perhaps our worship of Mammon has destroyed the West's collective memory? Still, as the annoying phrase runs, that was then, this is now...

God bless,

LSP

Your Money or your Life!

Anyone following the slow-moving(ish) train-wreck that is the Sovereign Debt crisis, will have noticed that France and Belgium have pledged to prop up Dexia, one of several rotten franchises in the heart of Europe. Presumably taxpayers will come to the rescue, but in the meanwhile, Dexia dropped a miserable 22 points on the Brussel's 'change. You can read about it in the SF Chronicle, if you like.


Belloc wrote somewhere that the Roman Empire was plagued with periodic financial crises brought on by usurious bankers. Interest on non-productive loans (his definition of usury) would mount up over the years until the burden became unsustainable, leading to financial collapse and ever higher tax burdens. Odd how history seems to repeat itself.

Jefferson had this to say about the banks:


"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered..."


Prescient, that Founding Father.


LSP