More Crap Cutting

1.  First, I need to make a correction/clarification with regards to the Kirchensteuer tax rate.  It is not 9% of AGI, it is 9% of the total income tax due.  This is explained in the Wiki article, but I’ll restate it because my text was definitely imprecise.  If a German has a taxable income of 250,000 Euros his tax bracket is 45%, his tax is thus 112,500 Euros.  Then, take 112,500 x 0.09 and the Kirchensteuer tax is an additional 10,125 Euros.  It is 9% of the tax, not 9% of the AGI.  Thanks to one and all who called out my imprecision.

2.  Let’s speak bluntly about abortion vis-a-vis the black community.  The average American black, immersed in, sympathetic to and morally crippled by the rap/hip-hop culture, isn’t going to be moved or persuaded by the fact that Planned Parenthood was founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger specifically for the purpose of exterminating first and foremost blacks, and let it also be said, low-IQ whites.  But Sanger’s main target for genocide was blacks – no question.

Here’s the crap-cutting:  Today’s black culture is so degenerated that even when confronted with objective evidence of their own genocide, they will COOPERATE with it because the ability to have mindless, loveless, promiscuous quasi-animal sex without “being punished with a baby” trumps absolutely everything.  Blacks in the west today WANT to kill the children they conceive every bit as much as their champagne-communist masters, and will happily crawl into bed with people who are explicitly and openly desirous of genociding the entire black race – SO LONG AS THEY CAN KEEP SCREWING MINDLESSLY.

You know I’m right.  You know that Dr. Alvedea King is preaching to a cinderblock wall.  And before you declare me a racist, remember that the entire point I’m trying to make is that there should be far, far, far MORE black people alive today than there are.  The SMALLNESS of the black population in the west is a problem, and we wouldn’t be in this mess if our society was still Christian and people – ALL PEOPLE – were getting married and being blessed by God with big families.

3.  Pope Francis has used the trope of the “Sensus Fidelium” in a very, very misleading way.  The Church teaches that “the supernatural appreciation of faith on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals.”

Pope Francis and the others are twisting this to mean mere populism, or an appeal to “democracy” within the Church.  Let’s cut the crap.  The “Sense of the Faithful” means just that – the FAITHFUL.  The vast majority of Catholics today – even “practicing” Catholics, meaning those who go to Novus Ordo parishes, DO NOT believe and/or even know what the Church teaches, and thus do not contribute to the Sensus Fidelium.  

I get email after email after email from Catholics who say that they had absolutely no clue what Catholicism, the Mass or the Eucharist was or meant until they stumbled upon this website – even though they had been going to Mass and were educated in so-called Catholic schools.  This is not bragging – this is a SCATHING indictment of the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo paradigm and proof of how utterly far-gone the situation is.  I am also shocked by how many emails I get, both hostile and friendly, from people who have no understanding of the Trinity or the Divinity of Christ.  I can’t tell you how often I get things from both Catholics and Protestants that say, “I love and worship God, and I pray to Jesus, too.”  The clear implication is that the person does not believe or understand that Jesus IS God.  And I’ll never forget the email from the angry Novus Ordo Kathy who told me how stupid I was because if I were REALLY Catholic I would know that “Jesus isn’t God – Jesus is God’s son.”  

Ah, the New Pentecost (TM).  Not *quite* as awesome as the original.

So, if a person does not believe what the Church teaches in toto – everything the Church teaches – if a person does not believe in the Trinity, or doesn’t believe or understand that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, or does not know or believe in the Real Physical Substantial Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, OR does not believe that contraception is a grave mortal sin, is this person really one of the “Faithful” who contributes to the Sensus Fidelium?  Of course not.  How can a person who does not believe in the most utterly foundational premises, such as the fact that the Godhead is Triune, or that Christ is Divine, or the Ten Commandments, possibly possess the Sensus Fidelium with regards to contraception??

