A subscriber inquired of me recently, "Who are in the European Coalition for War, and what is their aim?" These are good questions, because I have not explicitly named them nor their aim. For one, this has been because I have been observing and gathering data on European leaders and political actors to identify them. Explaining the (dark) motives of people pushing for more death and gore is also a very delicate exercise, because one drifts deeply into the ‘conspiracy realm’ while doing so. Now, I think I have a fairly convincing picture of who they are and what their motives are. Moreover, even academics (the most anti-conspiracy people on the planet) are starting to flirt with conspiratorial theories as they run out of standard models of explanation.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs went rather deep into the 'rabbit hole' in one of his recent interviews considering the CIA and forces pushing us towards a global conflict. Jeffrey has been under a heavy defamation campaign in the social media basically since the start of the war due to his pro-peace and pro-diplomacy views. What you need to understand about him is that, first, he is one of the most renowned economists of our time and, secondly, he’s a long-serving diplomat who has been advising, for example, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. If he calls the White House, he will get answered. I have zero doubt about his motives, even though I don’t know him personally.

In early June, the former National Security Advisor, General Mike Flynn, went full-Peak Escalation in his X post:

During almost all of the post-World War II period, and certainly since the establishment of the CIA in 1947, these unelected dark establishment forces have acted to destabilize the world, bringing death, famine, assassinations, violence, coups, riots, revolutions, and destruction to our planet. Currently, these forces are working to provoke Russia into a major --- perhaps a final --- military conflict with the West.

This could have been an excerpt from my Horseman of the Apocalypse, published in December 2023.

If such a group-over-groups with a dark agenda exists, we could describe them as modern Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is, because they would most likely try to bring ‘Biblical plight’ upon us. While not specifically named in the Book of Revelations, researchers of the Bible tend to identify the four horsemen as the Antichrist (first rider), War, Famine and Death.

Essentially, we are in an agreement that a dark conspiracy is hurtling us toward a global conflict with General Flynn. However, both General Flynn and Jeffrey seem to be unwilling to look beyond the Deep State, i.e., to the (dark) motives behind its relentless push for war and mayhem, and this is not surprising. I have been reluctant to write more about the deeper motives behind this process, which I call the Peak Escalation, because it gets so extremely speculative so very fast. However, now that both General Flynn and Jeffrey have drifted into the scene, so to speak, I want to add something to their analyses.

What we need to ask is: why on earth would an entity (a group, etc.) want to destabilize the world, bring death and famine, and eventually destroy it?

In The Horsemen, I noted:

Based on this logic, the aim of such a group-over-groups is likely to be to subjugate the whole of human existence under some kind of global control. They seem to want people mentally disturbed, weak, undernourished and fearful. This makes sense, because such people are easy to control and push in different directions, like hating the un-vaxed, Russians or Palestinians.

I expanded this reasoning in The dark motives behind Peak Escalation, e.g., into the nuclear confrontation (war):

A nuclear war might (might) fit into such a motive. If you want to turn humanity into a smallish slave-race serving the ruling elite, nuclear war would do just that (if you think that you can shield yourself from its consequences). That is, if you want humanity to blindly obey some “elite,” you need to greatly cut the number of people living on earth simply because smaller numbers are easier to control and it diminishes the likelihood of mutinies. Also, if your survival becomes tied to scarce resources shielded from the radiation and nuclear winter in ‘doomsday bunkers’ built by the elite, you will become submissive (see, e.g., this and this).

Naturally, the development of artificial intelligence is relevant here because it reduces, and in some areas entirely removes, the need for human labor. I will not delve any deeper into this at this point.

Now, we sink deep. The only logical explanation for wanting to “destroy humanity” is the existence of a major (“external”) force that, in some shape or form, feeds on it. That is, it feeds on human suffering, chaos, and destruction.

I know many of you are having a massive backlash right now, but think it through once more (enough times). What else could serve the aim of destabilization of the world and (eventual) destruction of humanity?

Homicidal urges and the need to hurt other people have given many (sadistic) leaders of the past “power,” which they have started to worship. This has taken the form of torture, occultism, Satan worshipping, and ‘black magic.’ These are historical facts, which are much closer to us, historically, than many of you think. I urge you to check (for example): Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (lecture), by Professor of History at Stetson University, Eric Kurlander. It shows that just some 80+ years ago, occultistic forces unleashed the most destructive war in the history of mankind.

What this leads us into is that the “dark establishment forces” behind the Deep State, noted by General Flynn, need to be in the worship or service of such ideologies. That is, the “occult forces,” (ideologies) that were behind the destruction unleashed by the Nazis, must be present also now. This is the logical explanation behind the relentless (non-negotiable) push for war and destruction we are seeing now. This is not to say that everybody participating in this conspiracy would know its origin, like most of the servants and soldiers of Nazism did not, but they are in the service of it, most likely due to a multitude of motives (money, power, feeling important, etc.).

The above implies that the leaders pushing for more war need to be in worship and service of these ideologies. This, straightforwardly, implies that the European leaders active in averting a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine, whom I call the European Coalition for War, need to be in the worship/service of these ideologies, or “forces.” In other words, President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, President Alexander Stubb (Finland), and, most definitely, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, need to be worshippers of the occult and thus in its service.1

If you are facing a backlash, again, calm down and think this through. What are the other explanations? When you apply Occam’s Razor, a method seeking for the explanation with the fewest possible assumptions, this is where you end up (at least I did). We, most likely, are once again being ruled over by occultists, and the implications are harrowing. More on those later.

Causa latet, vis est notissima,

Tuomas

Picture added on 6/9/2026.

Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current at the date of this entry. The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry, and the information contained in it may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice. Neither GnS Economics nor any of the authors can be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and those using this post do so solely at their own risk.

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial, or other consequences of their actions. Neither GnS Economics nor any of the authors can be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act, or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

The views of Tuomas are his own. They may or may not be endorsed and supported by the partners and staff of GnS Economics.

— — —

Original, published on July 7, 2025.

Greetings from vacation. We have just returned to Finland from our road trip through northern Norway. Maybe I'll post some pictures later.

I just opened my computer to go through emails and recent news, and something truly troubling caught my eye. A breaking news site in X, Rawsalerts, reported this.

This is very “Skynetti,” I would say, as it implies that OpenAI’s o1 model would have developed a survival instinct. That is, it would have become self-aware in the sense that it does not want to “die.” For reasons I do not specify here (at least not yet), I’ve spent a lot of time speaking with psychologists and robotics researchers about this, and all have tended to agree that the above is a hallmark for conscious thinking. I cannot emphasize enough how concerning I find this development.

As it happens, we have just published a piece covering implications of the speculation that an AI-based model would have decided on the attack on Iran in the GnS Economics Outlooks. I now republish this section here.

Black Swan Outlook: The Terminator Scenario

Read more

I actually started to draw the “map” in my mind already over 20 years ago. When I began to write my Master’s Thesis in the fall of 2003, a friend sent me a webpage that went through the anomalies in the September 11 terrorist attacks. I think I spent about four months gradually reading through the arguments against the official narrative, and then one morning I understood that 9/11 could not have happened like it was presented. I spent the remainder of the day in shock. I wandered around Tampere, Finland’s third-largest city, where I lived with my ex-wife, considering the implications of my discovery. It implied the existence of a large intergovernmental conspiracy with a very dark aim. After the shock had passed and after I had understood I really could not do much about it, the revelation slowly faded away until returning with a vengeance during Corona-times and especially after the cycle of escalation following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late-February 2022.

