Two major energy trade developments today highlight how the Western Alliance is quickly losing a grip on the world energy market, as an alliance between China, Russia, Iran and the Middle East Gulf Cooperation Council starts to take shape with actual trade exchanges that are not in dollars.

Last year, in response to big panda’s own interest and seeking to exploit two western alliance self-created weaknesses; (1) sanctions against Russia and (2) weakened investment in LNG production; China spearheaded the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange.

The exchange was aimed at group purchasing services for liquefied natural gas (LNG) though the use of the yuan to replace the dollar.  Essentially, team Gray operating without the global trading system of team Yellow (map).  The Shanghai exchange allows purchases of LNG portions by small and medium-sized buyers in yuan.

Today, CHINESE national oil company CNOOC and France’s TotalEnergies have completed China’s first yuan-settled liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade through the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, the exchange said on Tuesday (Mar 28).

Approximately 65,000 tonnes of LNG imported from the UAE changed hands in the trade, it said in a statement. TotalEnergies confirmed to Reuters that the transaction involved LNG imported from the UAE but did not comment further. (read more)

This exchange between the UAE and France is taking place without dollars. If the process continues the dollar weakens.  In the geopolitical world of currency valuations and trade, this might be considered the Archduke Ferdinand moment for the end of the petrodollar.  The question will become, can they grow this process with OPEC+ support and begin eventually trading oil in yuan?

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At a certain point in the economics of the great pretending cycle, one must wonder what circles they live in.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced another quarter-point interest rate hike and simultaneously noted the banking crisis will likely lead to tighter credit and borrowing for businesses on Main Street…. thereby further reducing the U.S. economic output.  Yet here we are again, and not a single economic or financial pundit is even talking about the origin of the inflation the Fed action is pretending to address, the spike in energy prices.

At the core of the Biden policy issue that creates inflation, is the energy policy that has driven oil, gas, home heating, electricity and manufacturing/farming costs through the roof.  The blocking of energy resource development/production is the top issue leading to massive increases in consumer prices overall.  The Biden energy policy is entirely ignored by a federal reserve attempting to shrink inflation.

Follow the bouncing ball of consequence.

Biden restricts energy development [Main St Suffers].  Prices skyrocket [Main St Suffers]. The fed raises interest rates in an effort to reduce the economic activity to meet the lowered production of energy resource development [Main St Suffers].  The result of the interest rate hike creates liquidity issues for banks holding treasury securities [Main St Suffers].  The banks then reduce credit lines, reduce lending and tighten borrowing to match their lowered liquidity [Main St Suffers].

The Fed then notes further increases in rates may pause as they await the outcome of restricted banking credit and lending from the rate hikes previously installed.  Nowhere in any of this is anyone talking about the nucleus of the issue – the stupid energy policy.  The great pretending continues in the West, while smiling panda lunches with Vladimir Putin.

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Let it not be said that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) does not understand what the Biden administration is attempting in the recent criticism and passive aggressive posturing toward Mexico.

Yesterday, AMLO was outlining a specific set of infrastructure initiatives that are ongoing.  Three new oil refineries together with new railroads and highways are under construction as the government continues positioning itself for energy independence. [Video Here]  However, it’s what he said after the energy remarks that’s really stunning.

The energy plan, which runs counter to the expressed demands of Canada and the United States, includes two regional ‘green’ refineries that will have the ability of turning used cooking oil into fuel.  However, the plan also includes new oil refinery capacity that will permit cheap gasoline independent of the need for Mexican oil to be refined in Texas and returned.

All of the refinery projects are on schedule to be completed by the end of this year and into 2024.  In essence, Mexico will have very cheap gasoline and diesel fuel in the near future.  This was previously outlined as a goal by AMLO in July 2022, and is against the interests the Biden administration.  Now those plans are becoming a reality.  Mexico is not joining the North American suicide mission of windmills, solar panels and reliance on unstable green energy.