But Pope Francis and the others are appealing precisely to the “Sensus” of the very people who DO NOT believe in what the Church teaches and thus have no place at the proverbial table, either as an informed dissent OR due to ignorance, as proof that ratification of divorce and remarriage, contraception, sodomy, and Marxism MUST be “true”, and the infallible, unchanging teaching of the Church MUST be “false”, or at least “changeable”.  Further, Pope Francis holds those very people who are genuine, faithful Catholics who DO believe EVERYTHING the Church teaches and thus DO contribute to the Sensus Fidelium, in contempt and is aggressively trying to intimidate into silence, marginalize, and even suppress them and drive them out of the Church.  (Good luck with that, Jorge.)  The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate AND the FFI nuns are under withering attack and have been for over a year, while neo-pagan “nuns” in the US literally escort women into human abattoirs to slaughter their children with ZERO consequences, and Cardinal Burke was demoted in his prime at age 66 to a position as the patron of a charitable organization.  Cardinal Burke’s position has NOTHING to do with the nation of Malta.  He is the patron of the Knights of Malta – a CHARITABLE ORDER.  I don’t think people understand that distinction.

What Francis and his accomplices are doing is pure, earthly populism and humanism – the worship of man – and nothing more.

“Modern secular man is the perfect man and the everlasting man.”
-Annibale Bugnini, architect of the Novus Ordo

I Officially Declare ARSH 2015 the Year of Cutting the Crap.

1.  Pope Francis is wildly popular and people think he is great because he is morally permissive and ratifies and confirms people in their mortal sins.  Elton John (real name Reginald Dwight), a notorious and flagrant sodomite, declared that Francis should be made a saint immediately, not even waiting until Francis is dead, because Francis has confirmed Reginald Dwight in his wretched sin.  Francis has done this to countless millions of souls.  Moral laxity and permissiveness is the currency he uses to buy earthly popularity.  When Dwight repents of his entire life of sodomy and moral depravity, and points to Francis as the reason why he has done so, then Francis will have led Dwight to Christ.  As it stands now, Francis has put his foot in Dwight’s, and countless millions of people’s backs and pushed them deeper into the maw of satan.

2.  Do you know what the Kirchensteuer is?  It is the church tax in Germany, and is the reason why the heretical German bishops have massive power, even though the Church in Germany is, for all intents and purposes, dead.  The Kirchensteuer is a NINE PERCENT tax on income that is levied automatically.  If a person who is Catholic opts out of the Kirchensteuer, say, for example, because the German bishops invest in pornography publishers, that Catholic can and usually is denied the sacraments – marriage and burials for certain, and sometimes other sacraments as well.  In fact, until quite recently, opting out of the NINE PERCENT Kirchensteuer was considered an act of APOSTASY by the German bishops, which is perhaps the quintessence of pots calling kettles black.  THIS, my little chickadees, is called “simony”, the selling of sacraments.  This is why the German Church should be put under interdict, and Roman Catholic missionaries sent to re-evangelize the Barbarians.

Instead, Pope Francis grovels and kowtows to these wicked, wicked men, like Cardinal Kasper, who is a proven artless liar and scumbag.  You know why?  Because the Kirchensteuer brings in over TEN BILLION EUROS per year.  And since the Church in Germany is basically dead, the German bishops live like Sultans AND distribute GOBS of money to … wait for it … LATIN AMERICA.  Yup.  Bergoglio suckled off of German largesse down there while implementing the “destroy from within” plan himself.

The reason that these filthy German prelates want so urgently to abrogate the 6th Commandment and destroy the sacrament of marriage is so they can keep Germans, who have all lost their faith anyway precisely because of the heretic bishops and priests and their open war against God and His Holy Church for 50 solid years now, from opting out of the Kirchensteuer by appeasing them by RATIFYING THEIR SINFUL NEO-PAGAN LIFESTYLES.  The German prelates figure that if they make a big deal of the fact that they will give the “Cracker” and the “Wine” (which remember, is the physical substance of Our Blessed Lord) to these people at the “Ecumenical Table Gathering” – because that is all the Eucharist and the Mass is to these people, so why not give them their “meaningless symbolic cracker” and make them happy – then the cash flows will be maintained.