Still, it has not been easy to convey one's thinking to the Peak Escalation hypothesis because it is so ‘evil.’ As I mentioned, it began as a worst-case hypothesis, but it has then become the working hypothesis at GnS Economics due to its remarkably accurate forecasting power. But to work, the hypothesis requires an intricate network to exist. Hence, my speculation below.

I have to note that the Peak Escalation hypothesis is still very much in development. I, for example, have not yet figured out what its cohesive force is. In other words, I have not yet discovered what keeps the entire delicate system together, as large human systems are always fragile. I have some ideas, but they are too declamatory to write down in an analytical form, yet. But below you find where I stand with the Peak Escalation hypothesis at the current time. I have redacted it a bit by removing the short introduction.

Tuomas

— — —

Published on June 6, 2025, in the GnS Economics Newsletter.

The actual birth moment of the Peak Escalation hypothesis was when Tuomas started to analyze the terrorist attacks of Hamas on October 7, 2023. He wrote in Apocalypse. Cancelled? that,

I want to share a piece of information from my friend, who served several tours in the U.N. Middle East military intelligence. He said to me several years back that nothing that happens in and around Israel goes unnoticed by Mossad. He gave several examples, which I cannot repeat here due to confidentiality. This is not a conspiracy theory, but a observed fact from a high-ranking soldier, who served in the area several times.

Thus, I, for one, do not believe for a second that Mossad and the IDF were surprised by Hamas. They at least allowed the strikes to Israel to happen, if not worse.

The Biden administration's panicked response to the strikes suggests they were unaware of the impending threat. Recently, we have learned that President Trump was not (allegedly) briefed on the attack on Russia’s nuclear forces (strategic bombers) by Ukraine. Tuomas has examined this topic thoroughly in his articles (see this, this, and this), which is why we will not explore them further here. We just note that President Trump has given an effective go-ahead for Russian retaliatory strikes, like Tuomas speculated earlier he would.

While we remain skeptical of President Trump not knowing, for example, the former National Security Advisor General Mike Flynn has made several statements in X arguing that President Trump did not know and that the Deep State (and someone “outside”) has taken control of the handling of the Ukrainian conflict. In one of his latest posts, he notes that

I believe that the American Deep State is staffed by those with a deep, visceral, and irrational hatred for Russia, and these persons have conspired to box in President Trump's decision making through the Russiagate Hoax. During the time the Soviet Union was expanding and infiltrating our government, I was an outspoken anti-communist, but, despite the lies told by our Deep State, Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. Even today, years after the Russiagate Hoax has been exposed, President Trump's efforts to bring peace are met with resistance.

During almost all of the post-World War II period, and certainly since the establishment of the CIA in 1947, these unelected dark establishment forces have acted to destabilize the world, bringing death, famine, assassinations, violence, coups, riots, revolutions, and destruction to our planet. Currently, these forces are working to provoke Russia into a major --- perhaps a final --- military conflict with the West.

This is very dark stuff from a long-serving general of the U.S. Armed Forces. Yet we go even deeper in our worst-case scenario.

In the worst case, behind peak escalation is an intricate network consisting of corporations, intelligence agencies, NGOs, government institutions, political leaders, and the elite. We got something of a first look into this when DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) demolished USAID. Tuomas looked at the mind-boggling revelations of DOGE.

If there is such a network of operators, there needs to be some central authority. Tuomas has suggested the existence of a highly secretive ‘group-over-groups,’ pushing their destructive agenda across the globe. This would coalesce with the Deep State and the military-industrial complex forming a War Triad. Intelligence agencies, NGOs, and some supranational organizations would be their operative arms, affecting governments and global and national elites, forming a global spiderweb-like structure of control.

At this point and with the information we currently hold, we cannot neither debunk nor corroborate the existence of such a web, but we need to acknowledge that it is definitely within the realm of possibility. This implies that we simply need to acknowledge the possibility of a global conspiracy against the human race. The relentless push towards a nuclear confrontation simply leaves no other possibility.

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Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry. The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as an investment advice. GnS Economics nor any of the authors cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk.

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor any of the authors cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

Our current likelihoods for the timing of Peak Escalation in Europe are:

1. Before the U.S. Presidential elections (November 5): 30%;

2. After the elections, but before inauguration (January 20): 40%;

3. After the inauguration: 20%;

4. There will be no Peak Escalation: 10%.

Note that these reflect also the fact that we currently expect President Trump to win in November. The likelihood of #4 (no Peak Escalation) is so low, because we consider it requiring a wide-spread (global) peace movement, which is nowhere to be seen currently.

Within them, we have now entered the 30% likelihood range. I do consider that the likelihood of the No-Peak Escalation scenario is the same or even smaller now. Yet, we have to note that there were efforts to push the conflict to the next level, but those efforts failed in provoking Kremling (instead they replied with something new).

I envisaged the Peak Escalation hypothesis in August last year. However, the concept had been circling in my mind for about a year before that. On November 5, 2023, I wrote:

As a final notion, and stop us from drifting completely into the world of ‘sunshine and rainbows’ ;), I want to share a piece of information I received from a former (long-time) operative in the U.N. Middle East military intelligence. He said to me several years back that nothing that happens in and around Israel goes unnoticed by Mossad. He gave several examples, which I cannot repeat here due to confidentiality. This is not a conspiracy theory, but a observed fact from a high-ranking soldier, who served in the area several times.

Thus, I, for one, do not believe for a second that Mossad and the IDF were surprised by Hamas. They at least allowed the strikes to Israel to happen, if not worse. This adds a serious twist to all that has been written above, implying that there may be a major ‘powerplay’ going on in the background, surpassing the current geopolitical logic and increasing the likelihood that we may end up seeing a highly illogical outcome, i.e., a serious escalation.

Essentially, the Peak Escalation hypothesis assumes that there are strong background forces seeking to widen regional conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and, possibly, Asia Minor into a combined ‘global conflict,’ essentially a World War III. This might sound preposterous, but when you apply Occam’s Razor to everything that has been happening (especially in and around Ukraine) rigorously, like I did in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it yields a rather definite answer. That is, the answer that requires the least amount of assumptions is that there is some powerful force pushing for the global escalation. It does not matter if you believe this or not. If you apply the Occam’s Razor principle in a truthful and honest manner, you will simply end up at this conclusion.

The motives behind such a force are much more difficult to come by. The military-industrial complex naturally seeks profits, and the Deep State seeks control. However, we have to ask, would a nuclear war serve their aims, as this is an inevitable end-result of waging a war against Russia? We can state, with rather high confidence, that annihilation of a vast part of the human race would not serve the aims of military corporations, which would lose their source of income (and factories), or those seeking for wider government control of societies, because societies and government control systems would collapse. So, to find a deeper motive behind the escalation against Russia, we need to step beyond the standard logic and common sense.

In the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I speculated that there exists some ‘group-over-groups’ seeking to Divide et Impera (to Divide and Conquer). I, for once, quoted former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who stated that

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

After the Occam’s Razor yielded the outcome of such a background force existing (I even checked with a student of philosophy whether I had applied it correctly), I extended my analysis to their aims. This is what it yielded:

If one applies Occam’s razor to everything described above, it yields one clear answer. There must be a very powerful group above parliaments, national elites and supranational organizations, like the World Economic Forum and the Bilberberg Group, pushing its own agenda of Divide et Impera. Moreover, the agenda must be exceptionally brutal, as it seems to attack all levels of human existence (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual). The existence of such a group would fit in with what President Wilson described in the early 20th century.