Ever since the July 2022 Oval Office press conference at the White House, CTH has been saying to keep an eye on Mexico, because these energy plans align more with the BRICS nation agenda than the goals and objectives of the World Economic Forum (western nations).   It is not accidental the U.S. government, including our intelligence agencies and DHS, has been seeding a negative overall impression of Mexico ever since.

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The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates again today, while simultaneously promising to support further bank bailouts that might come as an outcome of raising the rates again.   In the bigger picture there are two dynamics supported by the ECB playing out.

The first issue is the ideological effort to change the economic models based on climate change.  The Build Back Better (Green New Deal) policy, a traditional energy production control effort, is being supported by the ECB effort to shrink the EU economy to meet the rate of diminished energy production.  Make the economy smaller to meet the lower energy production rate.

Lowered energy production (oil, coal and natural gas) has raised energy prices; this is the fuel behind supply side inflation.  The Western (policy-created) energy inflation is hitting every aspect of the EU, US and western global economy.  The prices of all downstream goods and services have risen dramatically as a result.  The European banks are not going to stop trying to make the economy smaller just because banks are failing.  That brings us to the second issue.

Like the first issue with BBB controls, the World Economic Forum action plan for government also includes the creation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).  The collapsing of the traditional banking system supports the agenda to create CBDCs.  Raising interest rates puts more pressure on already weak banks.  This is a feature not a flaw of the intent.

Shifting the economy from traditional oil, coal and natural gas is one control aspect (climate change).  Shifting the banking system from traditional currency to central bank digital currencies is the second control aspect (total govt financial control).   The banking instability is the crisis that facilitates the CBDC solution.   Ergo, continue raising rates and continue making the crisis more useful.

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During today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) questioned Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen about Social Security and the immediate cuts that take place in nine years if the current plan goes bankrupt.  The confrontation was professional, but also very focused.  WATCH:

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers testimony today before the Senate Banking and Finance Committee.  During his statements Powell says, “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.” Powell continued, “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.“… “We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting.” …  “Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”

Everything about the testimony to the Senate, and almost everything within the questioning as presented, ignores the key and central component that inflation is being driven by energy policy.   The scale of the pretending around this issue is jaw dropping.

Western governments, including the U.S. through Joe Biden, have limited and curtailed the production and exploitation of Oil, Coal and Natural Gas.  At the core of the inflation within those same governments, this is the issue at hand.  Energy prices have skyrocketed, driving the cost of everything through the roof.  The central banks are raising interest rates in an attempt to shrink the economy to match the drop in energy production.   This is their monetary policy (interest rates) attempting to support economic policy (Green New Deal / Build Back Better).

There are no lines for consumers in the U.S and Europe of people buying durable goods, electronics or shopping for non-essential items.  Prices on the products within the durable goods economy are not being driven by excess consumer demand.  There are not 25% more people buying lemons and milk than this time last year.  The prices for goods in general, and for essential goods specifically, have risen as an outcome of the input costs around energy skyrocketing.

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He’s not called China Joe for nothing.  This is quite a considerable amount of U.S. tech products delivered to blacklisted Chinese companies.  It would be interesting to trace the multinational kickbacks to the Biden administration.

March 3 (Reuters) – The Biden administration approved 192 licenses worth over $23 billion to ship U.S. goods and technology to Chinese companies on a U.S. trade blacklist in the first quarter of last year, according to a document released by a U.S. congressional committee on Friday.

The 192 licenses granted were out of 242 license applications decided between January and March 2022, a chart showed, and 115 of those approved contained controlled technology. Nineteen, or 8 percent of the total number of applications, were denied, and 31 were returned without action.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, released the license numbers on Friday after revealing at a hearing on Tuesday that more than $23 billion worth of licenses were approved for suppliers to companies on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “entity list” in the first quarter of 2022.

In a statement on Friday, McCaul called the approvals unacceptable. “This critical U.S. technology is going to the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance and military efforts,” he said. (read more)

Beijing knows they can purchase U.S. political outcomes. At this point the pretending is embarrassing.

