Thursday, 10 August 2023 — South Melbourne

By Brian Chu Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia

[7 min read]

Dear Reader,

I’ve just arrived in Melbourne from the Southern Highlands on an overnight train, my first time travelling long distance this way. On several occasions, I’ve driven up and down the Hume Highway enjoying the rolling hills, pastures with cattle, lamb and horses, and taking stops in several towns along the way.

You might ask why I didn’t hop on a plane…like the late North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Il, whose fear of flying due to security concerns meant he only travelled in his bulletproof train? 

No, I’ve flown on planes before. I last flew in May 2022 to Melbourne but experienced both a delay and a cancellation. I could’ve arrived home at the same time had I hopped behind the wheel!

Thanks to the vaccine mandates, the airline industry has never been the same again. Several pilots and ground staff were dismissed for refusing to comply, causing a significant staff shortage.

I recognise that things are starting to improve with Jetstar recently appealing to the public, giving them a second chance now that delays and cancellation rates are falling. But until these mandates lift, expect domestic flights to continue experiencing further disruptions.

So I’ll stick with driving or taking the train when I travel to Melbourne.

The myth of vaccine efficacy exposed

My article today isn’t about my travels. It’s about digging deeper into vaccine mandates and their impact on our society.

The world was conditioned in the last few years to believe that vaccine mandates would be the most effective way against the Wuhan virus, reducing transmissions, hospitalisations and deaths.

Since these mandates, the number of cases and deaths around the world didn’t fall. The data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that it rose. Furthermore, word spread that some fell ill, experienced serious side effects, or even died after taking these drugs. Some of you might’ve been affected or knew relatives or friends who were.

These mandates divided society as some trusted it was done in our best interest while others believed something nefarious was at hand. However, the plot turned with the release of Matt Taibbi’s ‘Twitter Files’ and, more recently, the ‘Facebook Files’ revealing the collusion between governments, public health agencies, vaccine manufacturers and the media to quash dissenting views. My article last October detailed how Pfizer admitted to the European Union Parliament that it never tested the vaccines to stop transmission as they were rushing to bring them to market.

Governments worldwide are now bowing to public pressure to investigate the process leading to the accelerated approval of these drugs, the reporting of vaccine-induced injuries and deaths, and the communication and suppression of such news to the public.

What’s coming out isn’t pretty.

A case of serious medical and commercial malpractice

Most Australians mightn’t be aware that the Senate Employment Legislation Committee held an Inquiry last Thursday regarding the Fair Work Amendment (Prohibiting COVID-19 Vaccine Discrimination) Bill 2023.

Only Sky News and The Daily Mail Australia reported this at the time I penned this article.

You can find this video on the Australian Parliament House website.

The hearing lasted almost two hours with Senator Alex Antic (LP), Senator Matt Canavan (NP), Senator Pauline Hanson (ONP), Senator Matt O’Sullivan (LP), Senator Gerard Rennick (LP), and Senator Malcolm Roberts (ONP) quizzing the representatives from pharmaceutical giants and vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna as well as the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). 

There were several startling revelations in this hearing, including the following:

• Pfizer and Moderna are unable or unwilling to explain why the mRNA mechanism in the vaccines could cause myocarditis or pericarditis.
• Pfizer and Moderna are unaware of the extent of adverse impact from their products and therefore didn’t recommend the government drop these mandates.
• Pfizer staff took specially imported vaccines that didn’t meet the approval from the TGA to comply with the government vaccine mandate.
• Pfizer staff claimed that the company didn’t believe that Australians were compelled to take the vaccines, despite widespread evidence suggesting otherwise (think about the policies implemented by various state premiers).
• Pfizer and Moderna refused to disclose details of the confidential commercial contracts with the government including legal immunity to roll out the vaccines.
• Pfizer and Moderna haven’t arranged any compensation schemes for victims of their products, citing that the Australian Government is currently responsible for that.
• The TGA can’t explain why the Vaccines Adverse Events Recording System (VAERS) adjusted downwards the number of vaccine-induced deaths confirmed by doctors to only 14 despite the database previously recording over 1,000 certified deaths.
• All three agencies appeared surprised and largely unaware of the growing literature documenting serious reactions and consequences from these products.

I strongly encourage you to listen to this hearing to fully grasp the details. Also, pay close attention to the two Pfizer representatives and their shifty behaviour as they dodged questions and sought instead to recite scripted platitudes. 

If you’ve assumed that the medical community and pharmaceutical companies acted in good faith, this inquiry should help you readjust your perspectives.

What you’re seeing is the well-oiled machine of ‘The Science^TM’.

The beginning of the fall of Big Pharma

If you’re expecting that the hammer of justice will fall quickly for Big Pharma, not so fast.

Earlier this week, Senator Ralph Babet (UAP) proposed a Royal Commission to investigate the country’s handling of the Wuhan virus outbreak. However, the Senate voted down this motion.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see justice…  

Something stuck out to me in the hearing. It was the government pointing out the legal immunity that it extended to the vaccine manufacturers and the indemnity insurance cover that these companies had in place to protect themselves.

Two senators reminded these companies that fraudulent behaviour could void their immunity thereby rendering them liable for damages.

The writing is already on the wall. Everyone in the room knew that.

As to who’ll wear the damages, when they’ll occur, and how big it’s going to be, that’s a matter of time.

Expect this to play out in other countries.

