CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

With Oreshnik now entering the picture, everywhere the Hegemon will try to harass China they will also have to face Russia...

When it comes to state of the art Russian weaponry, what the inestimable Ray McGovern defines as the MICIMATT – the whole Hegemonic complex – seems to dwell in perpetual stupor.

They had no clue about Kalibr, Sarmat, Khinzal, Zircon or Avangard before they were introduced. They had no clue about Oreshnik (‘Hazel”) before the 30-minute protocolar warning by the Russians, stating a missile test was coming, and it was not nuclear. The Americans assumed that would be just another ballistic missile test, as they happen routinely close to the Arctic.

Even President Putin didn’t know Oreshnik was ready for its close-up until the last minute. And Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed that only an ultra-rarefied circle knew Oreshnik even existed.

In a nutshell: the MICIMATT only sees what Russia shows off – and when it happens. Call it a leak-proof vow of secrecy permeating the Russian military complex – which, by the way, is a massive state, nationalized company, with a few private components.

And that offers the Russian government, in practice, better engineering, better physics, better mathematics and better practical, final results than anything across the self-important collective West.

Oreshnik – a kinetic weapons system – is a certified game-changer when it comes to military technology and warfare in more ways than one: actually several. Simple physics tells us that by combining enough kinetic force and mass, utter devastation is guaranteed, comparable to a low-to-medium yield nuclear weapon. With the added benefit of no radiation.

Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), under development by Russia (along with other systems) even before Trump 1.0 pulled the U.S. out of the INF treaty in 2019.

A few concise analyses have pointed out how Oreshnik can be fitted into intercontinental (italics mine) non-nuclear missiles. The Russians are being very diplomatic, not stressing that if Oreshnik is launched from the Russian Far East, it can easily reach most latitudes across the USA.

Moreover, applying Oreshnik tech to tactical missiles – Putin late last week said this is already happening – also changes the whole tactical domain.

The new game in town is Russia being capable of unleashing ultra-high-velocity kinetic weapons literally anywhere around the world – after warning civilians to abandon the area around the targets. And there’s absolutely no defense against it, anywhere.

Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide

It’s quite predictable that the woke, arrogant/ignorant MICIMATT, as well as NATO and the whole, brainwashed collective West simply have no idea what just hit them, seemingly out of the blue.

To be concise: a system with the destructive power of a tactical nuclear weapon but carrying the precision of a top sniper’s bullet.

Ergo, sitting duck billion-dollar aircraft carriers; the whole, 800-plus Empire of Bases; assorted underground bunkers; ICBM launch platforms; naval shipyards; not to mention NATO’s HQ in Brussels, the Aegis Ashore base in Redzikowo (Poland), the NATO joint force center in the Netherlands, southern NATO command in Naples – all these immensely expensive assets are fair game for non-nuclear Oreshniks capable of reducing them to dust in a flash after flying for mere minutes at over Mach 10.

By now multitudes around the world are aware that Oreshnik may reach Berlin in 11 minutes and London in 19 minutes. Also that launched from southern Russia, Oreshnik may reach the U.S. air base in Qatar in 13 minutes; launched from Kamchatka in the Far East, it may reach Guam in 22 minutes; and launched from Chukotka, it may reach Minuteman III silos in Montana in 23 minutes.

To quote the epic 1960s Motown hit: “Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”

Graphic proof that the MICIMATT and NATO have absolutely no clue what hit them – and will hit them again – is the escalation dementia in effect even after Oreshnik’s warheads reduced a missile factory in Dnipropetrovsk to smithereens. And even after Moscow made it quite clear that they don’t need nuclear weapons to hit anything they want anywhere on Earth.

The MICIMATT plus NATO, in tandem, fired ATACMS twice against Kursk; released a P.R. trial balloon related to the suicidal possibility of sending nuclear weapons to Kiev; NATO warned businesses to enter a “wartime scenario”; NATO’s armchair admiral Rob Bauer, a Dutch non-entity, advocated pre-emptive bombings of Russia; Le Petit Roi in France and the ghastly British PM re-started the gambit of “troop deployments” to Ukraine (Starmer later backed off); and last but not least, the Liver Sausage government in Germany started to draw plans to use metro stations as air raid shelters.

