Is It Time To Flee The West? Wealth Week Episode 23
At Beaufort’s live event in London back in February, I suggested that we are living through an historic inflection point triggered by Joe Biden’s weaponization of the dollar and the Swift payments system as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since then, events are moving faster than even I would have thought possible. This includes pariah states being welcomed back into the fold in the name of geopolitical expediency. Recently, Foreign ministers from Arab League member states agreed to reinstate Syria’s membership after its suspension more than 10 years ago.
Syria was thrown out of the Arab League back in March 2011 when that lovely man Bashar al-Assad ordered a crackdown on protesters that triggered a civil war. It’s thought that nearly 500,000 people died in that war and more than 20 million became displaced refugees. It seems that Jordan has taken the lead in this process of reconciliation, while Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were at the meeting so we must assume they approve of Syria’s rehabilitation.
This is just the latest step in the firming up of relationships and the burying of old hatchets, with China having persuaded Iran and Saudi Arabia to kiss and make up despite backing opposing sides in the Syria conflict. They’ve now restored their embassies as well as allowing flights to land in each other’s countries. Meanwhile Iran’s President Raisi recently went to Damascus to sign long term trade and oil deals. Not every Arab state is comfortable with Syria’s re-admittance to the Arab League and America remains unequivocal – Assad heads up a rogue state that should not be allowed to sweep its treatment of the Syrian people under the carpet.
Perhaps the underlying sentiment behind this surge of camaraderie in the Middle East is the same as is fuelling the rapid development of co-operation between the BRICS countries. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa now have their own Development Bank to fund infrastructure projects while they are also creating independent financial plumbing to reduce their dependency on Washington. The scale of the threat to world harmony was recognised by the head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, in a recent speech in New York. There’s a whole industry of analysts that’s grown up to interpret the words of Central Bank governors so let me add my amateur attempts to the debate. I’ll give a series of quotes from her speech them ad my translation into normal speak.
“Following the pandemic, Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine, the weaponisation of energy, the sudden acceleration of inflation, as well as a growing rivalry between the United States and China, the tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting faster.”
No mention of the direct link between biblical central bank money printing during the pandemic and the oh-so-predictable inflation that it triggered. While it’s true that energy was weaponised, it was only the myopic energy policies of successive European governments that gave Russia the ability to reek such harm. That Germany still insists on shutting down its nuclear power stations shows the extent to which the lunatics now run the asylum.
“We are witnessing a fragmentation of the global economy into competing blocs, with each bloc trying to pull as much of the rest of the world closer to its respective strategic interests and shared values. And this fragmentation may well coalesce around two blocs led respectively by the two largest economies in the world.”
No shit Sherlock! This is the real issue – the world is splitting into two halves and countries are being invited to choose sides – between Eastern authoritarian communism led by China and Western authoritarian Marxism led by the World Economic Forum. For those of you with an interest in history, these WEF countries used to be called Western democracies. In the old days, a political party would be elected on a manifesto and would then implement the policies the electorate had voted for. What happens now is that all elected governments implement the policies they are told to by unelected elites, rebel technocrats and disruptive civil servants.
“We could see two profound effects on the policy environment for central banks: first, we may see more instability as global supply elasticity wanes; and second, we could see more multipolarity as geopolitical tensions continue to mount.”
This is where we get into the real nitty gritty. The waning of global supply inelasticity means the end of cheap Chinese imports produced by slave labour. It means the West has to rebuild its manufacturing capability at huge cost with massive inflationary effects on prices. Multipolarity means the cosy globalism of the last forty years is under threat as China flexes its muscles and the Middle East, Asia and South America drift away from historic ties to the West.
More at www.beaufortprivateequity.com