War in Ukraine: The ECONOMIC SUICIDE of the West is now under way
Hal Turner writes the following
Jerome Powell: “The war underscores the need for action on Digital Currency.”
UPDATE 11:47 AM EST —
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell just made a strange statement: “The war underscores the need for action on Digital Currency.” WTF? Why in the world would those two things be connected? This has “bad” written all over it!
UPDATE 11:54 AM EST —
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has REFUSED to answer when asked at a Press Conference this morning if the Federal Reserve is monetizing U.S. Debt.
. . . and there you have it. That is the simple fact that explains E V E R Y T H I N G that is now happening.
The global financial system has very few rules, but one of those rules is that sovereign nations cannot monetize their debt. They cannot simply print cash money to pay their bills.
If that is what the US is (has been) doing, then — pay close attention to this —- N O B O D Y on the planet will be able to trust in the value of US cash. So N O B O D Y on the planet will want to accept or use U.S. cash as a means of payment.
When nobody wants to accept US cash, and nobody wants to use it as a means of payment, the entire United States financial system goes into complete, irreversible, collapse. Total destruction of the value of everything which is denominated in ‘Dollars.”
When Powell was asked, but refused to answer, that said it all. There are only TWO possible answers to the question Powell was asked: “No” or “Yes.”
If the answer is “No” then life goes on, no big deal – yet.
If the answer is “Yes” then all hell breaks loose, immediately, as countries aroudn the world STAMPEDE out of the dollar. Hyperinflation would hit the USA overnight, banks would collapse overnight. It would be financial Armageddon!
The fact that Powell refused to answer, tells most __thinking_ people the answer must be “Yes.” His non-answer, may end up causing exactly the STAMPEDE mentioned above. We’ll know soon enough.
Well, the powers-that-be simply cannot tolerate that happening. They will need a distraction to divert attention, or a really big disaster, to blame it all on.
World War Three fits both!
Smash the world, wreck the global economy. Every country on earth goes into collapse, including the USA, and everyone gets to blame the war for it.
No responsibility for having spent our entire nation into Bankruptcy and sending the wealthiest nation in the history of the human race, into financial oblivion.
THAT is what’s happening, and the fact that Jerome Powell REFUSED to answer “Is the federal reserve monetizing U.S. debt” seems to me, to be proof.
UPDATE 12:19 PM EST —
The word is spreading . . .
MORE
Russian Ministry of Finance advises Russians to buy gold. “Investing in gold will be an ideal alternative for Russians to buying dollars amid an unstable geopolitical situation.
EVEN MORE:
POWELL: WE TALK ABOUT GETTING TO NEUTRAL RATE OF 2% TO 2.5%, AND IT MAY NEED TO GO HIGHER THAN THAT
POWELL: LIKELY WE CAN ACHIEVE A SOFT LANDING (HT REMARK: Whenever you hear a Banker talk about a “soft landing” they actually mean “a crash.” Here it comes, folks. I’ve warned have food, water, medicines. I meant it! This is why they’re talking about a crash. They raise rates and everything is going to seize up. It has to be done though. Should have just let it go in 2008 and suffered a little bit then. Now we have 14 years of loose monetary policy on top of the issues we had then. A soft landing is not only optimistic, but irrational. Fixing to get really bumpy.)
The ECONOMIC SUICIDE of the West is now under way… severe economic sanctions against Russia will END the dollar as the global reserve currency
(Natural News) Today’s urgent Situation Update podcast (see below) connects the dots and reveals why the West’s economic sanctions against Russia have actually set into motion a series of events which will inevitably lead to the end of the dollar and the collapse of America as we know it.
If you want to jump right to the podcast, you can find it at this link on Brighteon.com.
To understand why the dollar is now doomed, first realize that the petro dollar status of the US dollar made it the “world reserve currency” that has dominated world commerce for the last 75 years. The world reserve currency status allowed the USA to print more fiat currency and use it to purchase physical goods and raw materials from other nations without offering anything in return other than fiat dollars. In effect, it allowed the American people to enjoy a highly prosperous, materialistic quality of life — and affordability of goods — that has been artificial this entire time. Because if you can just counterfeit money and then spend it globally, you have an amazing deal.
All this time, America has been trading fiat currency for physical goods, and that’s a great deal for America and a horrible arrangement for the producers and exported of the world, such as China, Ukraine, Mexico, India, Korea, etc.
Additionally, the hyper creation of leveraged debt and trillions in new money printing (especially since covid) has created a highly precarious global debt bomb scenario and stands on the verge of imploding. It only needs one black swan event to topple the entire thing
Put just baited the West into unleashing an entire flock of black swans.