And don’t kid yourselves.  Timmy Dolan in New York and Cupich in Chicago, among many, many others in the former US are on exactly the same wavelength, and covet the revenues and worldly personal popularity that would come from appeasing unrepentant neo-pagans, both in the form of private donation AND by government transfer payments.  These bishops and priests have not, do not and will not hesitate for a moment to toss Our Blessed Lord’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to any obstinate sinner who demands it, because, let’s face it, most of them don’t actually believe any of it either.  Oh – but they know EXACTLY what the weekly rake is.

3.  So, the day after Bergoglio was elected and I passed along that he was a Peronist Fascist, which is, of course, a subset of Marxism, with a seething hatred of the Traditional Mass, and that he was going to be a disaster, and the hate mail rolled in.  Lil tip, folks.  When you have a MOUNTAIN of objective data, it is not only permissible to draw very simple, top-level conclusions from that mountain of objective data, it is morally incumbent upon you to do so.  This business of denying reality and painting it as some sort of perverse virtue is just another manifestation of the complete feminization of the culture.

4.  Pope Francis Bergoglio is pushing the global warming con because it is a pure mechanism for unlimited government wealth redistribution, and also because Bergoglio is dimwitted and, I have been told, scandalously unread.  He is babbling global warming talking points that were popular ten years ago and have been utterly, completely debunked and objectively disproved for five years, because he isn’t even sharp enough to keep up with the latest line of Marxist carnival barker crap.

5.  The reason why I so boldly state that these people, including the current Pope, seem to not actually believe any of it, is their anecdotal history of turning away people who wanted to convert and enter The Church (Bergoglio did this in Buenos Aires), and Francis’ repeated sneering diatribes against “proselytism” and repeated assurances to those outside the Church that he has no desire to convert them.

Okay.  THIS is what I’m talking about.  Right here.

For those of you who have been around here for a while, what have you learned about The Church?  Well, two things, for certain.  You have learned that the Eucharist, the bread and the wine after the consecration by the priest at the Mass, becomes the PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE OF GOD ALMIGHTY.  God, physically present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  NOT SYMBOLICALLY, BUT ACTUALLY.  The bread stops being bread – there is no bread anymore – there is the PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE OF GOD under the appearance (accidents) of bread.  Same with the wine.  That isn’t wine.  That is God under the accidents (smell, taste, viscosity) of wine.  Right there.  And we can eat Him.  And then God is physically, substantially inside of our bodies.  Because He loves us, and that is what He wants, and so that is how He set it up.  Because LOVE.

You have also learned that the Mass is not a show or a community meal, but is the literal bending of time such that the event of Calvary is made present to us every day.  Why?  Because Our Lord loves us and wants us to be there with Him while He dies for us.  He is CONSOLED by our presence at Calvary.  This ONLY happens at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  This does not happen anywhere or at any time outside of the Church.  This does not happen at any Pentecostal gathering, or at Superfun Rockband church, or at the Methodist Sunday service.  It does not happen at any synagogue.  This does not happen when an atheist or agnostic or Christian-in-name-only goes for a hike or ponders a sunset.  And it certainly does not happen at a gathering of the members of that satanic political cult called “islam”.  It doesn’t even happen when you go out and give free shit to poor people, either.  It happens ONLY at the Holy and August Sacrifice of the Mass.

Now here is the excruciatingly simple question:  If you know these things, and you understand them, and you BELIEVE them, please, please, please explain to me how you could NOT want to convert every single human being on the planet to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church?  How could you NOT want to tell other people about Our Lord, The Mass, The Eucharist, the Sacrament of Confession, and Our Lord’s Holy Church?  Further, how could you TURN AWAY a person wanting to convert?  How could you encourage someone to remain AWAY from the Eucharist, AWAY from the Mass and OUTSIDE of the Church?  HOW???  How could it possibly be that Our Lord DOES NOT want one of His children to be with Him at Mass, and receive Him in the Eucharist?  How could you call proselytism, that is, helping others to enter, know, love and receive Our Lord in His Church which is His gift to us, “solemn nonsense”, and sneer contemptuously and those who take The Great Commission seriously?  How?

