THE ECONOMICS OF LATE-STAGE EMPIRE

22 January 2026

Let's get to the macro economic setup at the base of all the political fighting today. 

Dutch disease, Triffin’s dilemma, hyperfinancialisation, and inequality 

What Mark Carney articulated at Davos this week was not a diplomatic disagreement but a structural one... and he was direct and blunt about it.

The global trade and financial system that once promised mutual benefit through integration, now increasingly drives advanced economies towards fragility and dependence. Decades of global integration, reserve-currency privilege, and free movement of  capital have outsourced productive capacity while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of the few who hold the financial asset cards. 

Under this cycle's late-stage conditions, the system no longer spreads prosperity. Trade becomes leverage, finance becomes coercion, and supply chain vulnerabilities become instruments of pressure. 

The shared nationalist and populist politics now emerging are not simple ideological coincidents, they are the political expression of an economic system that has reached late Quadrant C (all terms will be defined). 

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The mechanisms behind this shift are not new, they've been repeated numerous times in history, and they are now clear for us all to see. 

Reserve-currency privilege, persisourtent deficits, and financial dominance have produced effects long associated with Dutch disease (terms defined below), which is now operating at the scale of the global system... what Triffin described as a "monetary dilemma" has evolved into a political constraint leaving politics with fewer and fewer choices, while hyperfinancialisation has replaced production with asset inflation - for controllers of significant assets - as the engine of growth. 

The result is rising inequality which, accompanied by large-scale and continuous immigration, is leading to societal fragmentation, strategic vulnerability, and a marked and uncompromising narrowing of political choice. 

This piece describes the system in plain economic terms, and is my understanding of the late-stage Quadrant C regime dynamics increasingly feeding the politics of the developed world. 

1. The Common Thread

Dutch disease, Triffin’s dilemma, hyperfinancialisation, and inequality are not separate problems.
They describe different stages and symptoms of the same structural imbalance:

• A nation gains an external advantage
• That advantage distorts incentives
• Capital flows away from productive activity
• Finance expands faster than the real economy
• Wealth concentrates
• Social and political strain follows.

These symptoms seen together, allow us to diagnose late-stage economic systems.

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2. Dutch Disease. When Success Hollow-Outs The Economy

Dutch disease is the paradox where economic success in one sector damages the rest of the economy.

• Originally observed in the Netherlands after natural gas discoveries
• Large export revenues strengthen the currency
• A strong currency makes manufacturing and tradable services uncompetitive
• Labour and capital move into the booming sector and non-tradables. 

The result is:
• Deindustrialisation
• Loss of skills
• Long-term dependency on a narrow income source.

In modern economies, the “resource” is often not oil or gas, it is finance.

Glossary
Dutch disease: A condition where large foreign income inflows raise the exchange rate and undermine domestic industry.

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3. Triffin’s Dilemma. The Global Version Of Dutch Disease

Triffin’s dilemma applies Dutch disease logic at the level of the global monetary system.

• A reserve-currency country must supply the world with liquidity
• This requires persistent trade deficits
• Trade deficits weaken domestic industry
• Domestic political pressure rises.

The issuer of the reserve currency faces a choice:
• Serve global stability
• Or protect domestic economic balance.

It cannot do both indefinitely.

The United States exemplifies this tension - 
• Dollar dominance benefits finance and geopolitics
• At the same time it accelerates deindustrialisation and debt accumulation at home.

Glossary
Triffin’s dilemma: The structural conflict faced by a reserve-currency issuer between domestic stability and global liquidity provision.

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4. Hyperfinancialisation. 

When Finance Becomes The Economy

Financialisation becomes hyperfinancialisation when finance stops serving production and starts replacing it.

Key features:
• Profits increasingly come from asset prices, not output
• Credit creation outpaces real economic growth
• Corporate strategy prioritises buybacks, leverage, and arbitrage rather than re investment of profits 
• Housing and equities become the main savings vehicles.

This is Dutch disease without a mine or oil field. Finance itself becomes the extractive sector.

Consequences:
• Fragile growth
• Rising systemic risk
• Chronic dependence on monetary stimulus.

Glossary
Hyperfinancialisation: An advanced stage of financialisation where financial activities dominate economic returns and policy priorities.

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5. Inequality. The Social Balance Sheet

Inequality is not a moral failure, but it is an accounting outcome.

Hyperfinancialised systems naturally generate inequality because:

• Asset ownership is concentrated
• Monetary easing inflates asset prices first
• Wages lag productivity and prices
• Debt substitutes for income growth.

Those with assets compound wealth, those without fall behind.

Over time:
• Trust in institutions erodes
• Political polarisation increases
• "Society" buckles and fragments.

Inequality is the visible scar tissue of these structural imbalances.

Glossary
Inequality: Persistent disparities in income, wealth, or opportunity across a population.

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6. Putting It Together. A Single Causal Chain

The sequence is not accidental.

• Reserve-currency status triggers Triffin’s dilemma.
• Triffin dynamics resemble Dutch disease effects.
• Deindustrialisation and capital surpluses fuel hyperfinancialisation.
• Hyperfinancialisation amplifies inequality.

Each stage reinforces the next.

This is why policy responses that treat these issues separately often fail - they address symptoms rather than root causes. 

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7. Counterarguments And Limits

Looking at late stage quadrant C from the other point of view, trying to be balanced and positive:

• Financialisation can improve capital allocation in early stages
• Reserve-currency status lowers borrowing costs and geopolitical risk
• Inequality can reflect skill premia and innovation, not just extraction.

The problem is not finance itself, but it is scale, duration, and feedback loops.

Systems break when corrective mechanisms are suppressed too long.

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8. Why This Matters Now

These dynamics are most dangerous late in the cycle:

• When debt is high
• When growth is weak
• When trust is thin.

At that point:

• Inflation re-emerges through scarcity, not demand (see Note) 
• Politics turns inward
• Capital seeks real assets over paper claims.

History suggests adjustment is inevitable... the question is whether it is gradual or disorderly, but agreed or forced.

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References And Further Reading

• Triffin, R. “Gold and the Dollar Crisis”
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp04.htm

• IMF. “Dutch Disease Revisited”
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp0702.pdf

• OECD. “Financialisation and Its Impacts”
https://www.oecd.org/finance/financialisation.htm

• Piketty, T. “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674979857

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NOTE 1. HOW INFLATION RE-EMERGES THROUGH SCARCITY, NOT DEMAND

In late-cycle systems, inflation no longer originates from excess consumer demand.
It emerges from constraints.

• Years of underinvestment reduce productive capacity
• Deindustrialisation weakens domestic supply chains
• Energy, metals, labour, logistics and housing become bottlenecks
• Shocks propagate through fragile, tightly coupled systems

Money may be abundant, but goods, skills, energy, and infrastructure are not.

Prices rise because supply cannot respond, not because consumers are bidding more aggressively.

This is why traditional demand-management tools fail (see Note 4).
Raising rates suppresses demand but does not create mines, refineries, housing, engineers, or energy grids.

Scarcity inflation: Inflation driven by physical or structural supply limits rather than excess demand.

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NOTE 2. WHY THE RESERVE-CURRENCY ISSUER MUST SUPPLY GLOBAL LIQUIDITY

The global system requires a shared settlement asset:

• Trade, commodities, debt and reserves must clear in a trusted currency
• The reserve currency must be available outside the issuing country
• Foreign access requires net currency outflow. 

This forces the reserve-currency issuer to run persistent deficits.

Mechanisms include:

• Trade deficits
• Capital account surpluses are the other half of the accounting equation 
• Offshore currency creation via banking and shadow banking. 