By goading the West into severe economic sanctions and banking de-platforming, America just fell for Putin’s tactical genius and unleashed a series of events that will inevitably spell the demise of the dollar and the collapse of America. Here’s why:
First, the SWIFT de-platforming of Russian banks hurts western banks and institutions far more than it hurts Russia. Western banks have loan payments due from Russian borrowers, and now those borrowers are unable to meet loan payment demands. Similarly, many businesses in Europe import substantial amounts of goods from Russia, including wheat, minerals and technology. Now, with no way to actually pay Russian businesses, those exports have ceased, causing extreme economic damage to western businesses operating in the UK, France, Germany, Spain… and contributing to the product shortages and supply chain disruptions that will only get far worse (look into Russia’s exports of fertilizer and energy if you’re curious about how bad it’s going to get for Europe).
Those businesses have lines of credit and owe money to many western banks. When those businesses go into default — which is already beginning to happen — the banks that loaned them money will suffer a swarm of loan defaults that were entirely unexpected (hence the “black swan” designation).
The SWIFT system just warned the entire world to stop using SWIFT
But that’s not even the biggest factor at play here. When SWIFT disconnected Russian banks from its system, it broadcast a powerful, history-changing message to the world: If you want to have reliable commerce on a global scale, don’t use SWIFT or the dollar. Otherwise, your nation (or bank, or business, etc.) can be cut off at any time merely because you have a political disagreement with the Biden regime.
Thus, right now there is a mass exodus away from reliance on the SWIFT system. There’s also a rush out of the dollar itself as international companies dive into the Chinese yuan as a more stable currency that can still engage in financial transactions with Russia. This is why the yuan is exploding in value right now, by the way.
Informed people are also moving rapidly into cryptocurrencies, and this situation highlights the perfect use case for crypto: Rapid, decentralized international transfers that can’t get easily trapped by rogue, corrupt governments. Suddenly, XRP, Bitcoin, etc., all look a lot more practical, and we are starting to see people enter this realm who are not speculators and “hodlers” but rather practical international business owners who simply need a transaction system that functions.
For these reasons and many more, there is a global rush away from the dollar and dollar-based control systems such as SWIFT. It’s almost as if Biden and western nations were actually trying to detonate the dollar and bring it to its knees, ending the 75 years of dollar dominance in one grand suicidal leap off a cliff.
The de-dollarization countdown clock is now ticking away
At this point, global de-dollarization is now inevitable. It almost certainly cannot be stopped. Global faith in the dollar and SWIFT has been shattered and is very unlikely to be restored. (Obama has achieved one of his key goals to bring down America.)
Here’s another way to easily understand this dynamic. The commercial aircraft manufacturer Boeing has just announced it is ceasing all support and spare parts for Boeing aircraft owned by Russian airlines:
This declaration, of course, violates Boeing’s contracts with its Russian customers. More importantly, it sends out a message to the world: If you buy Boeing, you will be cut off from spare parts and support if Boeing ever decides it doesn’t like the actions of your national leaders.
Note that commercial aircraft are expected to fly for about 20 years or so, and it takes many years to pay off the loan balances stemming from the financing of those aircraft. If those aircraft aren’t flying, none of the loans are getting paid. And if Boeing cuts off all the spare parts — which they just did — the aircraft simply can’t fly. (They have strict parts replacement requirements that can’t be ignore unless you want the aircraft to start randomly falling out of the sky, which of course Boeing aircraft are known to do on their own anyway.)
The result? No informed air transport company in the world will ever buy from Boeing again. Why would you risk the total default of your airline due to the knee-jerk reaction of a “woke” corporation like Boeing suddenly deciding to violate its contracts and refuse to support the very aircraft they just sold you? Whatever these corporations are doing to Russia today, they can do to YOU tomorrow.
In similar fashion, what international business person is stupid enough to bet the future of their business on the dollar and the SWIFT system that has just proven they can disconnect you at any time, with no due process, for any reason they want? This is the international equivalent to the Canadian government looting all the private bank accounts of peaceful protesters or donors who merely gave $20 to the freedom convoy in Canada. There is no stronger declaration for why the Canadian people should all take their money out of all those banks immediately (and never use them again).
As a business owner / importer / exporter / manufacturer, the minute you realize the SWIFT system (and the dollar, and western banks) are all part of a criminal cartel of “woke” globalists who can destroy your entire business literally overnight, you will seek out a parallel economic system that promises far greater reliability and less woketard muckery.
This means there will be a mad rush away from SWIFT, away from the dollar and away from America. The new financial power centers of the world will likely land in China, with Russia also playing a significant role due to its vast energy resources.
America, on the other hand, will be left holding Joe Biden’s diaper bag while the dollar plunges into oblivion. The dollar’s days are numbered, and the global process of migrating away from the dollar is already under way.