Based on this logic, the aim of such a group-over-groups is likely to be to subjugate the whole of human existence under some kind of global control. They seem to want people mentally disturbed, weak, undernourished and fearful. This makes sense, because such people are easy to control and push in different directions, like hating the un-vaxed, Russians or Palestinians.

A nuclear war might (might) fit into such a motive. If you want to turn humanity into a smallish slave-race serving the ruling elite, nuclear war would do just that (if you think that you can shield yourself from its consequences). That is, if you want humanity to blindly obey some “elite,” you need to greatly cut the number of people living on earth simply because smaller numbers are easier to control and it diminishes the likelihood of mutinies. Also, if your survival becomes tied to scarce resources shielded from the radiation and nuclear winter in ‘doomsday bunkers’ built by the elite, you will become submissive (see, e.g., this and this).

I know the above is extremely speculative. But I am an unyielding empiricist who believes in cause and effect and in logic, no matter how twisted, behind major decisions. If you think that our (mostly European) leaders have simply gone mad, then you can bypass everything written above. However, if you are like me, then I would recommend that you start to look behind developments for the (likely) true motive behind all that is happening. I don’t see a nuclear war igniting just now, but the direction of travel is clearly towards it.

If you also find it to be the likely aim of some of our leaders, I would urge you to write to your parliamentarian or congressperson immediately and demand that we step away from this path. I would also do this ASAP, because (currently) nuclear confrontation with Russia is inching closer each passing day.

In hoc signo vinces,

Tuomas

Titles changed on 9/1)2025.

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Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry. The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as an investment advice. GnS Economics nor any of the authors cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk.

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor any of the authors cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

• ‘Craziness’ driving the world towards WWIII is increasing.

• Geopolitics is dominating in the background, but people tend to forget it’s a two-way street and that there’s no “right or wrong”.

• Chaos sowed across the globe does not fit any standard analytical framework.

• Major escalations could be just around the corner.

The craziness deepens

On 3rd April, Presidents of Finland and Ukraine, Alexander Stubb and Volodymyr Zelenskyi, signed a defense pact with Ukraine. Finland has not signed such bilateral pacts with a war-going country since our President Risto Ryti signed a Ryti-Ribbentrop-pact in June 1944. The “pact” was actually just a personal letter from President Ryti to the leader of the Nazi-Germany, Adolf Hitler, where he vouched that he would not pursue peace with the Soviet Union (Russia). In exchange, Finland continued to receive military support and grain from Nazi Germany, which was crucial for her efforts to stop the ongoing major attack of the Soviet Union. President Ryti made the pledge under extreme pressure, as Finland was facing an imminent threat of invasion, and paid a heavy price. He was imprisoned for three years by a war crimes court (demanded by the Soviet Union) in 1946.

So, Finland signing a defense pact with a country in a direct conflict with Russia is utterly unheard-of, since WWII. It makes absolutely no sense for the security of Finland. It’s actually a threat to her security. Some could even call it an act of high treason. The most worrying part is the statement by President Stubb, when he was asked whether Finland would be sending troops to Ukraine. His answer was: “At this point there’s no need to send troops”. This opens a door for future deployment of Finnish forces to Ukrainian soil. What could possibly be the motive for this?

On Thursday, there was another major escalation, when the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO”. This was exactly what President Putin warned against in 2008, when he (allegedly) said to President Bush that if Ukraine ever becomes a member of NATO, the country would cease to exist. Why an earth are western leaders deliberately pushing against a known red line of the Kremlin?

Europe crumbles

The European security structure has been based on unification and stopping conflicts in their tracks through negotiations since WWII. It was highly effective during the Cold War, while we’ve seen one major regional conflict in Europe since the Second World War, i.e., the Yugoslav Wars fought from 1991 till 1999, caused by the fall of the Communist Bloc. In 2004, we had the Georgian conflict and in 2014, the Ukrainian conflict begun.

What was notable in both Georgian and Ukrainian conflicts, was that they were caused by NATO and the EU coming too close to Russian borders in countries the Kremlin considered unstable. Simple-minded people assume that geopolitics is about fairness and justice. It’s not. It’s about security, period. China, Russia and the U.S. play ruthless geopolitical games. Just think, what would happen if Mexico would try to join a military alliance with Russia?

Yet, what we know from history is that when the European security structure crumbles, the world should tremble in fear. WWI and WWII, the most destructive wars ever fought, got started from failure of politics in Europe. Now we are on the path to failure, yet again. The question is why? Two plausible explanations rise above others.

Geopolitical realities

The most plausible geopolitical explanation that I’ve seen on the Ukrainian conflict is that the U.S. wanted to eliminate the threat of the Eurasian alliance, which was forming between China, Europe and Russia. While it was a loose alliance, it was deepening. Russia provided ample raw energy, China was the production hub (factory) and Europe provided capital and know-how. Overtime, this could (would) have developed into a deeper alliance, which could very easily have risen to threaten the global hegemony of the U.S.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential geopolitical scholars ever lived (he passed away on the 26th of May 2017), noted in the conclusions of his magnum opus, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), that:

The time has come for the United States to formulate and prosecute an integrated, comprehensive, and long-term geostrategy for all of Eurasia. This need arises out of the interaction between two fundamental realities: America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy.

This aim was achieved with the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war in late February 2022 (read update on 24/12/2022 on the controversy of who actually started the war). This could also explain, why the war continues. A peace between Russia and Europe would, most likely, re-start the construction of the Eurasian alliance. Perpetual war will guarantee that this does not occur, but this requires deepening escalation. We now seem to be on that road. However, the “Eurasian strategy” does not explain what is happening in the Middle-East.

Chaos as the aim?

Actions of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the Middle-East have been highly escalatory of late. The strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus cannot be considered as anything other than a deliberate act of escalation. Embassies are sanctuaries everywhere, and striking one simply cannot be a “mistake”. The IDF leveling hospitals is also nothing short of a war crime. Yet, the world stands idly by. Why? Moreover, on Thursday, several Iranian military bases were struck by a Jaish al-Adl, a Baluchi militant group, allegedly funded by the U.S., Saudi-Arabia and Israel. Iran has threatened to retaliate (understandably), which would lead to a deepening circle of escalation and, eventually, to a regional war, likely with very dire consequences. The United Arab Emirates also just announced that it will cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.

The deepening escalation, by Israel and some U.S. backed forces, makes absolutely no sense, unless the aim is to ignite a regional war. One could argue that Israel could be looking to crush all threats it sees in the region in a regional war. However, the devastation to the world would likely be cataclysmic, leading to wide-spread chaos. Who could possibly want that?

Divide et Impera

In December, I floated the idea of a ‘group-over-groups’ pulling strings above our democratic and supranational institutions. My analysis was based on the Occam’s Razor principle, which states that when you seek a solution to any problem, you should only include the least amount of assumptions. A dark agenda by a very powerful group is a theory with the least amount of assumptions. It simply ticks all the boxes. From my piece:

[…] behind every political decision is a force, which pushes it through. In the ideal situation, it’s the will of the people. A majority of the populace in a country want something, a majority of politicians want to get re-elected (and not to upset their supporters) and so they push the legislation through, more or less representing the will of the people. This is the ideal.

However, during the past three years, political leaders have made decisions that have been very detrimental to and/or objected to by the general populace on a global scale. These include multiple Corona lockdowns, money printing (leading to the inflation shock), two wars, sanctions hurting economies, the woke-agenda, and the de-farming agenda (see, e.g., this and this). Their combination makes no sense in a national-political sense, because they create havoc. It’s also difficult to trace all of them to the motives of any of the major hidden lobbyist groups, like the military-industrial complex on which U.S. President Dwight D. Roosevelt warned already in 1962.

I speculated that the aim of such a group could be Divide et Impera. This ancient principle, or strategy, translates as Divide and Rule (Conquer). The main idea is to create such large divisions between political parties, or whatever dominating parties, so that they cannot rise to challenge the rule subjected upon them, usually by an outside force. Ancient Romans used this strategy many times to enforce and cement their rule over their provinces. The strategy has four key elements (from Wikipedia):

1. Creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign and distributing forces so that they overpower each other.

2. Aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign.

3. Fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers.

4. Encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political and military spending.

We can see all in play in our western societies. Ordinary people have been divided based on artificial conditions, like vaxed/un-vaxed, pro-Ukraine/pro-peace, woke/conservative and those supporting all government actions vs. those opposing (this latter has existed in human societies for quite a while). Those that obey the agendas set by governments have been given full access to societies (during, e.g., Corona times), while those criticizing have been silenced and even imprisoned. In Europe, leaders of countries that followed the orders of unelected leaders of the European Union (Commission) received high positions in the EU power structure, while dissidents are discarded and even their careers sometimes destroyed. All local rulers, who rise to challenge the commands by the EU (like Victor Orbán in Hungary), have been defamed and even blackmailed. European nations have decades long histories of neglecting their defense spendings and now propositions are being made to fund the re-armament of Europe through the EU. “Meaningless” expenditures have of course been on the rise in western societies for a very long time.

When we subject the strategy of Divide et Impera to policies enacted across the globe, we can seen similar developments everywhere. This enforces the view that there could actually be very an influential ‘group-over-groups’ spreading its agenda of chaos (Divide et Impera) across the globe.

Conclusions

Forecasting has become extremely speculative in recent years. This is because the developments we are witnessing do not fit to any standard analysis framework. It’s also really strange how intelligent people seem to have forgotten the brutal realities of geopolitics. Fairness and “right and wrong” simply do not fit into it, but that’s how the western propaganda is marketing things currently (Russia naturally has it’s own war propaganda). The propaganda operations run in the West since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war have been so effective that even Josef Goebbels would have envied them.

The question we should be asking is: while geopolitical realities are dominating developments, at least in Ukraine, is there a global agenda of Divide et Impera being played in the background? If there is, who is pulling the strings? This need not be so, but if we do not ask these questions, we risk being played by forces seeking our demise. This is no time to be small-minded and/or naive.

The most frightening scenario is that the wars in the Middle-East and Europe will flare up within the next few months (or even weeks). Rallies in gold, oil and stocks of weapons companies suggests that something is up. Be prepared for extreme events.

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Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk. 

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

• The chaos waged across the world cannot be sufficiently explained by national political agendas.

• Search for an explanation hints to an existence of a 'group-above-groups’, with a dark agenda.

• If such a group exists, they could be described as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The idea for this third installment in my Apocalypse scenario series arose, when I learned that Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, have extended their operations to the whole of Gaza, with the likely aim of re-occupying Gaza. This announcement pushes us deeply into uncharted waters, with the response of the Arab countries currently unknown.

What I will present now, is a highly speculative entry on an ‘Apocalyptic path’ the global elite could be pushing the world into. Like I wrote in my first entry to the Apocalypse scenario series, “History shows that sometimes truly horrible scenarios manifest, and thus they need to be mapped“.

In the second entry in this series, I explained what I had learned about national elites and their history. I went through the secretive Bilderberg group and its effect on my former friend and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Elina Valtonen. What I did not disclose then, were my preliminary thoughts on a “group behind groups”, but now I will.

The Israeli-Palestine war was a kind of a tipping point for me. Like I detailed earlier, I have knowledge on the capabilities of Mossad and that nothing, nothing, major happens in and around Israel without Mossad knowing about it. The idea that Mossad and/or Shin Bet either did not receive information that Hamas was preparing such attacks or that they failed to keep the threat “contained” are ludicrous to me. Israel has the most pervasive intelligence agency in the world. So, to me, the only plausible options are that the attacks were either allowed to happen or, in the worst case, the agencies aided Hamas to conduct its atrocities to gain justification for the re-occupation of Gaza.

It is well known that factions in the Israeli government have wanted to regain the ‘Biblical borders’ of Israel. However, war in the Middle East, which the conflict has a high risk of triggering, would have both the ability to (utterly) derail the global economy and set the world ablaze. Such aims make absolutely no sense, unless creating total chaos is the aim. Who could possibly want that?

During the past three years I’ve been more and more drawn to the direction that there is some global force pushing these highly detrimental global developments in motion. It just does not make any sense that all of a sudden the majority of our leaders, especially in the West, would have turned “stupid” or completely against their constituencies. It seems ever more plausible that the Coronavirus was the trigger to a larger movement, possibly even to a plan that had been carefully constructed in the background for a very long time. In my thinking, this is the only plausible explanation for all the current craziness in the world, and in this entry I will explain my logic behind it. Essentially, the old principle of Divide et Impera (Divide and Conquer) seems to be applied globally, but who could yield such a force and why?

The group above groups

Former U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), has stated that:

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

This quote has been associated with Freemasons, but they were a rather well-known group already back then, which does not correspond to the vagueness of “power somewhere”. During the summer, a researcher of conspiracies asked me that “Do I think the secret society Spectre, in James Bond movies, is completely a product of fiction?”. That question threw me off-balance, somewhat, as its implications were so dire. I quickly went through the origin of Bond movies (e.g., that their father, Ian Fleming, was a former British Naval Intelligence officer and a journalist) in my head, and then mumbled, “probably not.” The conversation ended with a polite suggestion to look deeper into it.

First, I did not. The idea seemed way too far-fetched. Some months later, I was asked to comment on a book going through the structures of the global elite. At the beginning of one chapter, was the quote from President Wilson. Then it hit home. It was in the realms of possibility that “Spectre”, or a ‘group-over-groups’, could actually exist.

To find answers, I started to apply the principle of Occam’s razor, which states that when you seek a solution to any problem, you should only include the least amount of assumptions. This is because each assumption increases the likelihood of an error by introducing a new set of uncertainties. While, for example complexity theory is likely to be better suited for analyzing complex (chaotic) systems, like evolution, political decision making is rather straight-forward, because some force always drives it. What I mean by this is that, if there’s not a strong enough force to push through legislation, it will not go through, because there are so many competing fractions in parliament. This is why Occam’s razor is properly suited for analyzing political decision making.

So, behind every political decision is a force, which pushes it through. In the ideal situation, it’s the will of the people. A majority of the populace in a country want something, a majority of politicians want to get re-elected (and not to upset their supporters) and so they push the legislation through, more or less representing the will of the people. This is the ideal.

However, during the past three years, political leaders have made decisions that have been very detrimental to and/or objected to by the general populace on a global scale. These include multiple Corona lockdowns, money printing (leading to the inflation shock), two wars, sanctions hurting economies, the woke-agenda, and the de-farming agenda (see, e.g., this and this). Their combination makes no sense in a national-political sense, because they create havoc. It’s also difficult to trace all of them to the motives of any of the major hidden lobbyist groups, like the military-industrial complex on which U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned already in 1961. This is why the question we need to ask is, who/what is the force driving them and why?