If the issuer restricts liquidity:

• Global trade seizes
• Credit crises erupt
• The currency will strengthen violently

Thus the issuer is trapped between domestic balance which requires restraint and global stability which requires excess supply.

Global liquidity: The availability of a currency for international trade, finance, and reserve use.

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NOTE 3. WHY CAPITAL ROTATES AWAY FROM PAPER CLAIMS TOWARDS REAL CONSTRAINTS

Paper claims depend on confidence:

• Bonds rely on future repayment capacity
• Equities rely on future earnings
• Fiat money relies on policy and government credibility. 

When systems are over-leveraged and growth is constrained, future promises are discounted more heavily.

This is when capital seeks what cannot be diluted (debased) and investors seek assets that will protect their purchasing power,  starting with gold precious metals. 

Rotation out of financials continues into commodities - assets constrained by physics, geology, or biology, such as:

• Energy reserves
• Industrial metals
• Agricultural land
• Infrastructure
• Physical commodities
• Strategic inputs

These are not inflation hedges in the early stage, but they become inputs once scarcity bites.

Real constraints: Physical limits on supply that cannot be expanded by monetary policy or financial engineering.

This is why late-cycle capital flows do not chase growth stories, they (investors) will chase bottlenecks.

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NOTE 4. WHY DEMAND MANAGEMENT BREAKS DOWN IN SCARCITY-DRIVEN INFLATION

Traditional monetary policy assumes inflation is demand-led and supply is elastic.

When inflation is driven by scarcity:

• Energy, labour, logistics, and industrial capacity are constrained

• Supply cannot respond to higher prices

• Raising interest rates suppresses demand but does not create supply. 

Higher rates therefore:

• Slow growth before inflation falls

• Depress investment in new capacity

• Risk recession as the main disinflation tool. 

This creates tension between central banks and politicians:

• Central banks defend credibility through tight policy... note however that higher interest rates cannot deal with inflation caused by scarcity rather than strong demand 

• But political leaders focus on growth, jobs, and industrial capacity... which is why lower interest rates are the answer .. though it will bust the currency. 

Interest rates still matter, but in scarcity regimes they treat symptoms, not causes.

Demand-management failure: The reduced effectiveness of rate hikes when inflation originates from structural supply constraints rather than excess demand.

Thank you for reading this far. 

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ELITE CAPTURE, FINANCIALISATION AND MASS IMMIGRATION

12 January 2026

What happens to a nation when its shared startup culture, social trust between its people, and continuity in the sense of history and shared vision mission and values, are weakened by elite capture, financialisation and large-scale immigration?

Can such a society - our society - still function as a genuine national community, rather than a mere economic machine, as Ray Dalio calls it?

To be administered, exploited, extracted from, by a governing elite.

And operated, on the elite's behalf, by its admin class of political, technical, managerial and media?

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Table Of Contents

1. The Nation And The Social Contract

How nations form, what binds them together, and why legitimacy matters.

2. Elite Capture And Political Drift

How power shifts from communities to economic and institutional elites.

3. Financialisation And The "Hollowing Out" Of The Real Economy

Why finance replaces production, and the consequences for society.

4. Mass Immigration, Culture, And Assimilation Limits

How scale and continuity affect cultural cohesion and integration.

Glossary Of Terms

Nation

A Social Contract

Elite Capture

Financialisation

Real Assets

Financial Assets

Mass Immigration

Assimilation

The Corporate State

The Economic Machine

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1. The Nation As An Extended Family

• A nation begins as an enlarged family bound by shared culture, values, history, sense of identity and mission, and mutual trust between members. This is not far from the idea of "tribe". 
• Leadership originally grows out of this common social fabric, with rulers expected to reflect the moral standards and cultural identity of the people they govern, and the people to follow voluntarily; rather than have an elite that stands out and apart from its own people. Some people misunderstand this idea of organic leadership as "authoritarian" rule. 
• This is all covered under the heading of "social contract". There are numerous posts on this website of the political philosophy behind this concept (#Philo). 
• When this bond weakens, especially as rapid mass immigration dilutes a shared culture faster than it can be absorbed or assimilated, the sense of national continuity and belonging erodes.
• So what holds such a society together once that common culture is lost? Some people mistakenly think that "liberal democracy" will fix this.

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2. Cultural Breakdown And The Western Case

• Western societies illustrate what, as a result of intense globalisation, happens when this organic bottom-up model breaks down and is replaced by what you might call top-down spectacle and excess. 
• Political leadership increasingly reflects consumerism, financialisation, and cultural fragmentation, rather than shared civic norms; while large-scale immigration accelerates cultural incoherence instead of reinforcing a stable national identity and in-step advancement.
• So is it surprising that politics becomes theatrical and polarised rather than grounded and unifying?

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3. From Community Leadership To Oligarchy

• When a nation no longer draws its leaders from a culturally cohesive people, power tends to drift away from a native people of origin, towards those sections that possess wealth and influence instead. 
• Economic elites fill the vacuum left by weakened communal bonds, using money and media-reach to select leaders who resemble themselves, not the population at large.
• But if leadership now answers to capital rather than culture, whose interests are really being served?

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4. Nation Recast As A Corporation

• The end result is a nation treated less like a shared home and more like let's call it a "managed enterprise". 
• Citizens become customers, cultural inheritance and dissenting viewpoints get cancelled leaving only yes-men, and mass immigration is framed purely in economic terms as pro-growth reducing labour input costs, even while the original social contract holding everyone together gets dissolved.
• So how long can a country survive when identity, loyalty, and continuity are all reduced to economic short-term transactions?

5. Glossary Of Concepts

Elite capture. The interests of the sub-elites take the place of those of the nation as a whole.

Financialisation. Where investment goes into financial products rather than physical, which produces outsized returns for those who own the assets. Aka the K-shaped economy.

Financial products are tradable contracts where returns are generated from what some might call "usury", ie from irreal or financial contracts on real assets, like lending, interest, claims on future income, price movements; 

Real assets. From using PPE (not politics philosophy and economics ;) - property plant and equipment) and commodity-type inputs, to produce real physical outputs ie goods or services, for sale at home and abroad.

In practical terms, financial products include government bonds, corporate bonds, shares, derivatives, and structured products, all of which “turn over easily” because they are paper or digital claims, not tied to slow-moving physical assets. The trouble is success with investment in financial products depends on the endless expansion of the money supply (and empire?), consequent inflation, interest rates (up to suppress inflation risking to crash the economy rather than down to suppress interest on debt risking to crash the value of the reserve currency) and so the value of the reserve currency. 

Triffin’s dilemma. A global reserve currency must supply the world with liquidity, but doing so undermines its own long-term value and stability.

Real and "irreal" or financial assets. Real produce value by being used; financial represent claims on value produced elsewhere, in the future; backed once the gold standard is broken by trust in the government's promise to pay, which depends on growth in the economy and the tax base. 

Hubris and illusion. This separation from the real to the financial explains how, imho, we get detached from the real world and take off into delusional ideas about our omnipotence and perrenity, ie a detachment from the real world compounded by misplaced unwarranted (literally) confidence and hubris.

Large-scale immigration. An immigrant is not defined by separate origin or difference alone; immigration becomes large-scale when cultural inflows, volumes, are both numerically significant and also uninterrupted rather than in waves, overwhelming the host society’s capacity to integrate or assimilate newcomers into a common civic culture.

Also as well as quantitative consider qualitative differences ie how far from the native culture is the culture of the groups expected to a simulate?

Say an annual greater than 0.5 to 1% of a nation's population, and when foreign-born residents rise above 15–20 percent of the total population. At which point studies show that shared norms, language use, and social practices begin to fragment out eventually into conflict, rather than converge and assimilate into unity.

What can be done about this?

