By: John F. Haettich- June 16, 2022
Occasionally I try to blog from time to time to put my thoughts down on paper concerning current affairs. We face a number of obstacles this year, things that many have never experienced in their lifetimes. Record inflation is crippling a massive portion of the population who live paycheck to paycheck. The cost of groceries and gas has skyrocketed. In addition, we continue to have shortages, food supply issues on the horizon with delays on Chinese and European bread bowl exports, farming issues all over the world due to a fertilizer shortage thanks to the Ukraine war, and a government that suggests in some eerie way that rising gas prices are a good thing and a painful part of a “transition” where we will all be better off on the other end. There is significant talk on the world stage about the emerging ‘MetaVerse’, something that most people really don’t know or understand its significance. We continue to see developments in the IoT (Internet of Things) and the roll out of various digital identity platforms. Our government and governments around the world continue to march down the road to CBDC “Central Bank Digital Currency,” while most Americans and citizens around the world have no idea that its implementation would be probably the most drastic shift in quality of life and loss of freedom and privacy the world has ever seen. There’s a lot to know, while the issues that truly matter aren’t discussed or debated in a substantive way. We truly are in very unique and in many ways “dark” times.
Starting with inflation, There are some things you should know. The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is generally the index used to determine the overall rate of inflation. What isn’t widely known, is that the CPI does not include the cost of groceries and gas, the two most significant costs outside of rent/mortgage for the average American. While CPI sits at 8.6%, groceries are up over 20% and gas is up 50-100%. It is difficult to address inflationary issues if we don’t even capture the true inflation rate. We’ve heard of talk of QT (Quantitative Tightening), basically the shrinking of the Fed’s balance sheet. Many believe this is the answer, it is painful but it is what needs to be done. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase said recently he sees an economic hurricane brewing due to QT. There remains several gaping issues. The talk of QT while it seems romantically valiant, cannot effect the change we need to curb inflation unless several other things happen. Unless the government shrinks its budget, or raises our taxes, QT is unsustainable. Our government hasn’t expressed an intent to do either. It will be impossible to have sustainable QT if these things don’t happen. Should we continue spending as usual, the Fed will be forced to continue printing money (QE Quantitative Easing). In addition, historically, the main method to curb inflation would be to increase interest rates to above the inflation rate. What this would do is encourage savings, reduce demand, and in the end curb inflation over time. CPI is at 8.6%. True inflation is at 15-25%. Interest Rates just today were raised to a benchmark rate that will end the year at 3.4%, and they forecast it rising to 3.8% in 2023, still far below the true inflation rate. The short story: If you hold cash in the current environment, you are being robbed every day. This environment encourages the offloading of dollars, i.e. creating high demand for commodities and forcing the inflation rate higher and higher. The Fed knows this. The government knows this. So why are they playing dumb and allowing this environment to continue? This system is unsustainable, rooted in the most masterfully pulled off ponzi scheme of all time. Governments all over the world are indebted to Central Banks who loaned them money they created out of thin air with no backing whatsoever. The debt is so high, they can’t raise interest rates because it risks governments not being able to service their own debt. We are stuck, and the system will eventually fall.