The dark agenda?

What follows now is probably the most speculative lines I have written in my life. Yet, I would not be writing this unless I considered that there’s a likelihood, clearly above zero, that what these lines describe could be the reality.

If one applies Occam’s razor to everything described above, it yields one clear answer. There must be a very powerful group above parliaments, national elites and supranational organizations, like the World Economic Forum and the Bilberberg Group, pushing its own agenda of Divide et Impera. Moreover, the agenda must be exceptionally brutal, as it seems to attack all levels of human existence (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual). The existence of such a group would fit in with what President Wilson described in the early 20th century.

Based on this logic, the aim of such a group-over-groups is likely to be to subjugate the whole of human existence under some kind of global control. They seem to want people mentally disturbed, weak, undernourished and fearful. This makes sense, because such people are easy to control and push in different directions, like hating the un-vaxed, Russians or Palestinians.

I know this is extremely speculative, but when you look at all this from a high enough perspective, it starts to make sense. At least, it does to me. The only thing stopping seeing it, imho, is the fear assuming something like this brings to surface, but that’s rather normal. We just need to not allow it to effect our conclusions.

What kind of individuals would such a group-over-groups consist of? This is something I have not given much thought to, yet. We can assume that they need to be financially wealthy, but also extremely committed and they need to possess certain personal qualities, which allows them to operate without conscience. I am also rather certain that most of them are not in the public eye. I will not speculate on this any further now.

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

If such a group-over-groups with a dark agenda exists, we could describe them as modern Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is, because they would most likely try to bring ‘Biblical plight’ upon us. While not specifically named in the Book of Revelations, researchers of the Bible tend to identify the four horsemen as the Antichrist (first rider), War, Famine and Death.

If we look at what has been happening around the world, there’s been a very strong push against Christian values, like efforts to normalize different sexual perversions, marriage among the same sex and sexual mutilation of children in the “transgender revolution”. This is not to take a stand on these matters (except on the mutilation of children, which is utterly disgusting), but to point out that they are anti-Christian.

War has been clearly pushed, at least since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war (and probably earlier). As a peculiar marker, the current war between Israel and Hamas (Palestine) started just 50 years and one day after the start of the Yom Kippur War.

If the war in the Middle East engulfs the region, it could easily devastate the world economy. Collapse of modern economies tend to lead to poverty and famine, as people lose access to sufficient income. Moreover, food production is under growing strains in many parts of the world. War in the Middle East has the potential to disrupt global supply chains in a way we have not seen for a very long time. The combination of economic collapse, anti-farming policies and wars disrupting supply chains could lead to famine in many countries.

Famine, in combination with wars, naturally would lead to Death, but we can also speculate further. A growing body of evidence points to the lab in Wuhan as the origin for the Coronavirus. The aim of the group-over-groups could also be to unleash a much deadlier virus, that is, to create an actual modern plague. The aim could also be to start WWIII, which would bring utter devastation, as it would most likely, eventually be fought with nuclear weapons.

What would be the aim of such Biblical plights? To crush the will of the people, because if that happens, people turn into easily controllable ‘robots’ or ‘zombies’. This is the way to ultimate control. I am having trouble imaging to what other purpose all this craziness could be aimed at? Every single element from the “climate emergency” to central bank digital currencies lead in the same direction; removing our freedoms and pushing us back into slavery. People will not yield into this, unless their will has been crushed.

I do dearly hope that I am wrong on this. However, what you should be asking yourself is, what if I am not and how likely it is that such a group-over-groups could exist? Don’t fear the answers.

Tuomas

Picture added on 6/9/2026. Errata on Eisenhower corrected on 12/13/2024.

Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice.  Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk. 

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

• The Bilderberg group.

• The means to establish control, and the likely aims of the global elite.

• Forecasts of the current Apocalypse scenario, i.e., what’s next (in the worst-case).

My life has been filled with history. Like I mentioned before, my mother is a retired lecturer of history and society, and historical events and knowledge have been the bread and butter of our discussions since childhood. I consider this to be one of my most precious assets helping me to uncover the hidden aspects behind global developments, simply because it provides me a wider (more insightful) vision.

I have also been a “scenario thinker” for most of my life. I’ve been especially drawn to adverse scenarios, probably partly due to the tragedy of the early death of my father. I know, from personal experience, that highly adverse scenarios do sometimes materialize.

For a period of a little over two years, I’ve been gradually building an “Apocalypse scenario”. There were two main culprits for it.

While I strongly supported the first set of Corona lockdowns in Finland, after following the spread of the Coronavirus since mid-January 2020 (see our warning from 30 January 2020), the second to fourth lockdowns made absolutely no sense. The deliberate efforts of the cabinet of PM Sanna Marin to destroy our constitutional freedoms were something that I also had difficulties understanding. In early 2021, the answer arrived from our Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, whose senior official told me at a private meeting, that since summer 2020, all the instructions on how the cabinet was to handle the pandemic came from outside Finland. As this person was one of the officials in charge of Finnish Corona policies, I had no reasons to suspect this account. Basically, the statement directly implied high treason conducted by Prime Minister Marin.

The whole Corona catastrophe, including the largest medical human experiment in history (the corona-vaccination campaign), led me to question my view of how the world works and who were pulling the strings. As a result, in December 2021, we published a special report on the Great Reset, which is a collection of policies, driven by the World Economic Forum (WEF), with somewhat unclear, but likely sinister goals. We took the publicly announced goals and policies of the Great Reset (from now on GR) and ran standard economic policy analyses on them. Our analysis yielded an earthmoving conclusion, which we summarized as:

They [GR policies] can, and probably will, take decision-making to a global level into undemocratic and often opaque institutions. They are, quite simply, direct threat to democratic processes and decision-making. They threaten, or have already taken, the true power from citizens to ‘halls’ of supranational entities.

Alas, we concluded that we had, most likely, already lost the control of our societies to different secretive groups to which the WEF seemed to act as an umbrella organization. I am calling the people running these secretive organizations the “elite”.

In this entry, I will briefly summarize, what I have learned from this elite and their aims. It is not meant to be a comprehensive picture (not by a long shot) and some parts of it are highly speculative. However, I consider that to understand the current chaotic times, we need to stretch the boundaries we consider as normal, by entering into the conspiracy scene. We especially need to understand, in what ways and by whom our societies may be steered.

The Bilderberg Group

In early 2000’s I familiarized myself with the Bilderberg group, which held annual secretive meetings with politicians, business leaders and journalists. This was the first time I started to wonder what was truly going on in global politics. How could there be meetings, run by some of the wealthiest people on earth, where our leaders discussed important topics, but on which we the people, could not hear anything? According to my sources, all participants of the Bilderberg meetings are required to sign a secrecy agreement considering everything discussed there.

There’s a tendency of new politicians participating in the meeting to see a rapid ascension in their careers. I saw this up close with my former friend and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Elina Valtonen.

I met Elina in an EuroThinkTank group gathered by Professor Vesa Kanniainen in the fall 2013. The idea of the group was to construct a critical assessment on the future of the Eurozone, which was published as a book. When we met, I thought she was great(!), and I wanted to establish a friendship with her. To note, we were both married at the time and there never anything romantic between us. We just became good friends, as I hoped.