One last tip before you go…

Don’t think that the government is to mete out justice this time. It was responsible for lockdowns and vaccine mandates. At the same time, it approved the accelerated vaccine rollout for expediency. It didn’t seek what was right.

Now that the dust is settling, it needs a scapegoat to divert attention from its culpability. And Pfizer and Moderna are fat, plump and ripe for the picking, having raked in tens of billions of dollars of profit.

All of them can’t be trusted. Remember that!

Ensure you’ve secured your own wealth. Gold’s a good starting point. It’s doubled since 2015 and is now just under AU$3,000 an ounce. That’s a solid return by any measure!

God bless,

Brian Chu,
Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia

By Bill Bonner Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia

Dear Reader,

We marvel…we wonder…what is wrong with these people? We refer to the staff at Newsweek…who came out with this insipid headline story, ‘Biden Saved the Economy and Launched a New Age of Prosperity. Why Isn't He Getting Any Credit?’:

‘The current economy is in terrific shape — especially compared to what most economists expected. Every day, confidence in a soft-landing increases, and even the Fed seems convinced, despite an unprecedented rapid rise in interest rates.

‘…current GDP growth of 2.4%, well ahead of expectations. Inflation is at 3%, down from 10% just last year. Unemployment is at a 54-year low, at 3.7%, despite predictions that unemployment would substantially increase. Wage growth has been particularly strong at around 4%, and most commodity prices are down some 50%, with some down considerably more.’ 

Saved the economy? New ages of prosperity?

Why doesn’t he get credit? Why not give Harry Truman credit for the urban renewal program in Nagasaki after 1945? Why not give Chief Sitting Bull credit for reducing payroll costs in the seventh Cavalry?

Plague of the black debt

Wage growth is not ‘particularly strong’ at all. Because there is none. Adjust the 4% growth to inflation, using the ‘core’ measure, and you get real wage growth at MINUS 0.8%. And how about that 2.4% GDP growth? Strip out the Feds’ transfer payments and boondoggles, and growth flattens out. Because what Biden did was nothing more than continue the bonehead policies of his predecessor: stimmies to the voters, subsidies to crony industries, gifts to Zelensky et al…and enough weapons to keep the killing machine in gear.  

This is ‘fiscal inflation.’ It helps delay a correction…for a while. But it gives us a Banana Republic deficit at 8% of GDP…national debt accumulating at US$5 billion per day…rising bond yields…and an upcoming headache that is going to be one for the record books. All this debt will eventually have to be rolled over at higher rates…and inflated away.

Thirty years ago, we published a small booklet, written by our friend, James Dale Davidson, entitled The Plague of the Black Debt: How to Survive the Coming Depression. We warned that US debt was getting out of control.  

Back in 1993, US federal debt was just over US$4 trillion. There was still time to bring it down. And for a while, in the late 90s, it actually did go down as the Clinton Administration ran a few serendipitous surpluses. But then, along came George W Bush with his ‘War on Terror’…and the debt pile grew quickly.  

Empire of debt

In 2005, with Addison Wiggin, we wrote a book, Empire of Debt. Our theme was that the attempt to bring the whole world under the US thumb — funded by borrowing money — would lead to big trouble. The accumulated debt would end up making us weaker, not stronger. By then, US debt had doubled to US$8 trillion.

And now, empire spending — including money for soldiers, spooks, the World Bank and embassies, et al — has risen to US$1.5 trillion PER YEAR. Total US Government debt is nearly US$33 trillion. And you can forget about stopping this runaway train…there is no plausible way to put on the brakes. It’s ‘inflate or die.’ And nobody wants to die.

Looking back, maybe there never was a way to stop it.  

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…and empires gotta rise and fall. Unseen, unheard, unhinged…deep, megapolitical currents drag us all along.

Stuff happens, in other words…but not always what you want or expect.

In US history, 1971 seems to have been some sort of fulcrum. Before then, life in the US improved for most people. After then, it only improved, significantly, for the people on top. Wage gains ceased. Debt rose. GDP growth slowed. Inequality increased. Everything seemed to get worse…young people even began moving back in with their parents, stopped getting married and had fewer children.

‘The American economy is rigged,’ writes Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. He’s right about that, but dead wrong about how it works.

He shows the usual evidence. In the period running up to the 70s, the top 1% got about 8% of national income. Today, it gets 20%. Incomes for the top 1% have roughly quadrupled since 1970. For 90% of the middle class, they have been stagnant. And for those with only a high school diploma or less, real incomes have fallen.

Generational dividing lines

If you were born in the 1940s, you were almost certain to earn more than your parents. But as the years went by, the Industrial Revolution became much less potent, and the Feds gummed up the economy. If you were born after 1970, you had barely even odds of earning more than your parents.

What caused these things is a matter of much debate and speculation. So far, we’ve presented two hypotheses.

1. The phony dollar. The new, post-1971 dollar was basically fraudulent. It was a dollar that you no longer had to get by providing goods and services. Economic power shifted from people who created real wealth in the Main Street economy to the financialised, fake wealth of Wall Street. Asset prices soared. Output lagged. The rich used free money from the Fed to get richer. But most people got nothing.
2. The fading Industrial Revolution. By 1971, the immense power in fossil fuels was reaching its point of declining marginal utility. The big gains — the ‘life-altering innovations’ — were in the past. GDP growth slowed. Incomes stagnated.

Stiglitz ignores both. He’s got another idea…and another crackpot ‘solution.’

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia