The Gladstone
Economic Newsletter
Volume 17, No. 6
April 10, 2022
The Storm Cometh
and We Are Nowhere Near Peak Bull Hockey.
DISCLAIMER: The following is not intended as investment advice, but is rather intended to promote your own analysis of markets and the economic climate. The author is not a registered investment professional. Any action taken as a result of this analysis carries a high degree of risk. This newsletter contains the personal opinion of the author.
Dear readers-
The storm that is enveloping the world economy is going to be of epic proportion. I am not saying that to be dramatic. I cannot think of a single time in modern world history when we have had more going wrong with the inputs to the world economy than now (with the possible exception of World War II). It is clear that we are going to have a substantial food shortage on a world basis. Prior to 2022, the world saw large areas of drought in South America, Australia, and other areas. We had flooding in China for at least two years in a row. We even had the biblical plagues of locusts in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Then we had Ukraine occur. There is a large stock of grain currently trapped in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian crops may only be planted at half of normal year levels this year. Exports from Russia are affected by the war, and Russia may withhold its food supplies in order to take care of its own perceived needs.
So we will have famine. We currently have war, and the G7 is doing everything it can to prolong it and even make it larger. We have pestilence (remember the never ending coronavirus pandemic?). We have certainly had death, and if the parties pulling the strings in the G7 prevail, we may have much more. For those of you who haven’t caught my drift in this paragraph, those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Don’t worry- I am not the type to get biblical.
The world stock markets are getting ready to crater, in my view. The rally that we have seen in the U.S. has been a creation of intervention in the markets (once again), combined with some flight of capital from Europe. Would you invest in European companies if the supply of Russian gas or oil could be cut off at any time? The people running European manufacturing and industrial companies are terrified of this possibility. However, try telling that to Olaf Scholz of Germany, Macron of France and Boris Johnson of the UK. As other commentators have put it, “It is hard to watch the G7 commit suicide.”
I have caught serious flack from five of my readers for my focus on events in Ukraine in my newsletters since February 24th. These readers are highly educated but have missed the importance of events in Ukraine on the whole course of the world economy, and the five readers are suffering from serious displays of cognitive dissonance, as I wrote in my last newsletter. Rather than investigating what is actually happening in Ukraine, these readers have defaulted to either their inner educational biases (terminally liberal) or their prejudices against Russia or in favor of Zelensky.
If you listen to entirely western news sources, you are fed an endless line of false narratives about Ukraine and purported Russian atrocities. There is a massive psychological warfare campaign going on, led by the western intelligence services. The western media companies (which in the U.S. is about six players) are enthusiastic co-conspirators in promulgating the false narratives. This morning, my better half was watching one of the Sunday morning “news” programs as she likes to do (“I get your viewpoint all the time, I want to hear the opposing viewpoints”). I was making pancakes for our breakfast, and listened to the talking head on ABC go on and on about the recurring Russian atrocities in Ukraine, and they dwelt extensive of how the horrible Russian sent a missile with cluster bomblets right into a railway station in Kramatorsk crowded with civilian refugees fleeing the fighting. It was George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” As I listened to the mindless drivel being expounded, I questioned if we had reached peak bull hockey yet. Unfortunately, the conclusion I reached is that the hysterical propaganda we are bombarded with is only going to get worse.
For those of you who need absolutely incontrovertible facts before you believe that the “poor, peace loving, abused Ukrainians” were the guilty parties in this (and other atrocities), let me lay out the following for you to confirm yourselves:
1. The Ukrainian propaganda machine, and Zelensky himself, initially proclaimed that this was a Russian Iskander missile strike on the innocent crowd. Unfortunately, the fuel stage of the missile dropped off the missile close to the railroad station. Pictures of the fuel stage have fins and other features that make it identifiable even to laymen as being from a Tochka-U missile. The inconvenient truth is that the Russian military got rid of its obsolete Tochka-U missiles years ago, and replaced them with Iskander missiles. I can hear the naysayers going “that doesn’t prove anything.” I will go on.
2. The Ukrainians have routinely used the Tochka-U missiles in their stocks throughout the war. Nobody in the western press said anything when the Ukrainians fired a Tochka-U missile that impacted a busy shopping street in Donetsk city on March 14th, killing over 20 civilians and wounding over 100. I digress on this point, but you need to be aware of it.
3. I mentioned that the fuel stage of the missile dropped off near the railway station. An “inconvenient truth” (to mock Al Gore) is that if you line up the impact site of the missile with where the fuel stage dropped, the vector line leads right back into…..deep into Ukrainian held territory. There is no way in hell that this missile was launched from Russian held territory, as the former European military officer who writes the “Moon of Alabama” site demonstrates in the following link: https://archive.ph/FYvoH
4. Another inconvenient truth was discovered by Italian TV station TG LA7 (
) which portrayed the actual serial number of the Tochka-U fuel stage that landed in Kramatorsk. The Ukrainians had blurred out the serial number in their video footage that was released to the west, and other western reporters were careful to not portray the serial number
5. I don’t speak Italian, and had to get an English summary of the story from a website called Eprimefeed.com: “The Tochka-U missile that struck Kramatorsk, judging by the serial number, was Ukrainian, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Donetsk Union TV channel.
“The serial number of the Tochka-U missile that fell on the Kramatorsk railway station the day before has appeared on the Web. The 9M79-1 missile, serial number Sh91579,” experts comment on the information revealed. “Previously Ukrainian Militants Used Missiles from the Same Series.”