Elina and I shared many goals. We were both champions of personal and economic freedoms, and we wanted to save Finland. So, when she took position in the Finnish parliament, I quickly became her trusted economist. I wanted to help her to ‘liberate’ Finland and correct the way of the EU. At that time we also shared the view that Finland would be better off without the euro.

In 2019, without me knowing, Elina took part in the Bilderberg meeting in Turin, Italy. She also met President Emmanuel Macron. After these meetings, a gradual change in her thinking emerged. By early 2020, I had started to feel that our views were growing apart. A breakup in our co-operation came in May 2020, when the plan for the European Recovery Fund was unveiled. This, a debt issuance of the European Union effectively turning it into a federation, was the one thing we had feared in the EuroThinkTank. Suddenly, and taking the complete opposite stand than before, Elina started to defend the proposal of Germany and France. She also gave public statements supporting the federalization of the European Union. I was shell-shocked. She had previously supported a stronger EU with regards to defense (she’s a bit russophobic), but supporting the all-out federalization of the EU was completely against, what I felt she previously thought and what we had agreed in the beginning of our co-operation. So, a ‘break-up’ was inevitable.

My experience with Elina drove me to to consider the role of the Bilderburg group more deeply. The way I see them working is as follows.

They select rising political stars and media persons (journalists, editors, and even influencers) to their meetings to test, whether they will serve their cause. In addition to the NDA (non-disclosure or secrecy agreement), there are no other official agreements made. However, the meetings are for the planting of ideas and screening the candidates (more on this below). If/when candidates express their support to the cause, and make public efforts towards this, he/she will see his/her career shoot up. This is exactly, what happened to Elina’s career after 2019, and I do not think it was a coincidence.

Who are the elites?

A year ago, I participated in a large-scale project seeking funding from various sources. The project got the interest of the Vatican Bank, or the Institution for the Works of Religion, and our project leader was called to meet a Vatican banker. After the formalities had been conducted and it was time for small talk, the Vatican banker asked our project leader: “I have always wondered why Finns considers themselves to be living in a democracy, but they still let these ten people decide on everything”. Our project leader naturally did not have much to comment, nor was it discussed who the ‘group of ten’ were.

The conversation, imho, (I fully trust the account of the project leader) depicts the way our 'democracies' currently operate. In each country, there’s an elite that wants to decide on certain important developments, and then there’s a global elite consisting of the elites of the national elite. While the concept of global elite is probably relatively new, there have been national elites guiding developments all through human history. There’s one exceptionally worrying example on this.

In early 1920’s Weimar Germany, the elites in the army, bureaucracy, judiciary, academia and business wanted to engineer a return to an elite-controlled authoritarian society, because they feared  losing their lands and  becoming politically marginalized through the democratization of German society.1 This produced tacit support by the German elite for the Nazi party leading to one of the most oppressive and destructive regimes the world has ever seen.

So, who are in the global elite? I will not name any names, at least not yet, but many of the public figures currently part of the ‘elite’ are easy to track. Just compare them to the list of people participating to the Bilderberg meetings (note  that these leaked lists are not always complete). We can assume that all the people frequently participating in the meetings are part of the global elite.

It’s important to note that while some of the elite are public figures, at least since Roman times those making the most important decisions have remained in the shadows. I am rather certain that this is the case also now, which implies that we do not actually know the people guiding the fate of our societies.

What do they want?

The elite in the Weimar Republic wanted to ensure their power. That is, their ability to guide the German society, which led them to support the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler, instead of “dangerous” democracy. We can rather safely assume that the global elite wants something of the same. They are likely pursuing for ability to guide the development of the world and humanity to a direction they find suitable. Now, naturally, the question becomes, what is this direction?

On this we can only speculate. It’s obvious that at least part of the elite is trying to “save the world”, according to their standards, that is. This is likely to range from pushing through Green policies (which in often times turn to be more polluting than the original alternative) to population control and even to population reduction. Since at least the 1970’s, and establishing the Club of Rome, ‘over-population’ has been considered as one the greatest threat to the future of humanity in certain academic and political circles.2 This implies that depopulation could be on the agenda of the elite.3

In the December 2021 Special Report, we commented on the possible sinister aims of the GR (or global ‘coup’):

The aims or objectives of such a ‘global coup’ could include:

1)    Total control of economies and societies to impose various political agendas. 

2)    Full media control and a police state to control public opinion and keep dissidents in check.

A crisis would be needed to push through the first objective. This crisis would need to be so massive that it would create a need for a vast majority of citizens to give up their constitutional rights for economic and personal safety. Another option would be to exaggerate the severity of the crisis through targeted and wide-spread media propaganda operations. In any case, the majority of the population would need to be driven to a point where they would be unwilling to object to the directives given by their political leaders. Such directives would need to breach the economic and personal freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. When the constitution, which protects the rights of citizens from the tyrannical impulses of their government has been breached, total power would transfer solely to politicians and their influence groups, like the WEF.

We have already seen all these in action during the past three years.

How do they establish control?

How would I go about establishing global control? I would simply follow, what I consider the Bilderberg group is currently doing.

Firstly, I would establish a supra-national group with meetings to gather the rising political figures and media influencers. In those meetings, I would try to find common ground between my objectives and those of the politicians. I would hire a group of world-leading psychologists to create strategies on how to plant the seeds of my thinking into the heads of politicians, journalists, etc., which would slowly grow and start to influence their actions and decisions.

Next, I would create a screening organization to find the politicians most susceptible to and interested in power. Then I would create groups, under my indirect supervision, to monitor and influence these people on a regular basis. I would also make sure that those, who knew my agenda could not deviate from the plan or leak it to the populace without devastating consequences to his/her credibility and career (or even life).

All the above is 100% actionable with enough resources (money) and connections. I would be utterly surprised (even disappointed) if the Bilderberg group or the WEF had not have established such a system already.

As a last bit, I will discuss, where I see the elite leading us, i.e., what my Apocalypse scenario currently forecasts.

Where are we heading?

A good friend of mine and a former head of global fx-strategies of a major Nordic bank has stated: “We need to change our elites, because they do not have our best interest in mind”. This is a conclusion I now fully concur with.

If the plan of the elite is global ‘enslavement’, as I currently suspect, they need to conduct several shock-treatments to the global populace for them to accept this New World Order, etc., possibly leading us into the rebirth of a (global) feudal state. So, my Apocalypse scenario currently predicts the following:

1. Global economic collapse fueled by a banking crisis to establish the use of CBDC’s.

2. Escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war to include most of Europe.

3. Another and much more deadly (real) pandemic.

4. (Bonus: Threat of an Alien invasion.)

I am currently assuming that we would see the first three developments to occur between 2024 and 2026/27. In the absolute worst-case, these would lead the world into a WWIII before 2030.

Currently, my biggest worry is that the elite desperately want to escalate the Russo-Ukrainian war, because it creates fear, allows for further silencing of dissidents and because wars are highly profitable. I consider that the escalation may come from either side. President Putin may want to escalate to draw out all the ‘cards’ of NATO and to finish Ukraine off, while NATO (Ukraine) may want to escalate, possibly with a false flag operation, because it’s losing the war, which could rise to threaten the unity of the Alliance. If history is any guide, we will see an escalation during the next 1-2mo (I dearly hope not).