All this escalation paranoia sounds like a bunch of screaming kids playing in their dirty sandbox. Because for all practical purposes it is Russia which is now ruling the escalation game.

Breaking up Russia-China is hard to do

And that brings us to Trump 2.0.

The Deep State has already targeted Trump with a vicious war – a de facto pre-emptive counter-insurgency, even before he attempts to do anything practical regarding NATO’s collapsing Project Ukraine.

His ideal off-ramp might be an Afghanistan-style exit, leaving all the burdens ahead to a basket of NATO chihuahuas. Still, that’s not gonna happen.

Andrey Sushentsov is a program director of the Valdai Club and dean of MGIMO’s school of International Relations. He’s one of Russia’s top analysts. Sushentsov released this pearl to TASS, among other things:

“Trump is considering ending the Ukrainian crisis, not out of any sympathy for Russia, but because he acknowledges that Ukraine has no realistic chance of winning. His goal is to preserve Ukraine as a tool for U.S. interests, focusing on freezing the conflict rather than resolving it. Consequently, under Trump, the long-term strategy of countering Russia will persist. The U.S. continues to benefit from the Ukrainian crisis, regardless of which administration is in power.”

Sushentsov fully recognizes how “the U.S. state system is an inertial structure that resists decisions it deems contrary to American interests, so not all of Trump’s ideas will come to fruition.”

That’s just one graphic illustration, among many, that Moscow harbors no illusions whatsoever about Trump 2.0. Putin’s conditions for an attempt to solve the Ukraine riddle have been known at least since June: total Kiev withdrawal from Donbass and Novorossiya; no Ukraine in NATO; end of all 15,000+ Western sanctions; and a non-aligned, nuclear-free Ukraine.

That’s it. Everything non-negotiable; otherwise the war will continue on the battlefields, the way Russia sees fit, until Ukraine’s total surrender.

Evidently the Five Eyes – actually only 2 (U.S.-UK) – plus minion France, side by side with the most powerful silos inside the Deep State will continue to force Trump to double down on Project Ukraine, which is an essential part of the Forever Wars ethos.

The best he might be able to do is to divert attention from Project Ukraine by accommodating the Old Testament psychopathological genocidals in Tel Aviv, plus the Zio-con armada in D.C., in their obsession of forcing Washington to fight their war on Iran. Talk about a slight change of focus of the Forever Wars.

Tehran not only exports most of its energy to China but is an absolutely essential node of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) as well as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); that is, north-south and east-west crisscrossing Eurasia.

That would be the real war of choice – simultaneously against three BRICS (Russia, China, Iran). After all the American ruling class is already invested on a do-or-die Hybrid War against BRICS.

Still, the Trump 2.0/China face-off will be the fulcrum of the Hegemon’s foreign policy starting January 20. Virtually all of Trump’s appointments – as misguided as they may be – believe it is possible to break apart the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership and prevent China from buying energy from Iran.

There will be attempts to disrupt shipping lanes and supply lines – from the Maritime Silk Roads in the Indian Ocean rimland to the Northern Sea Route by the Arctic, including possible false flags along the INSTC.

But with Oreshnik now entering the picture, everywhere the Hegemon will try to harass China they will also have to face Russia. So the temptation to end Project Ukraine and NATO’s encroachment on Russia’s western borders will always be there in the back of Trump’s mind, part of a “seduce Russia to undermine China” syndrome.

The problem for the Hegemon is that the interlocking BRICS/SCO-wide Russia-China-Iran strategic partnerships do have other – kinetic – ideas.

Days after Donald Trump announced that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had "agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States," or face 25% import duties on Mexican goods, it appears she's done just that.

According to the Associated Press, Mexico has already broken up two migrant caravans consisting of approximately 4,000 people at their peak. Some of the migrants were bused to cities in southern Mexico, while others were offered transit papers, which allow them to travel across Mexico for 20 days.

According to migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán, Mexico's actions against the two caravans appear to be part of "an agreement between the president of Mexico and the president of the United States."

Thank you, @realDonaldTrump for doing more to secure the border in the last 30 days than President Biden has done in the last four years.

The era of open borders is over. https://t.co/dcOG3MYtlW

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) December 2, 2024

According to the report, the first of the caravans started near the Mexico-Guatemala burder on Nov. 5, the day Trump was elected. It had traveled roughly 270 miles in the ensuing four weeks of walking, ending up in Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca when it was broken up.

"They took some of us to Acapulco, others to Morelia, and others from our group to Oaxaca city," said said Bárbara Rodríguez, a native Venezuelan who ended up catching a bus into Mexico City.

In a statement Saturday, the National Immigration Institute said the migrants voluntary accepted bus rides “to various areas where there is medical assistance and where their migratory status will be reviewed,” and said “upon accepting (the rides), they said they no longer wanted to face the risks along their way.” -AP

The second caravan made it around 140 miles to the town of Tonala in Chiapas state, where authorities offered the migrants the transit visas.

Meanwhile, Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) has approved an injunction filed by the Jesuit Refugee Service and the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic to create a public registry of detained migrants.

By Damien Cleusix of the Quantastic World substack

Executive Summary

This analysis presents a sobering outlook for the S&P 500, arguing that it is currently the most overvalued it has ever been, surpassing even the 2000 Tech Bubble and 2021 market frenzy. Key points include:

1. The Margin-Adjusted Cyclically-Adjusted Price Earning Ratio (MAPE) indicates extreme overvaluation.
2. Projections suggest negative nominal total returns for the S&P 500 over the next 10 years, with potential annual losses of 1.4% to 8.9%.
3. A market correction to historical valuation norms could result in substantial losses, potentially up to 21.4% annually if occurring within the next three years.
4. Ultra-loose monetary and fiscal policies have contributed to market distortion and speculation.
5. Current market behavior reflects complacency and diminished critical thinking among investors.
6. The analysis warns of potential inflationary pressures and the need for investors to reassess risk tolerance and prepare for lower returns or significant drawdowns.

The article concludes that achieving positive real returns in the coming decade would require exceptional circumstances, urging investors to remain grounded in fundamental valuation principles.

“Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator.”   - S. Klarman

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easier person to fool.” - R. Feynman

In this analysis, we aim to objectively examine the current discrepancy between the intrinsic value and the market price of the S&P 500.

Our conclusion is that the S&P 500 is unlikely to have a positive nominal total return in the next 10 years and a ‘miracle’ would be needed to achieve positive real total returns.

Central Banks have brought forward future equity returns (and some more) with their accommodative policies and hyper-sensibility to downside volatility. Ultra-loose fiscal policies since Covid (justified in the first 6 months not thereafter) have put gasoline on the fire.

Being blunt, there is a real possibility for the S&P 500 to revisit at least the 2020 lows in the coming years.

Before we dive in, it's important to recognize that valuation metrics have little to no ability to predict short-term market fluctuations. Think of it like a rubber band: the farther the market price is from its intrinsic value, the stronger the pull back toward that value. This means that even seemingly insignificant events can trigger the start of a mean reversion when valuations are extreme.

Market Behavior and Investor Psychology

When equity markets appear unstoppable—rising relentlessly on good, bad, or no news—investors may neglect the fundamental principle that value anchors price.

Over a decade of quasi-invincibility, where every market decline is swiftly recovered, can lead to complacency and diminished critical thinking. Reflection becomes a liability. The educated fools are in control.

This environment fosters narratives like "Buy the Dip," and the creation of viral acronyms such as BTFD (Buy The F***ing Dip), FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and HODL (Hold On for Dear Life).

This time it is really different! Is it?