It is noteworthy that in the Ukrainian media pictures, the serial number of Tochka-U was blurred, but records with legible numbers on the air of foreign television channels appeared, for example, in the press release of TG La7.
Remember that at least 50 people, including five children, died as a result of the Tochka-U attack on Kramatorsk. Kyiv immediately blamed the Russian military for everything, although this type of missile is not used in the Russian Armed Forces.”
Ok naysayers, what more do you need to convince yourself that this was a Ukrainian false flag attack? Video of Zelensky standing over the bodies with blood splattered hands, holding a blood covered sign saying “Yes, we did it to our own people.” ? The Ukrainian intelligence operatives who supervised the launch of the missile even went so far as to write “For the children” in Russian on the fuel stage, knowing it would land not far from the impact zone, in order to give the western press another point of outrage to elaborate on. Any nation who does this to a crowd of their own people (mostly women and children) in order to blame the other side is despicable. But that, unfortunately, is the Ukrainian Government.
One of my naysayers adamantly disputes that Nazis have any real influence in the Ukrainian Government. Zelensky has been Zoom-type speeches to various European parliaments. The members of each parliament have been instructed to give him a standing ovation at the end of each of his speeches. Zelensky really screwed up when speaking to the Greek Parliament when he had a Nazi from the Azov Battalion join him in the speech! The whole Greek nation is totally incensed about this, as memories of Nazi atrocities during World War II are still fresh in Greek memories. Zelensky also screwed up in his presentation to the Cypriot Parliament when he refused to mention the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1976. Slowly and surely, European eyes are slowly being opened to the true nature of the Ukrainian Government.
The Bucha massacre will probably never be investigated by an impartial body. There are so many corroborating circumstances that really emphasize that a Ukrainian nationalist (Nazi) formation rounded up civilians who had white rags as armbands or Russian military rations in their possession, and shot them. The bodies were then staged. One cannot mention “Bucha” or “Nazis” on many internet platforms now without getting de-platformed. One very good commentator on Youtube is having to spell out “N-A-Z-I-S” to avoid the youtube algorithm.
I had found a very good article on the commander of the Nationalist battalion that is thought to have conducted the Bucha massacre. This man’s name is, I believe, Sergei Korotkov, who is a Belarusian wanted for crimes in Belorussia and Russia. He is a total Nazi who fled to Ukraine and who found fortune and a leadership position with the Ukrainian government. Unfortunately, I can’t find the article again. However, I did find the following (totally unverified!) transcript of a purported conversation between his subordinates commenting on the massacre video footage:
“– Hello.
– Hello Vasya, are you talking?! Can you f**ing hear me right now?
– Yes, I hear you well. Yes.
– Vasya, can you f** answer me one question. What the ***, Vasya, are you all really f**ed up there. Could you do anything well to me or not?!
– That is, what?!
– Shut up, Vasya. Why *** are they moving on camera, tell me, Vasya, ***. Can’t they *** lie down for five minutes?! Sergey Sergeevich f***ed me for half an hour now in front of everyone.
– I understand everything, this will not happen again.
– Don’t *** do it anymore, Vasya. Do you understand or not?! Next *** time, you’ll follow that Russian ship, ***. And I will go with you.
– Taras Grigoryevich, I understand everything, everything. Next time it will be different.
– How *** is there any other way?! Was difficult to put a woman on the road? You tell me! There was no *** normal woman?! You have *** only men in the frame lying, *** ***. I found some *** idiots in a civilian settlement.
– I assure you, Taras Grigoryevich, next time we will definitely do it well.
– That’s a *** (failure) , Vasya. I’m telling you, it’s just a f*** (failure). And tell Feder *** too, he is gonna get from the office now, ***. That’s it, ***.”
Even though this is an English translation from Ukrainian, it does have the authentic-sounding use of swear words common to Russia and Ukraine (note: Russian is an excellent language to curse in). Here is the link to the story:
I have purposefully not included any videos of Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian prisoners in cold blood. These are grisly, and the Ukrainians are filming and posting these videos as a point of pride. The Russians have done two small prisoner exchanges. The Ukrainian prisoners are repatriated in very good shape, fed and well cared for. The Russian prisoners received were tortured and a bunch of them had to be hospitalized. A recent exchange of 368 prisoners from each side failed as the Ukrainians couldn’t deliver the Russian prisoners. It is believed they had been tortured and abused to the point they couldn’t be delivered without a huge outcry.
I know I have gone on at length again about Ukraine. This is the pivotal event in the coming economic debacle to be endured by the entire world. The G7 keeps doubling down on completely failed policies. The fallout from those failed policies will be felt for decades. The world cannot allow this war to be expanded by the G7. The next phase of the war in Ukraine appears to be kicking off. This is the elimination of the Ukrainian army in the Donbass. The Russians also have perhaps 3000 Azov Battalion, Ukrainian soldiers and foreign military “advisors” cornered in the Azov Steel Plant in Mariupol. The Russians are trying to catch the foreigners alive. The whole G7 narrative may be blown if they do so.
If you have made it this far into the newsletter and are still convinced that the Russians are routinely committing atrocities such as Bucha and Kramatorsk, I have failed in my mission. I feel sorry for what will probably happen to you in the coming economic Gotterdammerung.
On to this weeks’ graphics (from various sources):