Western societies. Those held together by the transatlantic system of alliances and a common or International Rules Based Order with its institutions (which is now caduc).

Social contract. In traditional political philosophy, the social contract is the implicit agreement by which individuals surrender some freedoms in return for security, order, and shared rules under a legitimate agreed-upon authority.

In modern usage, it also includes the expectation that the state will manage economic welfare, equal rights, and redistribution, expanding the contract in terms of freedom from mutual restraint to ongoing provision and entitlement.

Economic machine. Ray Dalio’s model of the economy as a simple system driven by spending, income, productivity, and credit cycles, where debt amplifies short-term booms-and-busts around long-term growth.

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RUSSIA EL DORADO DILEMMA

28 December 2025

It makes sense - that if you can't steal Russian assets, then make deals. 

Russia looks like El Dorado on paper - vast land, huge resources, serious technical capacity.

But profit only works where contracts, courts, and ownership are trusted... In Russia, capital is conditional on politics, and since 2022 that risk has become explicit through forced exits, asset seizures, and sanctions. Western sanctions and payment restrictions make normal business simply impossible. 

Russia doesn't lack wealth, but wealth without rule of law isn’t if you like, bankable.

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1. Russia As “El Dorado” For American Business

Russia looks like a dream market on a map.

• It covers about one sixth of the world’s land surface
• It is rich in energy, minerals, and food.
• Much of this natural endowment remains under exploited
• Important technical skills base
• On paper, this looks like frontier capitalism at scale.

The instinct is understandable.... but so would be the disappointment.

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2. The Resource Case Is Real

Russia’s material base is not a myth.

• Energy. One of the world’s largest producers of oil and natural gas.
• Agriculture. A leading global exporter of wheat and other cereals.
• Minerals. Significant reserves of nickel, palladium, platinum, aluminium, and fertiliser inputs.

These are not optional goods.
They are the physical inputs to industry and an advanced economy and civilisation.

This is why Russia repeatedly reappears in strategic calculations, even after political rupture.

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3. Human Capital And Technical Capability

Russia is not technologically primitive.

• It sustains nuclear, aerospace, defence, and advanced engineering sectors.
• It has deep scientific and mathematical traditions.
• It produces skilled engineers and software developers.

However, technical capability is not the same as investability.

Markets do not run on talent alone, they need rules - law and its enforcement.

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4. The Legal Environment Is The Core Obstacle

This is where the opportunity breaks down alas.

• Predictable courts matter more than cheap skilled labour
• Enforceable contracts matter more than raw materials
• Property rights matter more than projected returns.

On the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025, Russia ranks near the bottom globally.

This is not a moral judgement, it is rather a pricing signal.

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5. Expropriation Is Not A Theoretical Risk

Since 2022, foreign firms have learned this the hard way, As we covered in an earlier post.

• Forced exits
• Compelled asset sales at steep discounts
• Transfers to state linked entities
• Restrictions on dividend payments and capital repatriation.

High profile cases, including disputes involving ExxonMobil, have reinforced a simple lesson.

If ownership is conditional on politics, capital demands a massive risk premium, or it simply walks away.

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6. Sanctions Change The Entire Equation

Even if governance improved tomorrow, sanctions dominate the near term reality.

• Finance is restricted
• Payments systems are constrained
• Insurance and shipping are limited
• Technology transfer is tightly controlled.

US Russia trade has collapsed to a fraction of pre 2022 levels.

This is not normal friction, it is a structural separation.

The rules are administered primarily through bodies such as Office of Foreign Assets Control, and mirrored by EU measures extended by the Council of the European Union.

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7. The “Gateway To China” Argument

In theory, Russia could serve as:

• A resource base
• A low cost energy platform
• A Eurasian manufacturing corridor.

In practice, this logic breaks down.

• China already accesses Russian resources directly, and on strong terms
• US firms operating in Russia would still face sanctions and export controls
• Output aimed at Western markets would be politically fragile.

Geography alone does not overcome geopolitics.

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8. Why Business Did Not Replace War

There is a long held belief that trade prevents conflict.

That belief has limits.

• Commerce works when rules are shared and trusted
• It fails when power and security override profit
• States routinely accept economic loss to pursue strategic goals.

When that happens, companies become instruments, or collateral.

This is not an anomaly, it is history repeating.

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9. What Would Have To Change

A genuine reset would require:

• A durable political settlement accepted by major sanctioning blocs
• A staged and credible sanctions unwind
• Clear restoration of legal protections for foreign capital
• Evidence, over years, not months, that contracts survive political stress.

Until then, boardrooms will treat Russia as rich, capable, and ... unbankable.

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10. Final Judgement

Our framing here is correct.

• Russia is materially wealthy
• It has serious industrial and technical capacity
• It could, under different conditions, be enormously profitable.

But profitability is not enough.

Without trusted law and stable politics, opportunity becomes a trap.

You could say that El Dorado always looks brightest just before the jungle closes in.

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11. Glossary Of Terms

• El Dorado

  • A mythical city of gold. Used to describe an opportunity that appears limitless, but proves dangerous or illusory.

• Rule of law

  • The principle that laws are applied predictably, including to the state, and that courts reliably enforce contracts and property rights.

• Expropriation

  • The seizure or forced transfer of assets, sometimes through legal or administrative means, often with limited compensation.

• Sanctions

  • State imposed restrictions on trade, finance, technology, and payments designed to coerce political outcomes.

• Political risk premium

  • The additional return investors demand to compensate for uncertainty arising from governance, conflict, or policy instability.

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12. References

• World Justice Project, Rule of Law Index 2025.
• FAO, global grain and wheat export data.
• US Census Bureau, US Russia trade statistics.
• OFAC, Ukraine Russia sanctions programme guidance.
• Council of the European Union, sanctions extensions.
• Financial Times and Reuters reporting on foreign corporate exits and asset disputes.

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WE CAN HEAR THE DRUMS, FEEL THE BEAT

21 December 2025

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1. Hearing The Drums

We can hear the drums, but we have not yet found the language to admit what we sense: that WW3 has started.

2. How Modern Wars Are Fought

We know that wars these days are fought through small, continuous, irreversible, escalatory steps, as the gloves slowly come off. It is only at the end that you get negotiation, and even then it is about the logistics of withdrawal rather than initial circumstances and intentions, or strategic “root causes”. I guess Europe is hoping that this will be the same with Russia in Ukraine, but it is very confusing to understand why they should think that, as the Europeans have no will to fight, no money, no military... no means; their only hope is American support but America is withdrawing, America cannot help as it is over extended and under focused and anyway has lost much manufacturing to globalisation.

3. The Elite Bet

Europe’s elite is betting on a Russian defeat, economic collapse or withdrawal. They have to, because the costs of their own defeat and withdrawal are greater than the costs of staying, as it is only the Russian threat that is keeping them together. The propaganda therefore needs to be maintained, so that the peoples of Europe see Putin as the cause of their increasing miserisation.

4. Censorship As A Sign Of Fear

We know that our leaders are genuinely worried, from when they cancel people like Jacques Baud, or try to steal the sovereign assets of another country and finally fail even when the money is in their hands, or are busy preparing a 20th package of sanctions that risk backfiring on us again while strengthening Russia. From our vantage point, our leaders' perception of danger seems an overreaction, incomprehensible even, because we cannot see any real threat emanating from Russia. Indeed, it is almost laughable, what are they so afraid of? Russia has spent four years in the Donbas. It seems so pathetic and yet so serious. We blink and ask again, "Why?". In effect, this lack of proportion creates more confusion in the public mind.

5. Legitimate Fears And Illogical Fears

Having said that, we can understand, though not necessarily agree with, the fears of small border states such as Finland, the Baltic countries, and others - the historic record is scary. But the fears of France, Germany, and Britain? That seems completely out of place. This is the confusing thing: why would these big, rich countries want to confront Russia at all? Where is the need coming from? How could Russia take them over anyway? Why would Russia even want to do this when it is largely self-sufficient and occupies a sixth of the surface of our planet as it is?

6. Geography And History

We know that geography is the fixed element of geopolitics, so we look to history to understand the politics of what is happening today. What was the Crimean War really about? Why did Britain and France support a declining Ottoman Empire? Perhaps what we are seeing today is a continuation of old rivalries, but surely the elite can see that the context is now very different. Reality is, it is a multi-polar world. When power is shared, it means negotiation. You cannot simply dictate terms and send in the carrier fleet. Multi-polar has also meant the pivot of history has shifted to the Pacific rim of China.

7. Realpolitik And Mistrust

Is this realpolitik? Politics driven by economics, finance, wealth and money, power and interest, rather than the proclaimed ethics and values we hear about in the press? If so, that is yet another source of confusion and mistrust in the public mind.

8. Spectators In A Growing Tempest

We are spectators in all this, but when we look to the elite we wonder whether they themselves are in control at all, or whether they are merely victims of history and the machinations of their own self interests. Why are they disrespecting their own values and denigrating their own institutions and internationally-agreed rules? So who really is in control? Does our elite in Europe have any agency over events? This is a legitimate question and a deep source of confusion, because it feels as though no one is in charge anymore and we are all being swept along in a mindless, growing tempest towards war. We sense that this is leading somewhere serious, but we do not know why or where. What we do know, from the language and the tempo, is that war is becoming normalised, maybe it's already started. And that is how confusion turns into anxiety.

AI assisted infographic

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Coming up next, from understanding to explanation...

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THE NEW PIVOT OF HISTORY

20 December 2025

1. What People Mean By Russophobia

Russophobia means fear of Russia that is bigger than the evidence.

People often talk about Russia as if it is always trying to conquer Europe. When you look at history carefully, this fear does not fit the facts very well. Russia has certainly been powerful, but power is not the same thing as wanting to rule everyone else. This gap between fear and evidence is the starting point for understanding russophobia.

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2. What Britain Was Really Afraid Of

Enabling power means helping someone else become dangerous.

Britain was not mainly afraid that Russia would conquer Europe by itself. The real fear was that Russia might help another country do it. Russia had land, people, and resources. Countries like France and later Germany had organisation, technology, and strong armies, but lacked space and raw materials. The worry was that Russia could provide the weight that allowed a continental power to dominate Europe.

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3. Russia And The Centre Of The Map

Pivot of history means the place whose geopolitical position affects everything around it.

This is why Halford Mackinder placed Russia at the centre of his thinking. In his time, Russia sat at the middle of Europe and Asia. Whoever controlled or aligned with this space could change the balance between land power and sea power. Today the centre has moved east, but the idea still helps explain how power shifts.

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4. Russia’s Long Memory Of Invasions

Invasion memory means remembering repeated attacks over centuries.

Russia’s history is full of invasions. Mongols came from the east. Poles and Lithuanians came from the west. Sweden invaded twice. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded in 1812 while trying to dominate Europe. Germany invaded twice in the twentieth century. In many cases, it was easy to enter Russia, but extremely hard to stay. Each time, the human cost was huge, especially for Russians.

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5. What Russia Did After Winning

Intent means what a country chooses to do when it has power.

After defeating Napoleon, Russia did not try to rule France or Western Europe. Russian armies went home. There was no attempt to build a European empire. Russia seemed satisfied with safety and recognition, not domination. This behaviour matters because it shows limits to Russian ambition.

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6. Why Britain’s Fears Kept Growing

Capability fear means worrying about what another country might be planning to do to you.

Over time, Britain worried about many possibilities. Russia might support Germany. Russia might industrialise and become powerful on its own. Russia might spread communism. Russia might block the route to India. Russian railways might strengthen its position as a land power and weaken Britain’s sea power. These were fears about what Russia could become, not what it was actually doing.

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7. Expansion And Buffer Zones

Buffer state means land used to create distance from enemies.

Russia did expand into nearby regions such as Poland, the Baltics, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the ‘stans. These areas touched Russia directly. They created space between Russia and potential invaders. This is different from overseas empires built by Britain or France. The Soviet Union expanded its system, but it did not build a classic colonial empire aimed at Western Europe.

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8. Two Insecure Powers

Security dilemma means one side’s defence looks like attack to another.

Britain and Russia were both insecure. Britain feared losing control of the seas and trade. Russia feared being invaded again. When Britain treated Russia as an aggressor, Russia felt threatened and acted defensively. Each side’s actions made the other more nervous. This led to escalation rather than stability.

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9. The Modern Result

Unintended consequence means results no one planned.

Trying to isolate Russia has pushed it closer to China. Power has shifted eastwards. Europe has become weaker. The main rival of the United States has become stronger. The old centre of the world has moved from Europe towards Asia.

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10. What This Says About Mackinder

Geopolitical legacy means old ideas still shaping new decisions.

Mackinder explained Britain’s fears very well for his time. The problem is not that he was wrong, but that his ideas were treated as permanent rules. When old theories are applied without updating them, they can create the very dangers they were meant to prevent. The mistake is in carrying on with the same old thinking rather than updating and adapting to new experience and revised understanding.

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11. Final Thoughts

Escalation means conflicts grow once they begin. Escalation dominance is about one side that can go further leaving the other behind.

History shows that wars tend to grow until someone clearly loses. Empires that lose major wars never recover their old position. This is simply what the historical record shows.

Question for you: has WW3 already begun?

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12. Glossary Of Key Terms

Russophobia
Fear of Russia that is stronger than reason or evidence.

Pivot of History
A central place that others move around and whose position affects the distribution of global power.

Buffer State
Land used to create distance from enemies.

Defensive Expansion
Growing borders mainly to improve security.

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13. References

Mackinder, H. J., “The Geographical Pivot of History” (1904)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1775498

Lieven, D., Russia Against Napoleon
https://www.penguin.co.uk

Kaplan, R. D., The Revenge of Geography
https://www.foreignpolicy.com

Jiang Xueqin: Chain Reaction Toward World War III Has Begun

https://youtu.be/P5gG9xXBQZE?si=uZDDAmskGqlINXnM

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WHY ARE OUR LEADERS SEEM SO IDIOTIC

17 December 2025

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1. POWER IS ABOUT PRESERVING THE SYSTEM

Yes. Power is about keeping the system alive — the system, the process — never mind the disastrous outcomes it can produce.

Disastrous, because we repeatedly choose incompetents to lead us. We choose comfort, what is familiar, rather than those with technical merit — the experts.

This is something independent thinkers find hard to understand.

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2. WHY DO WE CHOOSE THE WRONG LEADERS

Why do we choose idiots over rational, thinking people to lead us?

The answer lies in what Aristotle called the body politic. He used the body as a metaphor for society. Every part has a function: the brain thinks; the arms and legs act; the organs sustain life.

But most important of all is the heart. The heart sustains the rhythm of the whole. It keeps everything together. That, Aristotle argued, is the role of the politician.

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3. COMFORT, FEAR AND IDENTITY

Most people feel afraid if change comes too fast, if understanding is too radical, or if vision stretches too far ahead.

They want someone who reflects their values, their feelings, their identity back to them. This is how leaders build trust and loyalty.

Leaders themselves are driven by power, wealth, control, and the desire to please — and to manipulate emotion through propaganda.

There is little room at the top for brilliance. It is too frightening. People prefer familiarity, comfort, and leaders with big hearts.

Even highly intelligent leaders must dumb down their messages into the comfort zone of their followers to retain trust and influence.