Central Banks around the world, by lowering interest rates aggressively and providing unlimited support, verbally and/or materially, to the markets at the slightest emergence of stress and by taking too much time or even refusing to remove the accommodations they provided, have set the stage for historical markets and social dislocations.

If one add that a chunk of the post-Covid fiscal spending largess going directly to the equity markets through gamified trading applications or passive mom and pop vehicles or the emergence of the YOLO meme/life mantra you have all the ingredients for a massive speculation frenzy.

When finance dominates everything, when companies' management are obsessed by financial engineering and short-term personal rewards, when governments/central banks/regulators are controlled and not controlling, dogmatic and not pragmatic, the end result cannot be good.

While we will expand on this in another article, Ben Hunt of Epsilon theory has written extensively and brilliantly on the subject. One could start here.

Bubbles need leverage to expand

Although central banks have rapidly increased their target rates—often belatedly—they are now swiftly reversing course, once again demonstrating their asymmetric reaction functions.

Interest rates below a certain level probably have a detrimental effect for the real economy as investments in new productive capital become less and less elastic to rates as they decline toward 0%.

Zombie companies survive, preventing any Schumpetarian creative destruction, leaving excess supply in place, pushing inflation rate down (what? low rates could be deflationary?).

Furthermore, savers are forced to spend less unless they take more risk as their fixed income portfolio doesn't generate much of an income.

The only thing striving is finance where actors put on more and more leverage to buy existing capital (buybacks, M&A, dividend payment to private equity firm, etc).

The sad consequence is a larger stock of debt unbacked by new productive capital.

A system where overall debt cannot be repaid, ever. A system where the can is kicked down the road until it can't anymore.

The end game is either an inflationary burst to save the debtors, a multi-decade's slow growth environment or a deflationary burst.

Given that the debtors are governments, interest groups lobbying them and Generation X and the younger ones (who will soon dominate the electorate), we have little doubt that the inflationary scenario is the most probable.

But let's come back to the main subject of this article, the US equity market valuation.

Stocks are a claim on a expected future stream of cash flows. To assess this stream's value today, we have to calculate its present value using an appropriate discount rate. This present value is called the intrinsic value of a stock or of a group of stocks.

At a given discount rate, the short-term fluctuations of cash flows have very little influence on intrinsic value. Remove entirely 1 or 2 years of cash flow and the difference will be small.

Longer-term expectations, on the other hand, have a large impact. Those expectations are highly pro-cyclical.

Earnings are already, as we will shortly demonstrate, well above trend and, therefore are highly likely to grow less than the overall economy. Still analysts are expecting them to grow much more quickly.

Changing the discount rate can have a huge impact.

Discount rate assumptions backed by market participants are strongly correlated with their mood. Bullish participants will accept a lower discount rate, ceteris paribus.

Prevailing interest rates usually serve as a loose anchor to discount rate assumptions. We can nevertheless see, experimentally, an increased exposure to risky assets the lower the risk-free rate is, even when the mean excess return is the same.

On the graph below, one can see the average allocations to a risky asset across different interest rate conditions. Each condition has 200 participants, from the MTurk platform. The x-axis shows the risk-free rate in each condition. The mean excess return on the risky asset is 5% in all conditions.

 

We will now demonstrate using a methodology proposed by J. Hussman, the Margin-Adjusted Cyclically-Adjusted Price Earning Ratio (MAPE), that the US stock markets is the most overvalued it has ever been.

R. Shiller and J. Campell proposed the concept Cyclically-Adjusted Price Earning (CAPE) to forecast 7-12 years markets future return using a long moving average of earnings back in 1988 (originally 10 years). The goal was to smooth out the business cycle influence on earnings in order to get a smoother series they called trend earnings.

The CAPE model was good at forecasting forward return in the past (M. Faber applied it to foreign markets too) but some argue that accounting changes, payout policies, a move toward less competitive markets could have made the CAPE model lose some or even most of its forecasting ability.