I don’t yet have a concise vision on the endgame, that is, on the societal structure that the elite could be pursuing for. A feudal state, where there would be only rulers and servants (slaves), is a very likely candidate. The planned issuance of CBDC’s and other control methods, gives us hints as to what the control structure might look like. However, I think it’s yet too early to draw definite conclusions. I will, however, speculate on them in later posts.

As an final note, I have to emphasize that I do not consider the Apocalypse -scenario to be most likely of the scenarios I currently ponder for our future. However, as it is the most grave one by far, I have and continue to put in a lot of effort to constructing and updating it. This is also because in all forecasting, one absolutely needs to know the worst scenario imaginable. Only by acknowledging it, you are able to draw out all future paths for our societies and economies, which helps us to prepare for them.

Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice.  Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk. 

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

• The grip of central banks on our economies is likely to tighten.

• Central bank digital currencies (CBDC’s) are a means for financial enslavement.

• The implications of CBDC's are dire for banks, corporations and consumers.

A few days ago, I accidentally met a friend of mine, an associate professor, who was going to consult our new Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, on certain matters. While we where talking, he asked about my absolute worst case scenario for the next few years. Well, I gave a short, five bullet point summary of how I see things progressing in the ‘Apocalypse scenario’.

I’ve been doing scenario forecasting, as a part of the small team at GnS Economics, for over 10 years. Rather strangely, my life has been such that it has fostered the development of my thinking towards catastrophic scenarios. This actually started with the sudden death of my father when I was just two months old. My general way of thinking is also “narratorial” rather than “completing”. This means that I have a tendency to view the world through stories rather than through pictures to be completed, which is the way people usually view the world (my ex-wife has a doctorate in Psychology; so my personality has been tested, rather extensively ;)). One could say that my brain has been wired to build scenarios, especially the “apocalyptic” ones.

As I am the CEO of our company, GnS Economics, this has affected the structure of our forecasting, where scenarios are the work horse. At the same time, I have discovered that generally people have difficulties understanding scenario forecasting. If, for example, just one, usually the most clickbaity scenario is presented in the media and even when a low likelihood (e.g. 20%) has been attached to it, many have viewed it as the forecast from us, even though it has just been one (usually the worst) of the three forecasts we tend to construct for each situation. Most recently, this misunderstanding has occurred with my worst-case scenarios (see, e.g., this, this and this) for the Russo-Ukrainian war.

My original worst-case scenario was that Russia will mount a crushing winter-offensive against Ukrainian forces possibly dividing the country in half. This never, fortunately, occurred. The consensus (most likely) scenario was that Russia will just hold the eastern and south-eastern territories, as it now has (the ‘good’ scenario would have been Ukraine taking back their lost territories, but the likelihood of this occurring was miniscule already in October).

My absolute worst case scenarios almost never reach the reports of GnS Economics, because they are highly speculative and often rather apocalyptic. However, I consider them to serve a very important benchmarks in mapping the realms of our world. History shows that sometimes truly horrible scenarios manifest, and thus they need to be mapped.

On that note, I have come to the conclusion that it’s time to present my current Apocalyptic scenario, which I have been constructing for little over a year, to my subscribers. This is speculative and should not, at this point, be taken as nothing more than a sketch of the worst-case scenario currently imaginable. The reason, why I consider that now is a good time to present it, is because there are some hints that parts of it may be coming a reality. This will be the first entry in a series.

Central banks taking over the world?

We have been very critical towards the actions of central banks since 2013. At that point it had became clear that the massive meddling of central banks in our economies and financial markets were creating something monstrous. In June 2013, we wrote:

It is possible that the banking sector and the world economy were  saved by using too strong methods in 2008. As a consequence of this, it is also possible that the world economy is more like a zombie economy, where unprofitable banks and companies are kept alive with easy money and rescue packages from the governments. This kind of an environment is extremely sensitive to shocks or market disturbances, and this is a reason to be worried although there is no reason to panic, yet.

So we, correctly, saw that the role of central banks was changing and growing beyond their original role and what was probably good for the economy. In December 2019, we mapped the scenarios of the world economy through the global economic crisis, which at that time looked inevitable (we naturally had no knowledge of  Corona at the time of writing). There we envisaged the ‘Global bailout’ scenario:

At the heart of this catastrophe would be the harnessing of the money-creation power of the central banks to finance a massive growth in government spending. This would be the “bailout for all”.  

As we noted in Q-Review 4/2018, the size of the global risk-asset universe is currently somewhere north of $400 trillion dollars. For the bailout to succeed, central banks would need to absorb at least one quarter, if not half of this pool. This would mean a gargantuan increase in their balance sheets, which currently stand at over $20 trillion, with central banks effectively seizing control of global capital markets. It would be the end of capitalism as we presently understand it.

This would be the ‘dystopian’ response of authorities to the economic collapse which, at that time, we assumed to consist of four phases during 2020-2023:

1. Crash of the asset markets.

2. Failure of the European banking sector.

3. Failing zombie companies.

4. Collapse of China.

The Coronavirus, lockdowns and bailouts naturally changed our scenarios rather drastically, but they did not remove the threats of the above four developments, but just changed their forecasted timelines. We did expect the European banking crisis to emerge in late 2020 or 2021, but that never manifested. This was our single biggest forecasting failure.

A year later, we warned, for the first time, on the threat of central bank digital currencies, or CBDC’s. In December 2020, we wrote:

Notably, a much more problematic situation emerges when we notice that with CBDCs a central bank will become a competitor of the commercial banks. Thus, the central bank would function in the role of national banking supervisor, the ‘lender of last resort’ and also as a competitor in the commercial banking sector. It is clear that these obvious conflicts of interest could quite readily lead to the further corruption of any such central banking system.

In a banking crisis it is the responsibility of a central bank to 1) provide emergency liquidity support (money, and lots of it) to the banking sector, and 2) organize and oversee the restructuring of the banking sector. It is plain that when a central bank is also a competitor of the ailing commercial banks, the situation would become completely untenable. In a banking crisis, deposits would flee to the safety of the central bank, aggravating the crisis. Moreover, why would a central bank support its competitors? It could easily announce the closure of all unstable banks and the transfer of deposits to the central bank, with the tacit approval of apprehensive politicians. In the worst case, the whole banking sector would be nationalized.

This would effectively raise the central banks to dominate the monetary and financial realm of a country. Next, I go through the implications of it for consumers and corporations, including banks.

CBDC: A tool for domination

In a banking crisis, there would likely come a point, where depositors would seek the safety of the central bank, if a CBDC was offered (see our post for a description of the CBDC structure). This would, most likely, escalate the runs on commercial banks. There are several ways how a central bank could respond to this.

First would be an open-door policy, where every depositor could transfer their funds to the central bank. As the likelihood of failure of a central banks is miniscule, this would, most likely, lead to a deluge of deposits to the central bank in a banking crisis (like described above). This would leave banks in a very precarious situation, because they would lose their main funding source for loans. This would lead to an utter collapse of the banking sector. To cope, the central bank would probably lend the deposits back to commercial banks. This means that the central bank would act in such a way that the deposits would be collateral against the loans. This would give the central bank control over the lending practices and, effectively, control of the businesses of every commercial bank in the country. In this case, commercial banks would become mere semi-independent branches of the central bank. We can call this as ‘Gosbankification’ of the economy.2

To stem the deposit outflow, the central bank could also limit deposits it accepts. However, in a deep enough crisis, the public pressure to open the whole central bank balance sheet to protect depositors would most likely become unsurmountable, if a CBDC had been issued.