What happens to the American people when the dollar collapses?
When the dollar collapses, America will be plunged into lawlessness, chaos and destitution. Most commercial transactions will simply cease to function, causing a near-immediate halt to deliveries of everything (food, fuel, replacement parts, vehicles, tractors, etc.).
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that America’s cities will burn while gun battles rage in the streets where Democrats de-funded the police. Even before the collapse, here’s what downtown Seattle looks like in early March, 2022:
All the decades of debt creation, fiat currency counterfeiting and bailout money blowouts will coalesce into a day of reckoning that will plunge America into outright chaos. States will be forced to issue their own currencies just to prevent the plunge into third world chaos. Secession will commence, and the D.C. swamp will find itself embroiled in both a kinetic and economic war on two fronts: The home front and the international front.
It won’t be long after when the swamp falls and the American empire ceases to exist. This has been the design all along, courtesy of Barack Obama who put this plan into motion in 2008 and still runs it in 2022. Once the dollar is abandoned on a global scale and the US government collapses, America can then be invaded and conquered by the communist Chinese who need America’s farmland to feed their populations. A mass genocide campaign will seek out and execute every American who can be located, including all the Leftists who once believed communism was awesome. They too will be shot and dumped in the very same mass graves they once thought would be filled with Christians and conservatives they had hoped to mass murder, Mao-style.
It will take years for this entire process to unfold, and during that time, the American people can count on suffering through extreme supply chain disruptions, outrageous price inflation and the very real possibility of widespread famine. (Learn about where fertilizer comes from. It’s made from fossil fuels via the Haber process. Obama’s war on fossil fuels is actually a war on food.)
At some point not far off, the dollar will lose 20% of its purchasing value each calendar month. Hyperinflation will become a horrifying reality. Mass money printing by the Idiocracy Biden regime will only make things worse, and at some point the corrupt, broken, brain-dead government bureaucracy will attempt to confiscate firearms across America. That, of course, will spark a domestic civil war, which is exactly what Obama has been trying to set off since he ordered Eric Holder to pursue Operation Fast & Furious.
Can any of this be halted or reversed?
All this I’m describing is already set into motion. If we do nothing, it will all happen as I’ve described here. (I have successfully and very publicly predicted vaccine bioweapons, depopulation against humanity, the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crash and even the dot-com collapse.)
However, there does exist the possibility of late-stage intervention that could reverse all this and restore America. It would require a complete change of who’s in charge in D.C., followed by mass arrests of treasonous actors in Congress, the federal government, Big Tech, Big Media, Big Pharma and much more. It is highly doubtful, in my estimation, that such housecleaning will occur. Even Trump is still a shill for the vaccine industry, while leading “conservative” Republicans are often little more than RINOs who can’t wait to betray America. If we had another hundred Wendy Rogers, MTGs and Rand Pauls, we might have a better chance…
Some credible researchers believe there is a secret white hat plan to stage mass arrests of the top criminals and reinstall Trump, the rightful winner of the 2020 election. I hope they are correct, but I don’t put much faith in this plan, especially when all the deadlines that are publicly proclaimed to be the dates of action keep getting rescheduled and moved into the future. The whole thing smacks of an elaborate intelligence operation to convince the American people to stay disengaged while their nation is stolen and destroyed from within. But we’ll see…
The American masses are so dumbed down, they have no clue what’s about to happen
In the mean time, merely surviving all this is going to take extreme planning, stockpiling of supplies and a hardened mindset of adaptability and courage. That said, perhaps 95% of the American people have no real planning, no real stockpiles and are mentally weak and unprepared. Life has been too easy in America for too long, for the reason I mentioned up front: Easy money printing and affordable consumer goods often acquired with little or no effort. The American people haven’t really had to struggle for things in the way that Third World citizens do on a daily basis.
I’ve lived in Taiwan and Ecuador for extended periods of time. I’ve traveled around Asia, Central America, Europe and Australia. I speak three languages with adequate proficiency and am able to carry out conversations with local people in their own language, usually. What I’ve learned over all these years is that America has largely grown fat, dumb and lazy. I even wrote and performed a satire song about it in 2013 called, “Dumb and Lazy.”
If anything, the American masses are far worse in 2022 compared to 2013. The public schools have become pedophile-grooming indoctrination centers, the “news” is nothing but pathetic Pravda-style propaganda, and virtually the entire US population is mathematically illiterate.
While we’re at it, I also wrote a song in 2008 called, “I Want My Bailout Money.” Listen to the lyrics today in 2022 and you’ll be astonishing how it predicted nearly everything we’re now suffering through:
So here we are, at the last chapter of the American empire, now run by an actual Alzheimer’s patient who can’t speak in a consistently coherent manner, who pronounces “economy” like that scene ripped right out of Idiocracy, and who thinks that when Russia attacks Ukraine it’s evil, but when America attacks Yemen, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and dozens of other countries, it’s perfectly okay.