There is one answer, and deep down we all know what it is.  We can see it – terrifyingly – in the Pope, we can see it in our lukewarm-at-best priests and bishops, and we can see it in ourselves.  We don’t tell everyone we can about these things that are so unfathomably and SUPERnaturally wonderful because we don’t really believe any of it – and, like Judas Iscariot, some are so completely embarrassed by it that they want to tear it all down, from the inside for some, from the outside for others.

I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.

6.  Ending on a happy note:

Hi Ann,

It’s your friendly neighborhood ex-IRS revenue officer who emailed you awhile back. I read your New Year’s update from this evening, and while I’m very happy you have a job lead…

[…. advice, advice, advice, redacted ….]

On another note, I wanted to say I went to confession for the 1st time in more than 15 years a few weeks ago. My mortal sins have tormented me for a long time, and it was an unbelievable relief to lay them down. I have always thought of myself as a decent person at heart, but when I sat down and prepared my examination of conscience, I was shocked at what a bastard I have been. Thank you for the benefactor Masses, though the couple of measly donations I have sent hardly qualify me for that moniker. God bless you for the work you are doing.

J

 

 

Starting ARSH 2015 Off Right: King and God and Sacrifice Edition

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

A perennial favorite.  BNL with Sarah McLachlan performing a medley of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “We Three Kings”.  A masterful arrangement.

Glorious now, behold Him arise,
King and God and Sacrifice.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Worship Him, God Most High!

 

New Year's Eve Wrap Up

1.  Sorry for the dearth of posts, once again.  I am admittedly fighting “why bother” demons.  I shall try to do better.  I also bought an electric mattress pad which, while totally eliminating the problem of cold toes, presents a new problem with regards to actually getting out of bed and moving toward the computer for anything longer than the briefest of interludes.  Because cold toes.  YOW!

2.  Christmas in the Van was lovely.  Lots of company, a little Charlie Brown tree, and lots of meat.  I hope you all are having a lovely Christmas too.  Remember, this is just Day 7 of 12!  Keep it rollin’!

3.  December’s Mass for my benefactors was offered yesterday.  I will try to get January’s scheduled ASAP.  Deepest thanks to one and all, once again.

4.  I may have a steady job lined up.  It would be 30 hours per week of institutional janitorial work and facility maintenance.  Cash under the table, of course.  The wage hasn’t been hammered out yet, but I am hopeful that it will cover my rent.  If you do the math and make some broad assumptions, you will note that the wage will be a fraction of the so-called “minimum wage”.  Darn right.  When a person is in a situation like mine, the ability to sell one’s labor at a relatively low price means the difference between *some* income and ZERO income.  What I am looking forward to the most is having a firm schedule once again.  Able-bodied people should have a schedule.  Farting around is BAD FOR THE SOUL.

5.  No solution for a PayPal replacement has presented itself, and I am not optimistic on that front.  Cash or blank money orders to the mailing address on the Contact page is still the best bet.  Checks are tricky.  I anticipate having my bank account completely closed soon, and thus won’t have any way to deposit checks.

6.  I have received multiple emails saying, “Why don’t you set up a non-profit?”  The answer is, BECAUSE I’M NOT A CON-ARTIST.  Non-profits, by definition are not supposed to benefit the owner(s).  “Funds realized in the operation of the NPO will not be used to benefit any owners.”  In my case, every cent would “benefit” me, as it would be my disposable income.  Just because everyone else games the massively corrupt non-profit paradigm doesn’t mean I will.  Because… INTEGRITY.  I’d rather be broke and destitute than some sleazy grifter.  You know, like these filthy psycho gutter criminals.