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4. WHERE THE BRILLIANT MINDS GO

The bigger brains go elsewhere.

Into research and technology, building the things we will need.
Into the arts — the authentic ones — helping us make sense of experience and pushing beyond it.

But these people threaten power. Artists present radical, uncomfortable visions. Innovators move too fast. Thinkers challenge the rules we live by.

You are not going to follow them.

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5. PROPAGANDA AND THE HERD

Safety before truth. Appearance over substance. Feeling before reasoning.

Propaganda is a special form of Aristotle’s rhetoric:

Ethos — the speaker’s credibility and authority.
Pathos — appealing to emotion: fear, anger, belonging.
Logos — logic and data, often selectively applied.

If we are tribal or herd animals, belonging becomes the first rule of survival. Anyone threatening unity with unfamiliar ideas is cast out.

The group votes for safety and stability at the expense of excellence or long-term survival. That, Aristotle argued, is democracy.

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6. IDIOTS AS EMOTIONAL MANAGERS

But perhaps today’s idiots in power are not accidents.

Perhaps they are there precisely because they churn up emotion on behalf of their masters. They create the emotional landscape — values, fears, desires — into which approved messages are poured.

Calling this fake news or misinformation understates what is happening. This is propaganda.

We do not need this kind of leader. We need someone capable of radical rhetoric — capable of persuading us to accept transformative solutions to long-term decline.

The West is in decline. History is repeating itself — Rome, Spain, Holland, Britain. Instead we get emollient solutions that satisfy donors, distract the crowd, and soothe emotions while leading us towards collapse.

These leaders dampen reality, dampen anger, distract attention, and manufacture unity.

That is their function.

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7. TRUMP AND THE QUESTION OF A SCRIPT

In Trump’s case, the challenge is real.

He is expected to sell a long-term vision — largely shaped by Steve Miran and Scott Bessent — both to the public and to entrenched neocon elites.

He must inspire and transform. So far, that remains uncertain.

Is Trump an actor on the stage?
Is he part of the Entertainment Division?

And if so — who is writing the script?

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WILL IT BE WAR OR PEACE

5 December 2025

Rome, Spain, the Dutch and Britain fought to the end for their currency and their supremacy. Talks in Moscow hint at something different: cooperation instead of confrontation. If true, Ukraine may be the last war of the old Order, not the first war of the new.

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WHY IS UKRAINE STILL FIGHTING - HASN'T IT LOST THE WAR

Why is Ukraine fighting to the last Ukrainian?
This post explores whether the answer lies not in nationalism alone, but in power: specifically the power that flows from the dollar as reserve currency and the hegemonic status this confers on America.

To have your own currency as global reserve is "the exorbitant privilege", as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called it back in 1965:

• the world needs your dollars

    > you get lower interest rates

• you can run permanent deficits

    > import more than you export

    > consume more than you produce

    > fund it all simply by issuing IOUs (Treasuries)

• you get geopolitical leverage

    > freeze / confiscate reserves of others

    > cut countries off from finance

    > weaponise clearing systems

• Global profits / savings flow into your assets:

    > spiking demand for your treasuries, bonds, equities and real estate, pusing up asset values

   > keeping U.S. financial markets deeper, more liquid, more stable  

   > ie American assets structurally bid higher

Reality is, the US taxes the world. It swaps paper, digital entries, IOUs - promises that cost it nothing and that it will never repay - for real goods and services. But it is a poisoned chalice and one that America will one day fight and die for, unless, unless it can negotiate a way out

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1. STATEMENTS FROM GERMAN LEADERS

Annalena Baerbock, the previous German Foreign Minister, said, “I will put Ukraine first no matter what my German voters think or how hard their life gets”.

The new German Foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul, said, “Next week Russia either bows… or we enter the war directly. And if it turns into a world war then let it be for Ukraine”.

No surprises, nothing new, expect WW3, and remember what the Americans did to the Japanese in the last one.

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2. THE IMPERIAL PATTERN

Every empire has fought to preserve its currency as reserve for trade and save, and to defend its hegemony.

Rome, Spain, the Dutch, Britain.
All died fighting.

But there is still time, still hope.

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3. A POSSIBLE BREAK IN THE CYCLE

Despite this historical pattern, something different appears to be happening.

There were five-hour meetings between Trump’s envoy Steve Wytkoff and Vladimir Putin himself; held in parallel with Russia's and China’s foreign ministers, Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi, as far as I can understand at the same time in Moscow.

This suggests that the three major powers are talking about cooperation rather than confrontation, and incidentally sidelining European governments who maintain their hysteria and self-inflicted decline.

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4. A SHIFT IN POWER

Can we say that power is moving, but not along the lines of the old imperial playbook?

There are many posts here on this script describing the phases in the life of any Empire. Perhaps this time will be different and the optimist will be right for a change.

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5. A COORDINATED SETTLEMENT

If Washington, Moscow and Beijing are ready to discuss a coordinated security treaty (think Helsinki 1975 that Glenn Diesen who often discusses this) and on economic issues (think Keynes’ bancor), then the old EndOfEmpire phase may be re-written.

Instead of a catastrophic currency-defence war, we could see a negotiated transition to a new global Order.

Europe risks being sidelined by its own dysfunction unless there are honest re-elections this year.

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6. A RARE POSSIBILITY

History does not often give empires a peaceful exit.

Western propaganda says Britain handed over peacefully to America, but that is almost completely untrue.

How the US bankrupted Britain

Still, could this moment contain the ever-so-faint possibility of exactly that?

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7. WHY UKRAINE FIGHTS TO THE LAST

As to why the Ukrainians will hang on to the end in the face of doom, gloom and total destruction, I am not sure the answers given in the alternative media are enough.

I think the fundamental issue is power, and the power that flows from the dollar as reserve currency, and the hegemonic status this confers on America. And the Western elite triad has through blackmail and bribery - call it soft power if you prefer - bought in the authorities everywhere it sets foot.

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NOTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND HERE'S WHY

NOTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND HERE'S WHY

When states can no longer manage migration, equality, or the expectations of their own citizens.

In this article, we shall look at point 4 on  migration.

Uncontrolled immigration is not the cause of imperial decline but the symptom of a deeper sovereign exhaustion – when a state can no longer sustain its own population, enforce its own rules or align its elites with the national interest, the borders fail and the empire begins to unravel.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

When empires reach their late stage, the metropole still shines with wealth, but only because it has drained the periphery. And so people will move towards the light... just as that light is  beginning to fade. 

 

But uncontrolled immigration is not an isolated policy failure. It is a classic sign of late-stage empire: a state that can no longer police its frontiers, define its identity or align its elites with its population. From Rome to the Ottomans, from Britain to the US and EU today, border failure emerges precisely when institutions weaken and social cohesion fractures. It marks the passage from decline to breakdown, the final indicator that an empire has lost control of itself. 

This post is one of a series in EndOfEmpire Collapse - contrarian, evidence-based, sceptical of official narratives.

Key terms:
metropole = the imperial centre.
periphery = the regions supplying labour, resources, or taxes.
demographic fracture = a breakdown in population balance, identity and cohesion.

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2. THE CORE ARGUMENT

Uncontrolled immigration is not a policy mistake. It is a universal symptom of late-stage empire decline, a sign that the centre has lost control of its borders, its identity, and the trust of its own citizens.

Across Rome, Byzantium, Habsburg Spain, the Ottomans, Britain and today’s West, border failure appears exactly when institutions are exhausted and social cohesion cracks.
It marks the passage from decline to breakdown.

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3. DEMOGRAPHIC FRACTURE: THE FINAL INTERNAL UNRAVELLING

3.1 Population Out of Balance

• Ageing societies.

• Falling birth rates.

• Labour shortages.

