As a European, this article on how Meloni is preparing to sell out Italy and then Europe cheap to Blackrock and private American capital, is extremely important. Via Niccolo Soldo who shared Thomas Fazzi’s original reporting on his substack.

Why do Europe’s leaders want to turn our beautiful lands into a giant military camp cum prison colony, administered by printing press bankers? The trade is almost as bad as the one the Lenape made, trading the island of Manhattan for glass beads.

Giorgia Meloni and Elon Musk together in New York on Monday night.

FILIPPO ATTILI/US PALAZZO CHIGI PRESS OFFICE HANDOUT

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni was feted recently at a swanky event in New York City held by the Atlantic Council.

I couldn’t get the lingering smell of rotting fish out of my nostrils for a few days after that.

Continue reading Blackrock’s Trojan Horse in Europe: Italy’s Giorgia Meloni at uncoy.

Today I saw a graphic from Kayla Zhu, which shows the top 10 countries by average and median wealth.

It’s well worth a look. Here it is.

Canada makes the list on both sides. Canadians are number ten in both average and median wealth. The difference between average and median wealth astonishes me. In Canada, average wealth is $375K but median wealth is just $142K. That’s a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. I wondered about the inequality in Canada, as Denmark shows $449K and $194K, significantly closer to 2:1. Australia does reach a disparity of just 2:1.

But the situation in the US situation is far worse, their median wealth doesn’t even make the chart, despite being 4th with avarage wealth of $565K, well-ahead of Canada.

The US economy has basically become oligarchical, with a small coterie of well-heeled multi-millionaires and billionaires riding rough shod over everyone else.

Continue reading Average Wealth vs Median Wealth: A Slow Slide to Neo-Feudalism at uncoy.

Ipsos numbers looked gamed to me. I know that where I am in Central Europe people do not have any confidence at all in the economy getting better. There are huge layoffs in manufacturing in Germany, huge layoffs in technology (mostly in the US but it trickles out to us in Europe). The hot war with Russia (Russia was one of our largest and most generous trade partners: cheap energy in, high priced machinery/cars, luxury goods out) and a slowly growing trade war with China mean huge inflation.

We no longer even let our farmers work properly or earn a good living (anyone who thinks farmers live high on the hog have never worked a farm).

In the comments Peter Pan notes:

I think the responses would be quite different if every participant in the poll was made aware and took account of the demographic cliff facing many of their nations.

Continue reading Confidence In The Global Economy survey looks trumped up at uncoy.

Yesterday Oleg Tsarev, a long-time Member of Parliament in Ukraine (2002-2014), and a past candidate for President of Ukraine wrote a thought-provoking essay on what persuaded Ukrainians to fall into a civil war over NATO and association with the EU1 – dreams of a better life. Tsarev’s essay is in reaction to this 2020 video (Russian language only) where a normal Ukrainian citizen explains in an interview how Russia might woo him and other Ukrainians.

[fvplayer id=”46″]

Here’s Tsarev’s essay in English (original in Russian).

A slave does not seek freedom. A slave seeks a good master.

This is not said out loud, but what you see in the video is the basis – the foundation of Ukrainian separatism. That’s what 90% of the Ukrainian population thinks.

“When they start building skyscrapers in Russia like in Dubai, when they start giving away 100 million dollars (?!), when Russia starts blossoming and smelling, then we will turn around and ask ourselves: look, they have so much money, nowhere to spend it, in that case we won’t need independence either”.

Continue reading Ukraine Seeks a Sponsor at uncoy.

My father had a beautiful blue Cougar XR7 convertible with the Shelby V8 engine when I was a small boy in Vancouver. He bought it in 1970 when I was five years old. Not exactly a wise purchase for someone who was the father of three small children. Probably an act of rebellion by a 28 year old relative youth finding himself a certified Chartered Accountant with three children before he reached thirty.

Of course he sold that car by the time I was nine. There was a market for it in Toronto, where we had moved for his work and to be closer to his parents and my grandparents. The market was the heir to a small fortune for his first car at seventeen. He wanted to make a statement with the roar of the V8 under the hood and the gorgeous sky blue metallic paint.