One can find some great discussion on the subject here and here.

R. Shiller introduced the Cyclically-Adjusted Total Return Price Earning Ratio to account for the change in company payout policies with the increased use of buybacks to return capital to shareholders.

Two flaws remained nevertheless.

First, as identified by J. Hussman, one can get an even smoother trend earning series by adjusting the CAPE to get constant historical margins. He uses 5.4% margin as its average. So if the most recent 10 years average margin is 7%, one ought to multiply the CAPE by 7%/5.4% (1.3). A CAPE of 30 becomes a MAPE of 40.

The second problem is that margin could have increased permanently due to structural change in the economy and the dominance of capital-light businesses.

While this might explain some of the increase in margin, we are convinced that a large part of the increase in margin is transitory and that once capitalism is allowed to work as it should, it will disappear. It will be the subject for another article.

Anyhow, we have assumed a permanent increase of margin to 7% starting in 1998 with the emergence of internet.

Let's now look at the data.

As one can see, today's MAPE is the highest it has ever been, dwarfing the 2000 Tech Bubble and the end of 2021 frenzy.

We won’t talk about the divergence on factor valuations here, it will be the subject of another article.

If we construct an historical corridor with boundaries between the 0% and 50% percentiles of MAPE history, the prospect looks grim for Buy and Holders.

If we construct an historical corridor with boundaries between the 0% and 50% percentiles of MAPE history, the prospect looks grim for Buy and Holders.

The S&P 500 is currently almost 400% above the level corresponding to a bottom MAPE and 130% above the 50% percentile MAPE history.

If we assumed a return to the MAPE 50% percentile, with nominal trend earnings growing at their historical pace and the current 1.26% dividend yield, one can see that the S&P 500 nominal total return for the next 10 years would be at -1.4% annually.

If the markets reached similar valuation to the summer 1982, the nominal total return for the next 10 years would be at -8.9% annually.

We doubt (and it is a strong understatement) the markets will wait 10 years to test the MAPE 50% percentile. A retest in the next 3 years is possible. Reaching the MAPE 50% percentile in 3 years’ time would imply an annualized 21.4% loss.

Even if we assume normalized margins to be 10%, a return to the MAPE 50% percentile in 3 years’ time would imply an annualized loss of more than 15%!

One should also not forget the historical tendency of deeply overvalued markets to fall significantly below the MAPE 50% percentile.

It is also important to remember that today's margins are above our 7% assumption and that the CBO is projecting around 4% nominal US GDP growth to 2034. The odds are thus stacked against the >6% nominal earning growth we have assumed.

Among all the factors which will impact the markets nominal total return, the most important is inflation. As we have said earlier, on a 10-20 years’ basis the politicians' rulers and their electors will favor much higher level of inflation.

In this scenario, while nominal earning growth will be higher, ceteris paribus, with increasing inflation, the price investors will be willing to pay for each unit of earning will decline. Investors do not like inflation or deflation.

Conclusion

In light of our analysis, the current state of the S&P 500 presents a sobering outlook for investors. The unprecedented levels of the Margin-Adjusted Cyclically-Adjusted Price Earning Ratio (MAPE) signal a market that is significantly overvalued, even surpassing the extremes of the 2000 Tech Bubble and the 2021 market frenzy.

Our projections suggest that achieving positive real returns in the coming decade would require nothing short of a miracle. The combination of ultra-loose monetary policies, misaligned fiscal measures, and a pervasive "this time is different" mentality has created a perfect storm of market distortion.Investors should be acutely aware that:

1. The S&P 500 is currently trading at levels that are unsustainable in the long term.
2. Even with optimistic assumptions, the potential for negative returns over the next 10 years is significant.
3. A market correction to historical fair value could result in substantial losses, potentially as high as 21.4% annually if occurring within the next three years.

As we navigate these treacherous waters, it's crucial to remember the wisdom of Seth Klarman: "Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator." Now, more than ever, investors must resist the siren song of market euphoria and anchor their decisions in sound valuation principles.