• Rising dependency ratios.
  These create pressure for low-cost migrant labour before the state is ready to absorb it.

3.2 Social Dislocation

• Too few workers supporting too many dependants.

• Inequality deepens.

• Elites retreat into wealth bubbles and delusional imaginings
  King-Canutian thinking without the humility. 

• Ordinary citizens feel abandoned or deceived.

3.3 Institutional Retrenchment
When the state loses border control, it turns inward:

• policing speech,

• controlling narratives,

• projecting ideology instead of capacity.

This is not a snap collapse, it is the slow unravelling of any shared purpose.

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4. THE EMPIRE CYCLE

Every empire since the Romans and probably before have followed the same macro-sequence:

dominance → overextension → deficit spending → currency debasement → inflation → loss of confidence → collapse

No empire escapes the brutal maths:

• You cannot spend more than you earn.

• You cannot print prosperity.

• You cannot debase your currency without debasing your power.

Immigration breakdown is one dimension of this same decline process, alongside debt overload, money-printing, and the flight to hard assets.

"Debase" is to dilute or lower the quality of the currency by cutting the gold or silver content with base metals.

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5. WHY LATE-STAGE EMPIRES EXPERIENCE UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION

5.1 The Gravitational Pull of the Metropole
Even in decline, the imperial centre remains richer, safer and more functional than its surrounding regions.
People from the periphery - impoverished by war, extraction, and collapsing trade - move towards the metropole’s remaining prosperity.

5.2 Extraction and Return Migration
Empires strip the periphery of value: minerals, labour, energy, crops, taxes, artworks, profits.
Over time this hollows out vassal economies, causing outward flows of people seeking opportunity, welfare or protection (from warlords, authority has already collapsed) at the centre.

The metropole drains the periphery economically, then goes on to absorb its people demographically.

5.3 The Labour Needs of a Declining Core
Decline creates:

• shortages of domestic workers at affordable wages,

• stagnant productivity as debt, interest and financials overtake production,

• rising fiscal costs.
  Cheap migrant labour becomes a political necessity to sustain consumption and inflate GDP figures (even as GDP per capita stagnates).

5.4 Diverging Interests

• Elites benefit: cheaper labour, ideological signalling, political blocs.

• Ordinary citizens bear the costs: lower wages (inflation & purchasing power), weaker services, cultural disruption and conflicts.

When the centre can no longer align its elites with its population, when it doesn't know who it is or who it represents, border control collapses by default... there is nothing you can do about this and there is no reason to "get emotional" about it, it is just a fact of life.

5.5 Nothing Stops Immigration Except Imperial Collapse
This is the harsh historical reality:
Immigration stops only when the metropole itself becomes poor, unstable or unattractive enough for migrants to leave. Migrants were never much interested in the metropole, the indigenous core people (eg The Etruscians of Rome) has probably already fled, the migrants just move on and won't be missed.

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6. THE HISTORICAL PATTERN

6.1 Rome (3rd–5th centuries)
Migrating populations crossed the Rhine and Danube as Rome lost cohesion.

6.2 Byzantium (11th–15th centuries)
Turkish tribal migration into Anatolia overwhelmed weakened institutions.

6.3 Habsburg Spain (17th century)
Demographic decline + foreign labour reshaped social structure.

6.4 Ottoman Empire (19th century)
Continuous Balkan/Caucasus inflows during administrative exhaustion.

6.5 British Empire (1945–1970)
Post-war economic decline, Suez + rapid immigration → deep political fracture.

6.6 United States & Western Europe (2000s–present)
Sub-Saharan > Mediterranean > European (Italy, Greece...) flows, US southern border crisis, and EU overload - all these challenges, coming at a time of institutional paralysis (eg Chancellor Mertz of Germany complaining that Hungary's Orban has "no EU mandate to talk to Putin".

The rule:
When an empire loses control at the centre, it loses control at the edges.

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7. STRUCTURAL REASONS (WHY IT ALWAYS HAPPENS)

7.1 Administrative Exhaustion
Border systems fail when institutions lose discipline and capacity.

7.2 Economic Distortion
Elites need cheap labour; declining productivity and labour-force encourage open-door incentives.

7.3 Moral Disarmament
Declining societies lose confidence in their identity and are unable to define membership (who belongs and who doesn't).

7.4 Elite-Mass Divergence
Winners: the elite and corporate sectors.
Losers: native workers, public services, social cohesion.

7.5 Global Turbulence
Wars, climate stress, and collapsing regions send waves of migration towards wealthy, declining empires.

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8. CONSEQUENCES FOR WELFARE, WAGES, INFLATION AND GROWTH

8.1 Welfare Strain

• UK: 8 million “economically inactive” adults (16–64).

• One-third entirely off-grid altogether.

• Two-thirds on benefits.

• Health-related claimants up from 2.5m (2019) to 3.5m (2024).

• Fiscal cost: £35 - 40bn per year, rising 10% annually (DWP 2024).

8.2 Wage Pressures
A reduced domestic workforce pushes wages up, but not productivity, thus fuelling inflation and a wage-spiral.

8.3 Service Overload
Healthcare, housing and education systems absorb the pressures of population growth without there being any or little matching infrastructure expansion.

8.4 Drag on Growth
Debt and printing expands to fill the holes in the unproductive side of the economy. Labour shortages + welfare and interest costs + low investment and productivity, act as a brake on expansion.

This is the three-sided trap of late empires:
high welfare, low capacity, rising immigration.

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9. SUMMARY

Uncontrolled immigration is not the cause of imperial decline - it is the symptom of a deeper sovereign malaise: demographic aging, social fracture, administrative exhaustion and loss of national confidence. From Rome to Britain to the contemporary West, border failure begins when the state can no longer sustain its own population, enforce its own rules or align its elites with the public ("national") interest. As the metropole hollows out economically and morally, it pulls in labour from the periphery, even as it loses cohesion at home. Nothing stops the flow except the eventual collapse of the imperial system itself.

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10. REFERENCES & LINKS

• DWP, Benefit Expenditure Tables 2024–25

• ONS, Labour Market Overview (Oct 2024)

• IFS, Long-term Sickness and the Labour Market (2024)

• Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

• Ray Dalio, The Big Cycle

• Empire collapse explainers:
  https://youtu.be/ks8YCtUd26s
  https://youtu.be/dImRqE8y9wo
  https://youtu.be/Zl6Y362ld5M
  https://youtu.be/OpUI9GM5714o

• Colonel McGregor (immigration dynamics):
  https://youtu.be/dZdnC1btS4M

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HUNGARY V THE BRUSSELS ELITE

27 November 2025

This is a Hungarian-government-backed anti-EU, anti-Ukraine poster, from the streets of Budapest. Hungary under Orbán has been running a continuous campaign saying:

- “Brussels” wants to force Hungary into war

- The EU supports sending more weapons

- The EU / NATO will require conscription

- Supporting the regime in Kiev will raise taxes

Keep in mind also that the Hungarian opposition is “pro-war".

INTERPRETATION

Interesting poster. It’s classic political messaging, but you can see why it works: it taps into what ordinary people actually feel.

Nobody wants war, nobody wants conscription, nobody wants higher taxes, and most people don’t buy the idea that Ukraine is some innocent victim without a long history of provoking Russia and its Russian people behind it... backed btw by Western elites with taxpayers' money. 

Orbán’s government understands that mood better than Brussels does, it's just common sense in fact. Whether you agree with him or not, he’s representing the interests of his people - and probably European peoples in general - as opposed to the interests of European elites.