In my humble opinion, this appears to be a set up leading us into a new world of CBDC. For those of you who don’t know what CBDC is, this is Central Bank Digital Currency. In my opinion, the issue of CBDC is the biggest issue of our time. Bigger than food shortages. Bigger than inflation. In March of this year, Biden issued an executive order pushing for the “responsible development of digital assets” namely CBDC’s. There are lengthy publications on CBDC and I would encourage you to read up but I won’t bore you with all of the jargon. I will summarize my findings though. Overall, CBDC would be a purely digital currency that is trackable, programable, and can only be held on the Fed’s balance sheet. It is trackable, in that every single dollar and penny spent is traceable down to every detail of what it was spent on, where it was spent, etc. Being traceable, it also makes every transaction taxable. No more paying the babysitter cash or tipping the painter, etc. Every single transaction will be transparent and monitored. It is programable, in that they can program it to be spent on only certain things. If the CBDC you receive is programed to buy only milk or groceries, you will be turned down if you try to spend it on a new fishing rod. In addition, they can program it with an expiration date. If you don’t use it by the expiration date, it is unusable. I think you can see how dangerous such a monetary system is. With ideologues pushing towards a living wage, the thought of it being CBDC is a communist dream. Complete control over all economics and commerce. One more caveat to CBDC, is that again, it can only be held on the Fed’s balance sheet. Private banks that rely on deposits to fund loans would be out of luck. Currently deposits are on the balance sheet of private and regional banks. The move to CBDC would require a new private banking relationship to this currency, possibly something more similar to being licensed to transact with CBDC. This is where FinTech (Financial Technology) will take over. FinTech companies like Venmo, Zelle and others are already positioning themselves to transact in CBDC, and if you haven’t noticed major banking institutions are embracing FinTech as the way of the future. The writing is on the wall. The world of banking is about to change drastically, placing all of humanity at the mercy of the Fed, which if you didn’t know already, is private banking as well. FinTech stock is up by 272% in the past 3 years, while old guard US bank stocks have slid by 30% in the same period. Not a good sign. Recently the US House Committee on Financial Services had a hearing on Digital Assets and the future of finance where they discussed this at length. What is interesting, is that also recently a large number of national banking organizations including the American Banking Association, the BPI, CBA, CUNA, NAFCU, NBA & the Clearing House wrote a joint letter to the US House Committee discouraging CBDC as it would destroy private banking. The letter reads “In effect, a CBDC will serve as an advantaged competitor to retail bank deposits that will move money away from banks and into accounts at the Federal Reserve where the funds cannot be lent back into the economy. These deposit accounts represent 71% of bank funding today. Losing this critical funding source would undermine the economics of the banking business model, severely restricting credit availability, increasing the cost of credit, and causing a slowdown of the economy. ABA estimates that even a CBDC where accounts were capped at $5,000 per ‘end user’ could result in $720B in deposits leaving the banking system.” You can see, it is the ultimate centralization of banking and control. This is bad for capitalism, bad for freedom and bad for America, yet our government presses forward.
In terms of this ‘transition’ Biden continues to speak of, he is referring to radical ‘Green New Deal’ type policies that lead to zero emissions and would eliminate gas driven vehicles eventually. You’ve probably noticed a year ago that car dealerships have hardly any inventory. The claim is that this is due to a microchip shortage. While this definitely is a huge problem, it seems radicals are using this to their political advantage in pushing EV’s (electric vehicles). Not only are EV’s becoming more of a thing, but autonomous vehicles are on the rise, and the talk in Wall Street is a coming surge in TaaS (Transportation as a Service), where you will not own a car, rather you pay a monthly fee and hail a car kind of like how you do with Uber. This political movement wants to completely get rid of gas driven vehicles over the next 10-20 years. The President nor his cabinet seem too concerned about the soaring gas prices Americans are facing. Rather they seem to cheer it on as a 'transition', while blaming Russia and anything they can possibly get their hands on to blame. Men and women that have to commute to work daily are facing a significant downgrade in quality of life as a result.
And then there is the MetaVerse. Many of you know the name, but in my experience not too many individuals understand what the MetaVerse actually is. In a nutshell, this is the new level of the internet. Historically we’ve enjoyed use of the internet in 2D on our screens and handheld devices. The MetaVerse is a virtual 3D interactive world that is being built as we speak. This is a digital world that includes land, buildings, trees, landscapes, it has no borders, and it is just what it is called, an entire virtual world. Within the MetaVerse, you will be able to buy buildings or land (with digital money of course), you can take part in 3D interactive training, you could take a class on a tour of Rome, etc. Think of the movie series the Matrix. It is a similar concept, where people are just plugged into this virtual world going about life, but in reality they are just plugged into it. Why is this significant. The WEF and global think-tank groups are heavily discussing what is called the 20 minute city, where people will only be permitted to travel 20 minutes but will access everything they need. Travel out of state, out of the country, etc would be a thing of the past. Instead, you would just plug into the MetaVerse, interact with others, take your trip while in there, shop, hang out with friends, etc. Why is this appealing to the WEF? Because in their view, they can reach Carbon net zero by stopping the movement of people all together. After all we have to save the planet, according to the WEF. Digital ID, digital money and CBDC, they all play very nicely into the MetaVerse as well. Imagine a world where the Fed completely controls your every transaction, and the World Government controls your every move, restricting you from travel, forcing you to socialize and do business in the MetaVerse, while monitoring and tracking every move you make. For Christians out there, you could add this one to your list of possibilities for the “Image of the Beast.” We know that the beast is a world system that dominates the entire world. This would be a literal image of the world system in 3D that you at some point could be forced to plug into in order to continue in society. Tech executives and the WEF are doubling down on the MetaVerse as the path forward, the question is how quickly do people jump on board to these new technologies? Or are they eventually coerced and strong armed into them?