Continue reading Real world guide to the economics of collector cars at uncoy.

The latest hue and cry about China concerns slave labour in cotton fields in China’s Xinjiang province. Ostensibly the slave labourers are persecuted Uighurs. Generally picking cotton, like gathering grapes, is back-breaking work. One could probably call cotton pickers slave labourers anywhere in the world. The pickers in the illustration above are sharecroppers’ children in the US in 1909. Modern pictures from around the world don’t look much better. Here is Claude Renault’s photograph of A woman picking cotton in a field near Nagarjuna Sagar in India, a century later in 2005. It’s still back breaking work.

In terms of the treatment of Uighurs in China, the only comment I would make is that violent revolutionaries and separatists in the West have been fairly harshly dealt with. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared martial law in the face of the Quebec separatist movement.

Continue reading Is China deploying slave labour in its cotton fields? at uncoy.

This morning I read a very sharp and clear comment from Roacheforque on an otherwise banal story:

think it’s quite evident who will profit from the pandemic and lockdowns.

1) Amazon and other online retailers who can support locked down inhabitants of the new dystopia
2) Google and other online info/entertainment venues who now have much larger demand through lock down
3) Gates and the Vaccine industry who have governments all over the world racing to throw money at them as fast as they can
4) The global banking cartel, who lubricates all this shit and gets fat no matter which way things turn
5) Klaus, and Club Davos, the Royals and the Global Corporatists who were betting on this change so as to make it happen.

6) Last but not least, the new green orgy of climate correctness and bureaucratic collectivism.

Continue reading Who profits from pandemic and lockdown? at uncoy.

After doing untold damage to the United States water table with fracking, Chesapeake Energy has at last filed for bankruptcy. Its former CEO Aubrey McClendon was forced to resign in disgrace in 2012 and died by driving his SUV straight into a wall in March 2016 in bright daylight in what looks a lot like a suicide.

The damage Chesapeake has done to the North American water table will take nature millions of years to undo. All of that environmental damage was done while running in the red. Accessible energy resources were easily available from Venezuela, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia but instead as a matter of policy, Americans chose to poison their land. Chesapeake Energy is a symbol of the cupidity, corruption and short-sightedness of US leadership.

The conversation at ZeroHedge was fascinating. Hardcharger82 strangely feels that he’s happy to be old, or in his words:

“I am glad I’m not young anymore.”

Something I have been saying a lot in the last few years.

Continue reading Generational challenges: End Winner Takes All at uncoy.

There’s lot of talk about pulling manufacturing out of China and a renaissance in Made in America manufacturing. Most of the talk is unrealistic. Product owner adr explains why at Zerohedge in his comments on . Staying Ahead Of The Shortages:

(Did the author just now figure out that there is no made in America?

Take a look inside your assembled in the USA refrigerator. It has a piece of shit compressor that cost $5 and was made in Guatemala.

Shinola tried to “manufacturer” bicycles and watches in the USA. Nearly all the parts come from Asia other than the frames.

Window manufacturers get pellet stock for the frame extrusions from Taiwan.

There are only two leather tanneries left in the USA.

New Balance makes one sneaker in the USA. They are $180 a pair and are pieces of shit.

Continue reading There is no Made in America Anymore at uncoy.

Anatoly Chubais is the Russian politician who under President Boris Yeltsin led the privatisation via voucher together with Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar in 1992 to 1994. Theoretically every Russia received a voucher which entitled him (or her) to a proportionate share in the national wealth of the state enterprises. In practice, foreign concerns through Russian front men bought up large numbers of vouchers which they were able to trade for $10 or a couple bottles of vodka to naive and disillusioned workers. Effectively state run enterprises were being sold for the value of six months sales. The privatised companies schemed to avoid paying both workers and taxes and largely exported profits through middlemen companies. Voucher privatisation was the carpet bagging of Russia.

Chubais who is still lurking around as the head of RosnanoRosnano who have managed to squander $4 billion of Russian government investment to build a company with $25 million in annual revenue with operating losses of $80 million year.

Continue reading Duplicitous Anatoly Chubais declares Russia the poorest and most energy wasteful state on earth at uncoy.