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THE FINANCIAL EMPIRE BEHIND PROJECT UKRAINE

25 November 2025

THE FINANCIAL EMPIRE BEHIND PROJECT UKRAINE

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PREVIEW

Ukraine is no longer a story of values or sovereignty. It has become the centrepiece of Western financial exposure, where banks, hedge funds and other shadow investors fight to protect their positions while Europe pays the human and economic price. Beneath the rhetoric of democracy lies a hard reality of asset capture, elite self-preservation and geopolitical servitude – all wrapped in moral language designed to keep ordinary Europeans quiet.

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1. WESTERN FINANCIAL EXPOSURE IN UKRAINE

Ukraine has become a huge arena of Western financial exposure. American shadow banking – hedge funds, private-equity firms and high-risk investors – have poured money into Ukrainian assets for years, dating back to the beginnings of America’s financialisation in the 1990s.

The primary political motivation now appears to be the defence of these financial positions, the containment of Russia for geopolitical reasons, and the private interests of a corrupt elite. It is certainly not concern for Ukraine’s or Europe’s welfare.

A recent precedent illustrates this clearly. When Argentina faltered, Bessent and others surreptitiously backstopped Argentinian government bonds with billions. Bessent injected roughly $20 billion of taxpayers’ money into Argentinian treasuries simply to restore the value of portfolio managers’ bond holdings. Ukraine is the latest version of this pattern.

Argentina. Canada. Greenland. Venezuela. All examples of attempts to bolster Western balance sheets with new assets used as collateral for further debt extension.

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2. THE CORPORATE-FINANCIAL COMPLEX AND PROJECT UKRAINE

The corporate-financial complex tied into “Project Ukraine” knows that if the whole structure collapses, they will face enormous losses, political disgrace and possibly criminal scrutiny. Some may even fear for their lives. Worse still - some may even lose their money.

The stakes are existential. This explains the unusual fervour and the refusal to consider negotiation or strategic pause.

Anyone with a basic grasp of global finance can see the alignment. Western policy maps almost perfectly onto Western investor exposure.

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3. EUROPE AS A FOLLOWER, NOT AN ACTOR

European leaders have become followers rather than actors. They take their line from Washington. Washington takes its line from the interests of its financial sector, the military-industrial-congressional complex and the shadow-banking world surrounding it.

Europe therefore marches dutifully behind, offering yet another multi-billion package and a 20th wave of sanctions. Not from national budgets – they are empty – but from the seizure of Russian assets, a move likely to be reimbursed by European taxpayers once court challenges succeed.

It is a fiscal illusion with very real consequences for ordinary people.

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4. THE RHETORIC OF VALUES AND THE REALITY OF ASSET CAPTURE

All the familiar moral language is repeated. Democracy. Sovereignty. Freedom.
But the rhetoric rings increasingly hollow when weighed against actual strategic and tactical behaviour.

The United States has made no secret of its desire to acquire or control distressed foreign assets. Canada. Venezuela. Greenland. And now Ukraine. Asset capture dressed as moral duty.

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5. EUROPE BEARS THE HUMAN AND ECONOMIC COST

Europe is paying the price.

Young Europeans are dying.
Refugee flows destabilise neighbouring states.
Germany is rearming and piling on unsustainable debt.
Industrial output falls under the weight of sanctions and energy prices.
Western taxpayers are liable for hundreds of billions that could have modernised their own societies.

Within Ukraine, corruption continues uninterrupted. Large portions - sometimes as much as a third - of Western aid are diverted or simply disappear. This is apparently an acceptable haircut ... acceptable to the donor governments but probably not acceptable to the taxpayers, who - if fed the truth - would not and increasingly don't want this.

Meanwhile, as the flagrant corruption is sniffed out, Ukrainian oligarchs race to Tel Aviv rather than defend their own supposed homeland.

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6. NEO-COLONIALISM, NOT VALUES

France, Germany, the EU institutions and the UK have aligned themselves with this strategy.

One word captures it: neo-colonialism.
Not the old colonialism of boots and flags.
A financialised form where states become platforms for asset extraction and geopolitical leverage.

Measured against the EU’s founding values – Peace, Prosperity, Solidarity – the contradiction is grotesque.

What we see instead is:

– preservation of elite financial interests
– defence of hedge-fund exposure and sovereign-risk positions
– protection of the Western monetary system
– political alignment with Washington whatever the cost to Europe
– self-interest wrapped in moral language

Euch!

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7. THE FINAL TRAGEDY

Ordinary Europeans are told this is about democracy and self-determination.

But the real drivers are prosaic:
money, alignment, protection of entrenched interests.

The tragedy is that Europe – once capable of independent strategic thought – has surrendered its autonomy to actors who do not represent European citizens and do not care about their future. They do not even care about the welfare of their own populations. They care only about themselves.

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The Western war profiteers are panicking at the prospect of a peace in the proxy war on Russia via Ukraine.

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POWER AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL PIVOT OF HISTORY

31 October 2025

THE GEOGRAPHICAL PIVOT OF HISTORY

Background

Let's get under the skin of these global power players - such as the neocons - and feel where they are coming from. 

The fundamental number one essential idea that we must understand before everything else is that the battle is about global sovereignty. Sovereignty, power, is primordial because no one wants to have a boss and be told what to do - instead if it is you the global sovereign then it is you that sets the rules for everyone else and if it is not to you then you have to follow someone else's rules at the expense of your own interests. The elite got there because they are - unlike most of us - interested in pure power, control and setting the rules and agenda for others to dance to.

Summary

Over one hundred years ago, Halford Mackinder warned that control of the Eurasian landmass would decide the fate of global power. Today, as land powers rise and maritime empires weaken, his warning feels prophetic. The West still believes it commands the seas — yet it is strategy, not geography, that has changed the game.

From Greater Europe to Greater Asia

1. The Central Idea

• Geopolitics means the study of how geography shapes this power - political power to decide who gets what in the carve up.

• Mackinder’s focus was Eurasia — the vast continent linking Europe and Asia, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the Arabian Sea.

• His principle was blunt - who controls Eurasia controls the world. It goes like this:

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island commands the world."

• For centuries, this single geographical fact has driven the rivalries that defined power and global history.

2. From Silk Road to Sea Power

• Ancient Eurasia was connected by the Silk Road - decentralised land and sea routes carrying ideas, culture, and goods.

• The Mongols were the last to keep that system open. Its collapse in the 14th century gave way, two centuries later, to a maritime revolution.

• European explorers - Magellan, da Gama, Díaz - linked continents by sea, creating a new power system centred on ports and maritime choke points.

• Maritime trade could be monopolised; land trade could not. And with the Industrial Revolution, European powers gained the technology to dominate both commerce and colonisation. Financial was the third source of British power.

3. Pax Britannica: The First Global Sea Empire

• By the 19th century, Britain had defeated France and Napoleon, establishing Pax Britannica, a century of peace enforced by naval supremacy.

• The Royal Navy’s control of global routes was the backbone of world order, later inherited by the United States.

• Yet during this same period, Russia’s push through Central Asia exposed Britain’s vulnerability: sea power alone could not control the interior of Eurasia.

• The 19th-century Great Game. This was the long duel between Britain and Russia over Central Asia that ended with Afghanistan as a buffer state. But the Trans-Siberian Railway soon gave land power a new reach from Moscow to the Pacific.

4. Mackinder’s Warning

• In 1904, Mackinder presented The Geographical Pivot of History to the Royal Geographical Society.

• His warning: the industrial age and the railway had erased the sea’s monopoly. Land powers could now move armies, goods, and ideas across Eurasia faster than fleets.

• His famous formula: Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World.

• For the British, and later the Americans, this became strategic gospel.

5. From Empire to Containment

• The United States adopted Mackinder’s logic after 1945.

• National Security documents from 1948 onwards spoke of preventing any single power from dominating the Eurasian landmass.