The road ahead may be challenging, but it also presents opportunities for those who maintain discipline and a clear-eyed view of market fundamentals.

As we face the possibility of increased inflation and potential market turbulence, prudent investors should reassess their risk tolerance, diversify wisely, and prepare for a period of lower returns or even significant drawdowns.

In closing, let us heed Richard Feynman's caution against self-deception. The markets have a way of teaching harsh lessons to those who ignore the fundamentals.

By staying grounded in reality and maintaining a long-term perspective, investors can navigate the coming years with greater resilience and potentially position themselves to capitalize on the opportunities that inevitably arise when markets return to more rational valuations.

"It is better to be out of the markets wishing to be in than in the markets wishing to be out" - Unknown

“I never invest at the bottom, and I always sell too soon.” - Nathan Rothschild

As if obese redundant piles of American protoplasm, to borrow George Carlin's phrase, weren't already stagnant enough with the invention of Ozempic and the likes, there is now an AI powered human 'washing machine' that'll wash their ass for when they're too lazy to perform the most basic of hygiene tasks. 

Japanese firm Science Co. has unveiled an AI-powered "bath of the future," a shower pod called the "Mirai Ningen Sentakuki."

Resembling a high-tech capsule, it can wash and dry users in just 15 minutes. Chairman Yasuaki Aoyama revealed at an Osaka lecture that the device is 70% complete, aiming for a revolutionary bathing experience, according to the New York Post.

The user sits in a transparent capsule that partially fills with water, as shown in a viral video we've posted below. Sensors in the seat monitor vital signs to ensure an optimal bath, while high-speed jets with micro-sized air bubbles cleanse the body.

Chairman Yasuaki Aoyama commented: “We’re about 70% there.”

The Post wrote on Monday that the pod uses AI to monitor user biomarkers, projecting calming videos inside the capsule to enhance relaxation.

High-speed jets create microbubbles that burst with pressure waves, scrubbing away grime—a technique inspired by cleaning delicate electronics. The experience offers both physical and psychological cleansing, according to the company.

The design draws from the Ultrasonic Bath exhibited at the 1970 Japan Expo, which also used water and ultrasound for cleaning. Inspired by that, company chairman Yasuaki Aoyama plans to showcase the new "human washing machine" at Expo 2025 in Osaka, where 1,000 visitors can try it.

Reservations are already open, with plans for a home edition in the works.

And as for "enhanced relaxation", this can only mean we are just one step from...well, The Dude said it best...

Authored by Eric Margolis via EricMargolis.com,

Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation. It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.

Yet Pakistan is a giant mess. Its current politics are a form of tribal warfare. Corruption engulfs almost everything. Disease, particularly diabetes, afflicts its long-suffering people. Polio is making return.

In recent years, Pakistan has suffered vast floods that have ravaged this nation. Equally menacing, next-door India remains an ever-present danger. Far-right Hindu extremists who are heavily represented in the current Modi government, keep talking about ‘reabsorbing’ Pakistan into ‘Mother India.’ This would have happened long ago except for Pakistan’s important nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

India has also built an extensive nuclear arsenal, including three new submarines armed with intermediate-ranged nuclear missiles. This while people in India and Pakistan starve in the streets. And 60% of homes in India lack indoor plumbing.

The only institution in Pakistan that really works well is the armed forces. I have met many of its generals: most of them are intelligent, combat-ready officers. I knew Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan, the ferocious chief of ISI intelligence service who led the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. He was murdered with the tough tank general Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan until his aircraft was sabotaged in 1988. Zia was a great Islamic warrior and man of steel. Many Pakistanis still believe he was assassinated by the US though there is no direct evidence.

I was friends with the late Benazir Bhutto, a fascinating and alluring woman who was murdered in 2007. I interviewed Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999, a man who seemed insignificant compared to Gen. Zia.