In addition, talk continues on the IoT (Internet of Things), and the future potential of humans, and yes their literal brains, feeding real time data into the IoT which at some point will be the MetaVerse. Maybe it is time for the tech elites to take a vacation, really. I think they have lost their ever loving minds. AI (Artificial Intelligence) continues to make strides as well, with one Google engineer indicating that an AI designed by google now has the personality of a 7 or 8 year old, has opinions, feelings, and even fear. That can’t be dangerous right? Technology has gone out of control with little to no oversight or ethics considerations. The rubber will eventually meet the road.
ESG plows forward in the corporate world with little to no resistance. This is in my humble opinion, one of the most dangerous frameworks presented to corporations and the business world today. Let me explain why. ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) is a push for organizations all over the world (at the prompting of the UN and the WEF), to create metrics around these three areas for their business which will eventually be converted into an “ESG Rating or Score.” Based on your ESG rating, an investor may or may not choose to fund your business, and customers may or may not choose to do business with you. The UN and the WEF push ESG as a way to ultimately curb carbon emissions to save the world. My issue isn’t with the ‘E’ or the ‘G’, rather it is the ‘S’. The ‘Social’ piece of ESG seems to be a strong arm tactic to force companies to adopt policies around equity, diversity and inclusion. The ideas behind equity are along the lines of socialism and at its extreme Marxism/Communism. Diversity and Inclusion has more to do with Affirmative Action. These ultimately can serve to take the “free” out of free market, and can also be used to enforce woke ideologies. If you rate poorly in this area as an organization, your ESG rating goes down. We saw this recently with Tesla being removed from the top rated ESG list because of 'Social' issues at the organization. Elon Musk went on to call ESG a 'scam.' This is nothing more than the Chinese “Social Credit Score.” Do as we tell you to do, or we will reduce your social credit score and you will suffer. For businesses, their suffering will be in the form of loss of investment money and business. Oil and Gas companies are experiencing this as we speak, as equity money is drying up for operators that aren’t moving down the road of ESG effectively enough. There are currently tech companies being launched that can determine an ESG score by the use of AI and data from a company. The questions our politicians still fail to ask are: Who is determining these standards? Are they elected? Why are American companies being subjected to external global powers? Who is the watchdog that ensures these standards aren’t politicized? I can tell you first hand, they are already politicized, yet organization after organization will bow to ESG because of one thing- they need the investment dollars to operate. I don’t think Americans are prepared fully for the culture changes that are on the verge crashing into every aspect of our lives due to this highly politicized ESG movement. I assure you, Judeo-Christian values are not being taken into consideration. Prior to COVID there was a tsunami of CEO resignations. I believe it was around 800 CEO’s. I do wonder if many of their boards were telling them of this ESG move (which was in the works), and these CEO’s saw it was dangerous and wouldn’t agree to this direction. Just a guess, not a fact.
Americans could be better served by moving away from party politics (they are extremely distracting and unproductive) toward a simple debate on freedom, liberty, and how do we see the future. Are Americans willing to exchange freedoms of all kinds, to join the groupthink that comes with ESG, the MetaVerse and AI, along with the constant regulation and monitoring of your every move? Are we willing to bow down to the culture warriors attacking Judeo-Christian values? Are we willing to exchange a somewhat free market system for a socialist or even communist system? Are we willing to be subjected to a digital ID and CBDC, something that takes away our right to privacy completely? Are we willing to give up our body data to the IoT? Are we willing to receive a social credit score that goes up or down dependent on our compliance with the system being forced upon us? Are we willing to sacrifice our freedom of movement on the altar of the climate god that these world leaders have created? In my humble opinion, these are the simple questions our press and our politicians should be discussing. The biggest question, is ‘Are Christians willing to abandon the moral code and instructions of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?’ These values are being severely called into question. As for me, my answer to this question will always be a firm NO, and I will on behalf of my family pursue the interests of God over the interests of men.
Great article, John.