• America’s answer was to control the maritime periphery ie Europe in the west, Japan and the island chains off China in the east. This is a belt of bases and alliances known as “containment.”

• The logic was simple: keep the Heartland divided: prevent Russia, Germany, or China from uniting.

6. The Eurasian Response

• Russian thinkers such as Savitsky proposed an alternative: cooperation across the continent instead of division from the sea.

• The tragedy of Russia, they said, was pretending to be a Western maritime power. Its natural destiny was continental.

• After the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow still turned West, hoping for a “Greater Europe.”

• Washington, however, pursued the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992), declaring that no rival, friend nor foe, should ever rise again in Eurasia. Even allies like Germany or Japan were viewed as potential competitors.

7. America’s Grand Chessboard

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, advisor to several presidents, refined the doctrine in The Grand Chessboard (1997).

• US dominance, he argued, required keeping Eurasian powers divided and dependent on American security.

• Hence the modern alliance blocs: on one side dependent vassals, on the other contained adversaries.

• Russia, weakened, became what Brzezinski called a “geostrategic black hole.” If it resisted, it should be broken into smaller regions.

• Simultaneously, Washington launched its own “Silk Road” projects : pipelines and corridors designed not to unite Eurasia but to sever Central Asia from Russia and China.

8. The Eurasian Turn

• Around 2014, the pattern began to break.

• The coup in Ukraine ended Moscow’s hopes for a shared European order.

• Meanwhile, China lost faith in the US-led global system and launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a 21st-century Silk Road linking continents by land, sea, and fibre-optic cable.

• Russia, turning east, joined with China in what Mackinder would have called his worst nightmare: two continental giants, side by side, building infrastructure, banks, and trade routes beyond maritime control.

9. Multipolar Eurasia

• The new projects - BRI, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and BRICS - now link much of Asia, West Asia (the Middle East), and parts of Africa.

• The International North-South Transport Corridor connects Russia, Iran, and India. The Northern Sea Route along the Arctic shortens Europe-Asia trade and is outside US naval reach.

• From South Korea to Turkey, nations are aligning around practical cooperation. No one power can impose terms; interests must be harmonised for land powers.

• The logic has shifted from hegemony to multipolarity: shared power, regional balance, pragmatic trade.

10. The Western Dilemma

• The West still clings to the illusion of control.

• Freezing Russian funds, sanctioning Chinese tech, and weaponising finance have only convinced others to seek alternatives.

• The result is self-isolation: the more coercive the system becomes, the faster partners look east.

• What once was an empire of sea routes is becoming "an archipelago of fear".

• Mackinder’s law endures: geography does not care about ideology.

11. A Realist’s Reflection

• I want the West to survive, but survival demands adaptation.

• Our elites cling to narratives that made sense a century ago; today, their arrogance blinds them to a world no longer theirs.

• Multipolarity is not collapse; it’s correction. Yet our refusal to accept it will turn adjustment into breakdown and collapse.

• As Machiavelli warned: Men see things not as they are, but as they wish them to be ... and they are ruined.

12. The Asian Future

• Dostoyevsky wrote: “Russians are as much Asiatic as European... It is time to turn away from ungrateful Europe; our future is in Asia.”

• That line now feels prophetic. The West’s contempt has pushed the centre of gravity eastwards.

• The new Silk Roads - routes, railways, data cables, pipelines - are already remapping the world.

• We are watching the end of five centuries of sea power and the rebirth of the land.

Glossary

• Geopolitics – how geography shapes power and policy.

• Heartland – Mackinder’s core of Eurasia, from Eastern Europe to Siberia.

• World-Island – the joined continents of Eurasia and Africa.

• Multipolarity – distribution of power among several centres.

• Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – China’s global infrastructure and trade strategy.

• INSTC – International North–South Transport Corridor (Russia-Iran-India).

References

• Halford J. Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History (1904).

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1997).

• “Defense Planning Guidance” (1992) – Wolfowitz Doctrine.

• US National Security Strategy (1988).

• Official papers on BRI, AIIB, and INSTC (2013–2015).

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END-STAGE EMPIRES ARE RUN BY THEIR BANKERS

29 October 2025

Bessent steps in to protect profits of friendly investors.

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FINANCIAL RESCUE AS IMPERIAL OVERREACH

The strange case of an American Treasury Secretary covering massive hedge fund losses with public money.

Bessent, Argentina, and the American Taxpayer.

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1. Story – The Bailout Nobody Asked For

Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary and long-time Wall Street insider, has brokered a US$20 billion rescue swap with Argentina.
Officially, it’s designed to stabilise a struggling emerging-market partner.
In practice, it protects U.S. hedge funds - notably BlackRock, Pimco and Fidelity - from heavy losses on their Argentine bond positions.

Bessent’s history with these hedge funds goes back decades. Many now see this as a bailout for his old financial friends, not a policy in the interests of the American taxpayer, who shoulders the inflationary and fiscal costs.
Argentina’s inflation, at over 250%, and its looming debt repayments make this a highly risky commitment of U.S. backing.
(Buenos Aires Times source)

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2. Context – Empire’s Financial Reflex

This episode illustrates a deeper trend in late-stage empire economics:
- The financial and political centres of power have fused
- Wall Street gambles abroad, and when those gambles fail, Washington steps in.

Rather than allowing markets to clear the mess themselves, the imperial centre props up its own capital class, diverting public money away from domestic renewal.
This is not new — it is a recurring pattern in end-of-empire histories.
The centre protects capital flows outward, while the periphery remains indebted and dependent.

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3. The Moral Hazard Machine

Such rescues create what economists call moral hazard:
- investors take reckless risks knowing they’ll be saved

- taxpayers face austerity measures (cuts in services) and/ or tax rises, to cover bailouts.

The results are predictable:

• Resource diversion - tax and Treasury support flow to global finance, not to Main Street

• Accountability collapse - bailouts happen and the press gives out diplomatically worded cover stories (aka propaganda) to keep us on board
• Erosion of legitimacy - meanwhile, ordinary citizens are not stupid and know very well when elite speculation has gone wrong.

How is it possible to reform a financial system when the stability depends on shielding the same insiders who caused the instability in the first place? ... reform becomes impossible.

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4. End-of-Empire Paradigm

Historically, empires in decline exhibit three common traits:

1. Finance captures the state - public institutions serve private capital
2. Financial overreach - production is outsourced to vassal states, but instead of profits being reinvested into (real) resources and further productive capacity, they are put into financial (paper) assets like treasury bonds and stock markets and property 
3. Legitimacy loss - citizens sense the rules no longer apply equally - asset prices inflate for the rich, while High Street prices inflate for the remaining 95+%.

Bessent’s Argentina deal shows an imperial centre spending its dwindling credibility to protect its own network ie a short-term fix that further deepens long-term fragility.

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5. Outlook - When Empires Become Credit Lines

This is what happens when finance replaces industry as the core of power. The global trade reserve status of the dollar gives America and its financial class immense power as we see in this case, but is also the cause of its undoing.
An empire once built on production and innovation now survives by extending credit (printing)  to others and to itself - it monetises its debt ie borrows more and more at the short end and prints money to cover the mounting interest payments and debt rollover repayments.

Such cycles always end the same way:
the financial core overextends, confidence and trust erodes, the bailouts become bigger, the taxpayers angrier, the legitimacy thinner, until the system collapses under its own weight.

What does "collapse" look like?

At each deal like this one, policy-makers push the can a little further down the road, saving the system temporarily... but only for themselves.

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References
• Buenos Aires Times, “Bessent steps in to protect profits of friendly investors in Argentina” (Oct 2025)
• Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order (2021)
• Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987)

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When Empires Bail Out Their Financiers, short term stability leads to chronic fragility.

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