Benazir Bhutto, whose father Zulfikar was ordered hanged by Zia, used to tease me, ‘oh Eric, you love your Pakistani generals.’ I did. Most were fierce Pashtuns from the NW Frontier, born warriors. They first defeated the Soviet Union, then the mighty USA.

I also took to some of the Indian generals that I met. They and their Pakistani counterparts had none of the slipperiness and deceit of most politicians.

This brings me to the jailed, 51-year-old former cricket star, Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most popular political figure. Khan was jailed on fake charges over receiving gifts, when the ruling oligarchy feared Khan would win a landslide in elections. His wife was also thrown into prison.

Imran Khan’s chief enemies were the Sharif brothers, Shebhaz and Nawaz. Both were rich Punjabi industrialists often accused of egregious corruption. I came out of war-torn Afghanistan to interview Nawaz. He left me unimpressed, particularly after the time I spent with the fiery General Zia.

Mass protests have engulfed Pakistan to demand freedom for Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister in prison for over a year. Pakistan has been under U.S.-backed military rule since Khan’s ouster in 2022, and the crackdown on protesters has been brutal pic.twitter.com/HvYAPA3GJX

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) November 27, 2024

The United States and Britain, vocal champions of democracy, had nothing to say about the illegal imprisonment of Pakistan’s most popular democratic politician. It was clear they were supporting the Sharif brothers who were more amenable to America’s wishes and anti-Islamic policies. Pakistan’s influential army appears to be backing the Sharif regime.

This is interesting. Washington, which makes so much noise about democracy, is now supporting undemocratic regimes in Morocco, Tunisia, totalitarian Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Gulf, not to mention Africa and Latin America. The CIA installed the current Ukrainian regimes. Efforts are again afoot to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and, of course, to crush the life out of Palestinians.

What Washington really wants around the globe is total obedience, not real democracy.

One way you can tell the CIA is not behind the current protests in Pakistan is the total absence of any coverage in the Western press.

Typically a pro-democracy movement like this against a military dictatorship is celebrated. But in this case the military is our ally so nada. https://t.co/MR1bvWk9V4

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 5, 2024

Pakistan is a sad example. President Pervez Musharraf told me that a senior State Department official warned him that if Pakistan did not allow US troops to use his nation to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’

Great powers want to have their way. Democracy and common sense too often do not stand in the way. At least the new Trump administration in Washington is being brutally frank about its wants and needs unlike the honey-tongued hypocrites of the Biden years.

NATO's new secretary-general is trying to talk tough ahead of Donald Trump taking office. Surely he knows Brussels is in for a rough ride, given that during the first Trump administration the president (rightly) ripped NATO member states for not paying their fair share in defense spending, while relying on Washington to shoulder the burden.

Mark Rutte has warned Trump in a Financial Times interview that if Ukraine is pressured into a 'bad' peace deal which is favorable to Moscow, then the United States and Europe would face a "dire threat" from Iran, China, and North Korea.

All of these 'rogue' states (in the lexicon of some Western leaders) have deepened their relations with Russia throughout the course of the nearly three-year long war in Ukraine. North Korea and Russia in particular even signed a defense pact last summer, resulting in some 10,000 North Korean soldiers being deployed to support the Russian side. All are also coordinating on circumventing US-led sanctions.

Like some pundits at hawkish US think tanks, Rutte tried to frame to outcome of the Ukraine war as of dire importance for Taiwan's freedom. According to FT:

Rutte noted the risks from Russia supplying missile technology to North Korea and cash to Iran. In an apparent reference to Taiwan, he said that Chinese President Xi Jinping "might get thoughts about something else in the future if there is not a good deal [for Ukraine]".

"We cannot have a situation where we have [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un and the Russian leader and Xi Jinping and Iran high-fiving because we came to a deal which is not good for Ukraine, because long-term that will be a dire security threat not only to Europe but also to the US," Rutte told the FT in his first interview as head of the western military alliance.

Rutte had met with Trump a week-and-a-half ago at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. It was their first such meeting since Trump won the election on November 5.

Clearly the NATO chief tried to persuade Trump to essentially keep up the same muscular stance on Moscow as the Biden administration. It seems he tried to present the same 'domino' effect argument which hearkens back to the Cold War - which goes something like if 'X enemy is not stopped here, then Y enemy will also feel emboldened and seek military conquest' etc.

"Look at the missile technology which is now being sent from Russia into North Korea, which is posing a dire threat not only to South Korea, Japan, but also to the US mainland," Rutte said he told Trump, as quoted in FT.

"Iran is getting money from Russia in return for, for example, missiles, but also drone technology. And the money is being used to prop up Hizbollah and Hamas, but also steering conflict beyond the region," he had claimed.

"So the fact that Iran, North Korea, China and Russia are working so closely together?.?.?.?[means] these various parts of the world where conflict is, and have to be managed by politicians, are more and more getting connected," explained Rutte.

"And there is one Xi Jinping watching very carefully what comes out of this," he added, in apparent reference to Taiwan. "These were the points I made," the NTO leader stressed.

But we doubt that that Ukrainians young and old, tragically dying along the front lines in this horrific war of attrition, will care much about NATO and Western grand strategy regarding far-flung places like China or North Korea.

A new report says the collapse in rough diamond prices has prompted the world's largest producer to implement broad price cuts. 

Bloomberg reports that De Beers' final sale of rough diamond stones on the secondary market was led by a 10% to 15% price cut amid a slumping market pressured by the proliferation of artificial diamonds and sliding demand across the West and China. 

Yet on Monday, the company capitulated on that position at its final sale of the year. De Beers cut prices by 10% to 15% for most of the goods it sells, according to people familiar with the situation. That's the first major price cut since the start of the year and a historically large reduction.-BBG

Price cuts at Anglo American's De Beers come as the Diamond Standard Index, which dates back to early 2022, has plunged to record low levels. 

Here's more from the report:

De Beers wields considerable power in the rough-diamond market. It holds 10 sales each year in which the buyers — known as sightholders — generally have to accept the price and the quantities offered.

Still, even after the steep cut in prices today, the company's stones are still more expensive than the going rate in the secondary market, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. The company also removed some of the flexibility it had offered at previous sales.

De Beers typically reserves aggressive price cuts as a last resort. While it keeps pricing secret, the across-the-board cut this month is hefty.

So much for the diamond giant putting a floor under prices... 

Take a look at our prior note titled "Diamond Prices Crash To Multi-Decade Lows As Art, Wine, & Rolex Markets Sour." 

A new report by Ipsos on global attitudes towards education and schools has highlighted the breadth of issues that affect different systems around the world.

More than 1,000 respondents took part in each of the 30 countries surveyed between June 21 and July 5, 2024.

As Statista's Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, a third of respondents in the U.S. say that political or ideological bias is the greatest challenge facing their country’s educational system today. Similarly, 30 percent of adults in Hungary and Poland felt the same.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Worry over their children's safety was the second most commonly picked concern in the U.S. at 31 percent.

It was also a main concern in France (30 percent), India, Mexico and Brazil (24 percent each).

In Indonesia, six in ten respondents stated that unequal access to education was the greatest issue troubling the schooling system, with the next two most commonly selected answers inadequate infrastructure (36 percent) and insufficient usage of technology (30 percent).

Meanwhile, in the UK, a lack of public funding was cited by 40 percent of respondents, marking the largest share of the 30 countries polled, followed by several South American nations (Colombia at 37 percent, Chile at 36 percent and Brazil at 35 percent).

The survey also found that the most positive perceptions of education systems were primarily in Asia.

Adults in several countries across the region were also more likely to say that they thought the education system in their country is contributing to reducing social inequalities.

For example, the vast majority of respondents in India (72 percent) agreed with this statement, as well as Singapore (68 percent), Thailand (66 percent), Indonesia (64 percent) and Malaysia (63 percent).

At the other end of the spectrum of 30 countries were Turkey (34 percent) and Hungary (30 percent).