The central bank could also issue a ‘synthetic CBDC’, where private sector payment service providers would issue liabilities matched by funds (reserves) held at the central bank. That is, the private issuers of digital currencies would act as mere intermediaries between the central bank and the end users: consumers and firms. However, even this structure would aggravate the banking crisis, because the financial intermediaries issuing the CBDC would be fully backed by central bank reserves, making them safer than commercial banks, which follow the fractional reserve banking doctrine.3 Basically, the only solution to this would be to make each bank an intermediary for the CBDC, which would mean a takeover of the commercial banking sector by the central bank, and effectively a transfer to a “non-synthetic” (retail) CBDC.

Alas, if (when) a CBDC is introduced, it will, most likely, eventually engulf the banking sector. This gives  raise to some rather dystopian scenarios.

Financial enslavement

Christine Lagarde and  the general manager of the Bank of International Settlements (the “central bank of central banks”) Agustín Carstens, have raised the prospect that CBDC’s would be used to guide consumer behaviour. Moreover, the BIS chief is promoting the creation of a universal ledger, where commercial bank deposits and the so called central bank money (cash, coins and reserves created by a central bank) would have the same “programmable form on an integrated platform”. Essentially this implies a system, where central banks, through CBDC’s, would control all transactions in real-time (i.e. when they occur). In the worst imaginable scenario this would include all financial transactions, including those of stocks, bonds and derivatives.

In this, we arrive to the speculative side which, if we look at the developments, do not necessarily look so conspiratorial after all. It has been reported that the United Nations is planning to introduce a new global digital ID system, which is linked to individuals’ bank accounts. This would give whoever is collecting the data (the central bank), almost unlimited access to the life of every person within the system. However, even if in place, such a system could not be used to effectively control, or guide consumer behaviour, because commercial banks would be independent actors. With the introduction of CBDC’s, this would eventually change radically, as described above. In the worst-case scenario your transactions could be blocked based on, e.g. your previous actions, because central banks would be in control of your every transaction in real-time.

The crucial part of all this is that the control through CBDC’s will be incomplete, if cash is generally used as mean of payment. It’s possible that one reason why the digital payment systems have been enacted in developing countries, like India, is that they are  testing grounds. That is, if countries that use mostly cash can be pushed into digitalization, it can be achieved elsewhere. The people in poorer countries also have limited means to object such a development.

We also need to remember that central banks are only quasi-independent organs of government. They report to the parliaments, which provide their capital, powers (on the  legislative level) and to whom central banks settle their profits. Governments can dismantle a central bank or order it to be audited. So, any talk of central bank independence is just talk, nothing else.

Implications for consumers and corporations

The Dystopian scenario described above would naturally alter the operational landscape of consumers and corporations in a rather radical way with banking system falling under the domination of the central bank. We have not completed our analysis on the changes yet, but we will, and so here I will go through my preliminary thoughts on the issue.

The centralized control of payments thus needs to link the ID, the bank account, some payment provider (like Google or Apple Pay) and the CBDC in an universal ledger. Once the digital payment system has been installed, linking your ID and bank account to it, is rather straight-forward (or at least this is how I have understood it). At this point, I have no clear picture how the universal ledger would be formed, but after the banking sector would be dominated by the CBDC, authorities would have near total control of the economy. Like explained above this would create a system, where your every purchase would be tracked and subject to the scrutiny of central bank officials. The issue of individual, or personal carbon credits has also been raised. If these would be linked to your digital ID in a CBDC controlled system, they could be made personal. This means that your purchases could be controlled based on your personal carbon credit. Basically, the only way to object all this, at the consumer lever, would be to create local currencies, to make greater use of barter-type contracts and cryptocurrencies outside the universal ledger. Based on the information I received, this should not be too difficult nor expensive to accomplish.4

For banks, the implications of the Dystopian scenario are clear and dire. They would lose most of their freedoms as independent actors. While central bankers would not, at least in the very beginning, enact tough guidelines towards their newly acquired ‘commercial branches’ this would almost certainly change, when the economy falls into recession or if there was some major crisis. In such a case, the central bank would most likely issue strict guidelines on all transactions of banks, dictating what you could buy and from where (consider for example the sanctions against Russia). Moreover, in such situations, central bank and government policies would, most likely, also be strictly enforced on all lending activities. This means that lending to both corporations and consumers would be monitored and only those projects and investments would get financed, which would follow the agenda and policies  of the government (and the ‘elite’). Think, for example, of the enforcement of the ‘European Green Deal’ in all investment activities.

Many large, multinational corporations could benefit from the CBDC controlled system, as long as they would follow the agenda of their ‘overlords’. However, the situation could (and most likely would) become rather tricky for small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s). This is, because the world seems to follow the Great Reset policy, at least to some extent (see our analysis of it here and here), which means that the interests of large corporations, and not those of  SME’s, would be at the top of the agenda of governments. In the CBDC controlled economy, all funding to SME’s could thus suddenly simply dry up, if the overlords decided that they want to drive the whole or some parts of the SME sector down.

Even if this would not be pursued, CDBC’s would make the life of many SME’s very difficult. This is because both their purchases and the purchases of their customers would be subject to whatever is the current agenda was being of their governments. For example, if beef would consume carbon credits, the amount of beef a restaurant was able to acquire could be limited, as well as the consumption of beef by the customers of a restaurant. Moreover, any SME project that would not follow the current policy agendas would face serious hurdles in acquiring funding. There, essentially, would not be free entrepreneurship anymore.

Conclusion

The threat posed by central bank digital currencies, and the over-reach of central banks in general, is a serious threat that is not generally publicly acknowledged. However, many economists and bankers do express their concern in private discussions, and even academic journals.

The latter should be a wake-up call for everyone. For example, Fernández-Villaverde et al. raise the issue of heavy political and economic pressure the central bank would come under, if a CBDC would rise to dominate the monetary realm of a country.5 They argue that a central bank could be forced to use its profits and its ability to divert lending towards politically desirable ends, such as green initiatives, social, gender or racial equality, universal basic income, or even towards supporters of politically acceptable political parties. Such outspoken criticism against central banks and speculation on a massive political corruption are very exceptional in usually dull academic literature.

Moreover, Nicholas Anthony and Norbet Mitchell conclude their research on a CBDC of the Federal Reserve : “A U.S. CBDC poses substantial risks to financial privacy, financial freedom, free markets, and cybersecurity”.6 Christop J. Waller, executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated in his speech on 5 August 2021 that: “I remain skeptical that a Federal Reserve CBDC would solve any major problem confronting the U.S. payment system. There are also potential costs and risks associated with a CBDC.“

These are dire and exceptional warnings. They show how grave many of the academics and Fed presidents, working on CBDC’s, see their threat to be. CBDC’s can be considered as a ‘Hindenburg omen’ (an omen for an ensuing collapse) for financial freedom and thus on our societies. Yet, the mainstream media is almost competely silent on this.

I consider the silence to be one part of the current control mechanism pushing the agenda of the globalists through. People are being kept uninformed and thus docile towards the coming developments, until they are ready to be implemented. At this point, a combination of massive media campaign spreading fear and a global crisis are probably needed to make people to accept the CBDC structure. The full extent of the cataclysmic change the CBDC’s would bring to our economies would naturally be left undiscussed, at that point also.

I will continue the Apocalyptic scenario during the summer.

To all Finns, I wish a happy Mid-Summer! Stay safe. :)

Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk. 

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.