So to punish Russia, they commit economic suicide for America. So pathetic…
We are watching America being taken down by a suicide cult, and I don’t see any way this is going to be halted without some huge surprise like the return of Christ. (And if you’re betting on the Rapture plucking you out of all this because you are a pre-trib believer, you might be making a huge mistake on the timing of all that… God wants you to be prepared, no matter what.)
Listen to today’s Situation Update podcast for even more details, including practical things you can do to beat inflation, stock up without spending a fortune, and prepare to survive the near-certain collapse of America:
How Russia Will Bypass Western Economic Warfare
So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what? Cookies?
What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.
One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.
Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.
While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.
They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.
To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.
Hudson remarked how he is “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.” On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”
This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”
Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”
About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”
I’m going to de-dollarize myself
So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”
It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.
A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:
“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”
Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.
From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.
Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.
With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.
The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.
Russia has its own bag of tricks
Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint: everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.
So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? (Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.)
In an essay published this morning, deliciously titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how “NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”
He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:
First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank).
Hudson defines their economy base as “monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”
Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is “to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”
Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as “the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”
As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how “Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (namely, the Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).”
Hudson shows how “the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”
He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat.” (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster: “This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.”
As for blocking Russian raw materials exports, “this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”
And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter: “The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”
That’s not going to happen. Hudson clearly sees how “the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”
Let’s confiscate some technology
Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.
In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble, “which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”
The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike “would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”
But that seems to tell only part of the story. Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov: the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.
In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,” Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on “friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.” This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.
Koltashov maintains that “one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.” Now, Russia could use “China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”
As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief. China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources – with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators. It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.
Error in New Zealand Makes Thousands of People Rich
Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.
Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Since the mid-1980s he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties. This article was originally published on The Cradle.
2 thoughts on “War in Ukraine: The ECONOMIC SUICIDE of the West is now under way”
you and your pat will be missed when everything goes down here in montreal:)
you have been with me for so many years that you are part of my family
blessings
The Great Falsehood that has been the capitalist system has been with us as just that —- and, let’s just say it has a long timeline. Because, for one thing, the world learned zilch from the 1929 crash.
Thus we had in Canada a ludicrous situation as made the news as far on as just a couple of years or so back. That the average Canadian was in debt to the tune of $1.76 for every dollar earned. The one obvious conclusion not included: such a debt can never be repaid.
The other side of the falsehood coin is communism, an ideology which my smart-ass friend Sol says also cannot be other than one-sided, as confirmed by the birth chart example of Karl Marx where all his planets are sitting fully on one side, i.e., on one half of the chart with absolutely nothing on the other. Too neat a coincidence?
Thus the life of our world is merely a coin of crazy incidents where everything is shown up to be false and unreliable.
Jerome David Salinger came up with a masterpiece in The Catcher in the Rye when he had the teenage protagonist Holden Caulfield growing up to discover said world exactly that very ‘phony’ place.
The novel then surfaced in the news with John Lennon’s assassination when the assassin Mark David Chapman was found to be carrying it on his person at the time he shot Lennon in front of The Dakota hotel in NYC on December 8, 1980. Chapman, then a borderline psychotic, had found a parallel between the phoniness of the world that was obsessing Holden Caulfield and the disconnect Chapman perceived in Lennon’s professing peace and love and not having possessions while making millions off his records.
There’s another coincidence but yet to see mention of, between the day of the murder — the 8th of December — and the date December 8, 1941, on the other side of the international dateline in Japan when its imperial navy bombed Pearl Harbor, which infamous event was to later encompass the rather shadowy correspondence within historical fact that Zenjiro Yasuda, founder of the Japanese financial conglomerate also named Yasuda, which helped finance Japan’s 20th century military operations, was the great grandfather of Yoko Ono, Lennon’s wife (who eventually inherited the greater bulk of Lennon’s 200-plus-million-dollar estate, not to mention, as an heiress, the fortunes of the Yasuda corporation). All of which goes to prove, as I started out to explain, how crazy everything is.
Rounding out this comment with 2 more connections: First, John Lennon was shot during his mid-life crisis year at age 40 (which passage my astrologer friend refers to as the Uranus Opposition). While some time this year 2022, Mark David Chapman will be submitting his 12th request for parole (all previous attempts turned down by the courts) — and 2022 will mark 40 years since he killed John Lennon. Will Yoko Ono finally forgive Chapman???
Now, for Jerome: The meaning from the original Greek is ‘sacred name.’
Hallelujah!