I haven’t been writing much because of several reasons; first, it’s quite obvious that things are proceeding according to the patterns I explained before, and I have nothing new to add, for the most part. Second, I’m actually trying to avoid watching the news all day because it’s toxic; it keeps me at a heightened stress level and I can’t keep this up indefinitely, so I take breaks whenever it’s possible.

As I see things, the situation in Ukraine will soon reach a point where the entire Ukrainian state will completely collapse; its actual functioning army has held for so long because it was utilizing the static fortifications they built over the years in the occupied parts of Donbass, which made it very hard for the Russians to advance unless they were willing to either accept great casualties on their side, or use weapons of mass destruction against the enemy, and they decided against both. However, when those fortifications fall, and the Ukrainians lose the majority of the fighting force because all of their viable army is currently holding those positions, there’s nothing that can really stop Russia’s westward advance. When Kramatorsk falls, it’s game over for Ukraine.

In order to prevent the imminent collapse of Ukraine, America prodded Lithuania, which in this picture resembles that little snarky critter that protrudes from Jabba the Hutt’s slimy arsehole, to blockade Kaliningrad and provoke Russia into opening a new front there in order to protect their assets. The Russians are taking their sweet time formulating a response, which means they understand the situation perfectly, and are designing a response that will improve their strategic position.

The G7 made another fantastically stupid move by blocking Russia’s gold exports. The idea is to reduce Russia’s ability to liquidate their gold holdings when they need cash. What the G7 idiots don’t understand is that Russia doesn’t need liquidity; they are functioning at a large surplus for the last decade or something, and using this surplus to buy more gold, so access to an international credit line or ability to sell assets for cash don’t actually mean anything to them; if anything, they have a surplus of foreign currency already, and their foreign trade is increasingly migrating towards non-Western directions, and the clearing is performed in non-Western currencies. This means that the Russian state/central bank will be able to buy more gold at subsidised prices, because that’s where the surplus will go, and the gold producers will be unable to sell gold to G7 countries, and/or for G7 currencies. As a result, Russia will have even greater gold reserves, and introducing a gold-standard for the Ruble will start looking like a really good idea. Also, this will reduce the amount of physical gold available on the G7 markets, putting increasing strain on the paper market, and making it very tempting for someone with lots of resources to attempt a short squeeze against it. I would read this as “China” and “US bonds”. All kinds of shit will hit the fan if events start following this course, because flooding the market with US bonds and draining all the physical gold from the Western markets is absolutely the last thing America and Britain would want.

Crypto currencies are doing what is expected of balloons in a cactus field, but that’s expected by all but the most hardened cryptins (from “crypto” and “cretin”, if it’s not obvious enough). Psychologically, the collapse of all those unbacked “assets” and derivatives is necessary for re-establishing the economy of sound assets, which means that shares of companies that make money and pay dividends are worth more, and things that are actually more important for survival are worth more. Crazy, right? The problem is, once things start going that way, the G7 economies will start figuring out that “G” stands not for “great” but for “gowno”, pardon my Polish.

Also, the governments had a splendid idea of trying to avoid inflation by refusing to raise salaries. That’s an incredibly stupid idea because this will produce an instant public revolt when people who can’t afford food simply dispense with the entire political class, by hanging them all at the lamp posts, and, likely, at all those surveillance cameras they installed lately.