7.  So, you all realize that if you have cable or satellite, you are paying Al Sharpton’s salary, right?  The reason channels like MSNBC continue on with sub-basement ratings is because the vast majority of their revenue comes from cable-sat licensing fees, not advertising revenue.  It matters not how low the ratings are, these channels still receive a cut of every single cable-sat subscriber dollar, and since MSNBC is a “basic cable” channel, that means almost EVERY cable-sat subscriber is subsidizing Al Sharpton, MTV, the sodomite channel and all the rest.  Even the most obscure channels receive high-eight figure annual licensing revenues.  MSNBC probably receives into the hundreds of millions in licensing revenue per year.  If you STILL have pay TV, you are lining that retarded, murderous jackass’s pockets.  Are your precious “shows” more important than your civilization?

Wait.  Don’t answer.  We both know what your answer is.  See item 1.

8.  Happy New Year.  Here’s the Hag being all overly-optimistic, in keeping with the season.  “If We Make It Through December”.

http://youtu.be/sGDo1Jybs_I

 

Starting the Seventh Day of Christmas Off Right: Cherubic Lullabye for the Baby Jesus Edition

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Manger

Remember, He was placed in a manger, which is a FEED TROUGH, because He is the True Food that comes down from heaven.  His swaddling cloths foretold His burial shroud.  Oh, and remember that Bethlehem literally means “House of Bread” in Hebrew, and literally translates to “House of Lamb” and “House of Meat” in Aramaic.  Because the physical, substantial presence of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist is foretold and proclaimed on pretty much every page of the Bible.  Because without the Eucharist, the entire edifice crumbles into nonsense and people worshiping not God, but themselves.

Here is one of my favorite pieces of music, which sounds like a lovely angelic lullabye to me.

All we that in mystery
Holy Cherubim portray
As the life-creating Trinity
With thrice-holy hymn we adore and praise.
Come, let us cast off all earthly care
And forget every vain employ.

For the King of All comes in triumph
By unseen hosts of angels brought
To us that bid Him welcome.
Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Yet Another #TOLDYA: Commodities Giant Ceases ALL Gold Trading

There are actually TWO Barnhardt Axioms.  The second Barnhardt Axiom is:
Seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is today, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.

The first, older Barnhardt Axiom is:
If you can’t stand in front of something and physically defend it with a firearm, then you don’t own it, and probably never did.

The fifth largest Commodity trading company (not a brokerage firm per se, but specializing in trading commodities in both the physical and on paper) just announced that they are ceasing ALL gold trading activity.  Why?  Because the PHYSICAL GOLD that is allegedly stored and/or backing the paper markets ISN’T THERE, everyone knows it, and they want out before the manure impacts the rapidly spinning airfoils.

This is called a “mokita”, from a language in Papua New Guinea, meaning “a truth everybody knows but nobody speaks”.

Yup.  I’ve been saying this for years.  COMEX warehouse receipts are a joke, as are ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds).  I wonder what the factor is on “owners” of each serial number?  Kyle Bass was beyond smart to get his physical gold out of COMEX years ago – essentially cashing out of the Ponzi super-early, before it collapsed, which is the one and only viable strategy when one finds oneself unwittingly in a Ponzi – as Bass did with regards to COMEX.

Last month DeutscheBank also announced that it would cease all physical precious metals trading.  Yup.  The jig is up, methinks.  The metal simply isn’t there, and these people are getting out not out of a profound sense of moral responsibility, but rather like vermin exiting a sinking ship.  How does one defend oneself when after taking delivery of a certain bar, or even just owning on paper, and fifty other claimants show up, each carrying a warehouse receipt with exactly the same serial number?  Or when you are notified that your gold stored in your safe deposit box is ACTUALLY someone else’s property.  The article linked above rightly draws the link between the situation with the metals markets and the situation in the American real estate market wherein fraudulent robosigning, bundling and derivatizing of mortgages leaves actual ownership title to the physical houses up for grabs.  Nobody actually knows who owns what any longer.  And, as we have discussed at length recently, when the Rule of Law breaks down and there is no Equal Protection thereunder, the biggest thug wins.

Yeah, the only way to win in that mess is to not play.  Take your ball and go home.   If you still have one.

Starting Ember Wednesday Off Right: "Vittles" Edition

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

A reader sent this verse from Proverbs in after I said that I had prayed that donations be “not too much and not too little”.  Note the direct correlations to the Lord’s Prayer:

Remove far from me vanity, and lying words. Give me neither beggary, nor riches: give me only the necessaries of life: Lest perhaps being filled, I should be tempted to deny, and say: Who is the Lord? or being compelled by poverty, I should steal, and forswear the name of my God.
Proverbs 30: 8-9

The Latin uses the word “victui”, or in English, “victuals”, meaning food, in the phrase “give me only the necessaries of life”.

…tribue tantum victui meo necessaria.

Or, perhaps, “give me only the victuals that I need.”

You all know the word “victuals” if you ever watched “The Beverly Hillbillies”.  The Clampett’s were constantly talking about “vittles”, meaning food, right?  In fact, here is a propaganda piece for the processed food industry done in ARSH 1963 by the cast of The Beverly Hillbillies:

 

http://youtu.be/B_irZudsi8I

The SPELLING of the word as “Vittles” is a corruption, but the PRONUNCIATION is NOT.  The word “victuals” is NOT pronounced “VICK-shu-als”.  No, the proper pronunciation of the word “victuals” is in fact “VITT-uls”, just as the Clampett’s (and Miss Jane) correctly say it.  Interesting, no?

So, the proverb says, “give me only the food (victuals) that I need…” which is darn close to “give us this day our daily bread”, which is a reference to the True Food that comes down from Heaven at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist, and certainly also to the virtue of temperance – not too much and not too little.  Moderation.  Just what we need and no more, lest we go off the deep end… in either direction.

"That's All…"

Mel Torme, aka The Velvet Fog.  File this one under “God singing to man.”  Lyrics, by verse, with art below.

——————

I can only give you love that lasts forever, And a promise to be near each time you call. And the only heart I own For you and you alone That's all, That's all...

I can only give you love that lasts forever,
And the promise to be near each time you call.
And the only Heart I own
For you and you alone
That’s all,
That’s all…

I can only give you country walks in springtime And a hand to hold when leaves begin to fall; And a Love Whose burning light Will warm the winter's night That's all, That's all.

I can only give you country walks in springtime
And a hand to hold when leaves begin to fall;
And a Love Whose burning light
Will warm the winter night
That’s all,
That’s all.

There are those I am sure who have told you, They would give you the world for a toy. All I have are These Arms to enfold you, And a Love time can never destroy.

There are those I am sure who have told you,
They would give you the world for a toy.
All I have are These Arms to enfold you,
And a Love time can never destroy.

If you're wondering what I'm asking in return, dear, You'll be glad to know that my demands are small. Say it's me that you'll adore, For now and evermore That's all, That's all.

If you’re wondering what I’m asking in return, dear,
You’ll be glad to know that My demands are small.
Say it’s Me that you’ll adore,
For now and evermore
That’s all,
That’s all.

Extremely Ominous: Russia's Central Bank Just Raised Interest Rates to 17%

Yesterday, Russian interest rates were at 10.5%, which sounds almost incomprehensibly high to those of us who have been living in the world of ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) for the past six years.  Well, overnight, the Russian Central Bank raised interest rates 650 basis points in one shot – to 17%.

And we all remember what parabolic increases in interest rates mean.  Ahem.  Cough cough.

The Russian economy is now completely dependent upon oil.  25% of Russia’s GDP is derived from the energy industry.  Half of the Russian government’s budget is funded by tax revenue from energy.  Apparently someone didn’t go to class the day they taught about diversification.  (Must have been out shirtless bareback riding that day.)  Even I didn’t realize how heavily levered Russia was in energy until I looked it up just now.  It’s categorically insane.