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Requested to stick at top of site for few hours. /SD

This is it. This is pure MAGA. President Trump is announcing the big one… “Economic Agenda 47“

This is the economic policy blade to drive a stake through the vampire heart of corporatism, globalism and the exploitation of the U.S. economy by multinational corporate interests. This “universal baseline tariff” approach, is the policy that slays the dragons of the World Economic Forum, destroys the Beijing dragon and simultaneously ends the EU Marshal Plan advantage. This is a big deal.

President Trump makes the economic policy announcement today, and it is an incredible structure of trade and economic proposals that would be resoundingly effective at restoring every financial mechanism within the United States as a sovereign country.  The proposal is economic nationalism in policy form.

First, here’s the announcement {Direct Rumble Link} – WATCH:

[Transcript] – “Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing—but in reality, he is pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country. It ripped us apart. Biden and the globalists support RAISING taxes on American production. They support MORE crippling regulations killing American jobs. They support skyrocketing domestic energy costs. And they support massive anti-American multinational agreements that send our wealth and factories overseas.

Very simply, the Biden agenda taxes AMERICA to build up CHINA.

China is the big beneficiary. We cannot let that happen. And just a couple of years ago, it wasn’t happening. China paid to the United States hundreds of billions of dollars and no other president got ten cents. Legitimately, ten cents from China.

My agenda will tax CHINA to build up AMERICA.

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With around 4,000 miles separation, two friends of the Treehouse, Neil Oliver and Lee Smith, essentially asked me the same question this week, “how do we stop this madness?”

It should not be an option hearing this talk about the need to secede, fracture, isolate or form smaller defensive boundaries.  WE ARE IN THE MAJORITY, they just control the power structures and systems of communication. That’s why they spend so much time, effort and attention manipulating social media. My proposed solution is to draw from history, specifically from the Polish solidarity movement.  What we need is a general two-day workers strike, highlighting to the few that the many have had enough.

In his weekly monologue Neil Oliver takes the new issue of rationing vegetables in the U.K and overlays the surplus of lies that creates it.  Neil Oliver generally has exceptional insight and strong grasps on the obvious; however, this one is epic and one of his best. WATCH:

[Transcript] – They’re rationing tomatoes in the supermarkets. We’re told it’s about supply chains, bad weather and the price of heating, but right now, in terms of the messaging, I suspect it’s more about pushing the word – rationing. Less about any believable shortage of food and more about getting us used to hearing the word.

No doubt, if experience is anything to go by, the rest will come later. My money says the rationing app for our smartphones is already sitting on a hard drive somewhere, ready when we are.

For now, it’s more of a familiar process of psychological manipulation. Get us acquainted with the general idea of food scarcity so that we’re well-primed when the planned reality is unrolled.

We were given the same treatment with words like “lockdown” and “pandemic”, “mandate” and “denier”. Nudge, nudge. Rationing is a word from our parents’ and grandparents’ generation, a bit like “War in Europe” and “Fascist” and now they’re back in fashion once more. Rationing, I ask you, while the landfills swell with fresh food dumped every day.

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A few interesting aspects to this soundbite before the hubris is displayed.   Notice how Ukraine President Zelenskyy immediately affirms his knowledge that an increasing number of Americans no longer support the endless proxy war in Ukraine.  Apparently, the CIA and State Dept are focused very heavily on managing U.S. war fatigue and communicating that issue with the Ukrainian government they control.  {Direct Rumble Link}

Zelenskyy is asked about the increasing number of Americans who no longer support the war.  His response is to demand support and tell the stoopid Amerikaan voters, their opinion means nothing.  The direct and implied message is, if America doesn’t continue funding the war in Ukraine, our global credibility will collapse and people around the world will start laughing at us.

The propaganda is pretty thick, yet there are millions of Americans asking if the war is really such a dire situation, why does it always seem like there is an endless amount of time to promote the theater of it?  An auditorium filled with mindless captures, stares at a stage containing a leader who has unlimited time to play the role in the script…. yet somewhere, in some place… there is apparently a war happening.  What I mean is, the “theater” of the Ukraine war narrative is consuming far more resources than the actual fighting of the ‘war.’  WATCH:

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