This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Everyday it seems only to be getting worse. The delusional grandpa rambles and babbles. Trump sent his A-team to Davos to prepare his way. Demonstrations in the streets complete with burning American flags. Is this Iran? Is this the Ayatollah chanting death to America! A revolutionary communist movement taking hold? No, this is Switzerland! Quiet, peaceful Switzerland. The Trump toadies tried to put the best face on it. But it only lasted for about ten minutes.

Howard Nutlick was asked to put himself in the shoes of the Danish Ambassador. Then asked, how would he feel and react if the situation were reversed? Nutlick refused to answer and explained as if someone had pulled his string. The Western Hemisphere belonged to the United States. Lock, stock and two smoking barrels, and then refused to answer any more questions on the issue. That made for one hell of a panel discussion. Do you wanna talk about it? “No!” It was an instant buzzkill forty-eight hours before Trump was scheduled to arrive. This will be “Must See TV!”

Emmanuel Macron gave a fiery speech stating that Europe didn’t like bullies. They also don’t like delusional grandpas releasing their private texts on their social networks. Oh, this is going to be interesting! I’ve never seen Europe this upset in my lifetime. A Danish pension fund is dumping all of its Treasury bonds. Expect more to do likewise. But as exciting and feel-good as that might sound, it’s only cutting off their nose to spite their face.

If Europe dumps its approximately 2.8 trillion dollars in Treasury bonds. The United States economy would go into a nuclear meltdown the likes of which the world has never seen before, and the Europeans would lose a shit ton of money on the deal. The contagion would spread to their own economies, and they would lose another shit ton more money and probably their political jobs. Like the Republicans in Congress, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. If the Republicans try to remove Trump, they face disaster. And if they don’t…disaster.

Wall Street slid two percent yesterday. Crypto criminal coins also got hammered. We’ve learned recently, the too-big-to-fail banks were heavily invested in criminal coins and the short selling of silver. Yesterday, silver went up and crypto went down. As the big banks try to hedge their investments by propping up the crypto coins. Eventually, they will be holding the door for other investors to leave. One day, they’ll wake up like Billy Durant and find they’re all alone. What whoa! So, the Europeans really don’t have to do too much. The Trump economy is collapsing on its own. Generally, when stocks fall, bonds rise. When bonds rise, the dollar also rises. But the dollar has been in a steady decline since March.

Everything fell yesterday, and it might all rise today, or it might not. The investing world is holding its breath. Waiting to see what President Coo, coo for Cocoa Puffs does next? Gold rose to $4,700 an ounce. Gold is where investors run for a safe haven when they’re scared something real bad is going to happen. Too late! Something bad happened last January. What always makes me laugh, though, is that sooner or later, you have to come out of the bomb shelter and cash out of gold into dollars or euros, pesos or Pokémon cards. If the world economy crashes, gold won’t save you. (Spoiler alert!)

Every time Mr. Trump opens his big yap and says the magic word, Greenland. Gold prices will rise and criminal coins will fall. Europe and Asia just won’t buy any more of our Treasury bonds. That way they don’t lose any money and they don’t lose their jobs, but the effect on the United States remains the same. Delusional grandpa wants Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. Alienating our former allies will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to make the Treasuries more attractive to the now alienated and reticent buyers.

It’s like Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know about yet.” Back in the 1920s, the US economy was going along so well. It was thought that we didn’t need the rest of the world. So the government began to impose high tariffs. Then the economy crashed in 1929, and the contagion spread to Europe. The collapse was especially hard in hard-pressed Germany, helping Adolf Hitler to gain office, and the rest is, as they say, is history.

Two world leaders met on a battleship in the North Atlantic during a Second Great World War and issued the North Atlantic Charter with the goal of bringing an end to World Wars. The premise was simple enough. Nations would treat each other fairly. Nations would abide by international law. Strong nations weren’t allowed to bully weaker nations and, most of all, territorial sovereignty would be respected.

It would be illegal under international law for one nation to accuse another nation’s elected leader of alleged crimes. Or arrest them, whisk them away, and hold them incommunicado and then attempt to steal their assets. Nations wouldn’t interfere in another nation’s domestic policy. They were free to do business with whatever nation they wanted. Regardless of what third-party nations might think of it. Nations would refrain from creating spheres of influence. Say for example, the way Nazi Germany declared Europe as their own and Japan declared Asia to be theirs, or Stalin to declare Eastern Europe to be his.

It is a sorry state of affairs because Europe already knows that it can’t hurt Trump without hurting themselves in the process. It’s difficult to convince voters in democracies to suffer economic pain without a war. To tell their voters, we just have to do this, even though it’s going to hurt. Same as it ever was. Europe didn’t want to go to war again to save the Rhineland. It didn’t want to go to war to save the Sudetenland. In the end, Europe was forced into a world war and hundreds of millions of people died. Europe was destroyed for twenty years.

Donald Trump explained yesterday that rather than renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, that what he really wanted to do was to rename it the Gulf of Trump. But he feared if he did that, he would be killed. (Oh, sweet prophecy, I hear you calling!) A dictator with a congress and court under his heel. A powerful military and territorial ambition. Indeed, the Gulf of Trump. Exactly! The Gulf of Trump. He wants an Anschluss with Canada. He invaded Venezuela and now he threatens Greenland.

The dictator had grand building plans to rename national monuments and build new monuments to his own glory. An Arch of Triumph. And he was going to rename Berlin Germania!

“The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future of the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.”