So now Brent Crude is trading under $60 per barrel, and Russia’s economy is imploding.  People are selling the Ruble and moving into the Dollar, Euro, Yen, pretty much anything is considered a flight-to-quality at this point.  Heck, the Ruble is crashing even relative to the Venezuelan Bolivar.

So, in order to attract capital into Russia, which they need desperately because the massive petroleum expansion was financed with debt, they are raising interest rates hoping to retain that capital which remains, and more importantly to attract new capital.  And you know what?  The market is showing that even with Russian bonds paying out at 17%, the interest rate still isn’t high enough.  People who were holding Russian bonds before are STILL selling them, and there is no new buying interest.  And the Ruble is still selling off.  If Russia can’t price its bonds into the market and attract capital to shore itself up, the banking system will fail, and Russian bank deposits will be “bailed-in”, in other words, swept as they were in Cyprus.  But don’t worry.  All of the Russian Oligarchs keep their money in London.

So why is this happening in Russia and not in the West?  I believe that the difference is that the Russian economic bubble has been inflated by highly-leveraged pertroleum revenues, but the West’s economy, as Karl Denninger has been screaming for years, has been propped up by Federal Reserve (and European Central Bank) money-printing.  Everything in the US is debt-driven.  Heck, Americans are using credit not just to buy houses and cars, but to buy groceries today.  New debt creation has outpaced GDP growth in the US since the CARTER administration.  Sometimes by as much as a factor of 7:1.

Which is worse?  Clearly, the Western paradigm is worse.  At least Russia’s economy, levered though it may be, is tied to a physical commodity – and perhaps the physical commodity par excellence: energy.  The Western economic paradigm is inextricably tied to larceny:  currency debasement and the forcible financial rape of multiple generations of people, many of whom will not even be born for decades or centuries hence.

So, in the West, in our debt bubble we are in a massive catch-22 that can perpetuate itself a bit longer than Russia’s petroleum bubble, but is far more toxic.  Namely, if the Federal Reserve/Banksters keep interest rates synthetically at zero, all of the interest-income dependent   portfolios (i.e. money market funds, pension funds, 401k and IRA, insurance companies, AND Social Security and Medicare) will eventually implode due either to a simple lack of revenue OR because the high-risk derivatives they have migrated into in order to generate any sort of return have collapsed, BUT if they allow interest rates to rise and the bond market genuinely comes back into play, there will be a massive move of money OUT of the equities (and also residential real estate, obviously), and the stock market bubble will utterly collapse, along with the real estate bubble.

Both Russia and the West are “in check” on the chessboard, but the board is far more open for Russia.  The West has basically nowhere to go, and is down to its last piece.

Putin has been flexing his military muscle like crazy lately, with Russian fighters and subs probing and flat out incurring into European and North American airspaces and waterways on a near-daily basis.  Putin is economically trapped, and is also nuts, and history tells us that when nut strongmen become trapped, they get out of it by starting wars.  If Putin were to invade Finland, Estonia and Poland tomorrow, you and I both know that the former U.S. would do nothing to stop it.

Again, and I cannot say this enough, get out, Get Out, GET OUT of the financial system as much as you possibly, possibly can – while you can.  Your money, your savings, is a fungible proxy for all of those years of your life that you spent working.  All of that time.  All of that labor.  If the fungible proxy of 0’s and 1’s on a computer server becomes extremely vulnerable to theft with no recourse or Rule of Law, then prudence dictates that you should defend your property by reallocating into something that is, at least, LESS VULNERABLE than 0’s and 1’s, which are wholly, completely contingent upon the Rule of Law and the fiduciary integrity of the ruling class.

Considering that the ruling class today is wholly comprised of psychopathic oligarchs, and that the Rule of Law is dead, replaced instead by an arbitrary tyranny, NEED I SAY MORE?