Force Majeure: another wrecking ball?

 

Belle Carter at Natural News (& reposted at Discern Report), introduces another likely wrecking ball coming to your neighborhood:  force majeure.  Back in the day, when part of my job was negotiating contracts, a force majeure clause was always one of the standard provisions.  At that time, force majeure would have been described as:

In business circles, "force majeure" describes those uncontrollable events (such as war, labor stoppages, or extreme weather) that are not the fault of any party and that make it difficult or impossible to carry out normal business. A company may insert a force majeure clause into a contract to absolve itself from liability in the event it cannot fulfill the terms of a contract (or if attempting to do so will result in loss or damage of goods) for reasons beyond its control.

In my own professional experience, no contract was ever nullified by force majeure.  But now here’s Ms Carter sounding yet another alarm: 

Back in September last year, the Health Ranger Mike Adams put forward a scenario in which things could end in a global force majeure. This is slowly taking shape now as financial institutions start to crumble.

Finance website Investopedia defines force majeure as a clause included in contracts that takes out liability for unforeseeable and unavoidable catastrophes that interrupt the expected course of events and prevent participants from fulfilling obligations.

The examples cited are natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, as well as human actions like armed conflicts and man-made diseases.

“It means that many financial obligations – potentially including social security, U.S. Treasury debt, pensions, derivatives, commodities paper contracts, industrial deliverables, insurance payout obligations, etc. – would be nullified,” Adams said during the September 12, 2022 episode of “Health Ranger Report.”

“This appears to be part of the ‘Great Reset’ plan to clear out U.S. Treasury debt by ‘defaulting without defaulting’ – i.e. blaming some other great emergency for the cancellation of financial obligations and the wholesale resetting of the global money canvas.” (Related: Global FORCE MAJEURE coming after declaration of World War III – many financial obligations, contracts and pensions will be vacated.)

Stock analyst Marshall Hargrave also pointed out that force majeure, by virtue of not always being 100 percent clear and transparent, generally favors the big guys. . . .

Ms Carter covers related topics, including ownership of precious metals, especially gold, as a hedge.  As noted above, though, force majeure “generally favors the big guys”.  The full article is here.  

And again, if you think this is far-fetched, according to Investopedia, the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic could qualify as force majeure.  

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The Collapse of the Dollar?

 

Steve Kelley cartoon at Townhall

Mac Slavo is not optimistic.  Here’s the opening of his column at DiscernReport:

Know What to Expect:
The Death of the Dollar Is Coming

The death of the dollar is coming and it’s going to hit the American public like a ton of bricks. Once it is no longer the world’s reserve currency, all bets are off concerning the fiat currency, and we should brace ourselves for what comes next.

Obviously, the central banks will need this epic crash to usher in the CBDC (central bank digital currency) which will be a technological slave system of control. But before that, we could see things that could only come out of the movies.

The dollar has not been backed by gold in a long time and its value is eroding. Debt, currency devaluation, massive speculation, massive currency creation, and intentional government incompetence are pretty much guaranteeing a very bad ending. A number of events have happened throughout the years which has jeopardized the Dollar’s standing. The Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) collaboration has gained steam in creating pathways for business and they have begun to totally bypass the U.S. Dollar.

And here’s his advice to everyone:

Here are the things we need to be prepared for according to All News Pipeline, once the ruling class finally puts the final nail in the dollar’s coffin:

1. Bank Runs – people are going to want as much as they can out of their banks even though it’s going to be worthless unless you need some toilet paper. Some will attempt to rush and buy precious metals with their money while they still can.
2. Capital Controls – the masters will ban the slaves from converting their dollars into foreign currencies to try to keep the dollar afloat for a few more days.
3. Inflation – it’ll spiral out of control because the dollar will be worth almost nothing
4. Massive Unemployment – businesses will find it impossible to get parts or supplies from other countries, so there won’t be jobs to do.
5. Empty Grocery Store Shelves – food will be a hot commodity. The shelves will empty as people stock up at the last minute with whatever money they have.
6. Public Riots – all of the above will lead to massive violent public riots. People will be depressed and angry, but most will be still too dumbed down to take it out on the ruling class and bankers who control them like marionette puppets. They will instead, destroy businesses and loot whatever they can.

Make whatever preparations you may need or do an audit of your preps. This is inevitable, even though no one knows the exact day that it’ll happen. . . .

Read the entire column here.  Think this is alarmist and far-fetched?  I would prefer to think that Mr Slavo is wrong.  But what if the price of eggs is just the canary in the coal mine?

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Mark Steyn: America is not "Too Big To Fail"

 

This weekend the inimitable Mark Steyn posted his column as the catastrophic events unfolded in Afghanistan.  It is a depressing read, and as America’s past and present involvements in Afghanistan impact on our “fiscal responsibility”  (a subject within the scope of Tea Party’s mission), I am linking to it.  Mr. Steyn considers not just the Biden administration’s failures, the U.S. military’s failures, Afghanistan and the Taliban, but also larger consequences, for America and across the globe.  Here’s Mr. Steyn’s opening:

To reprise a line from a decade-old column of mine:

Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you're Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you're Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America.

That's the point to remember: if you're an Afghan schoolgirl, today is the fall of Kabul; elsewhere, in the chancelleries of allies and enemies alike, it's the fall of America. Even by their usual wretched standards, the world's most somnolent media are struggling to stay up to speed on the story. Here's the scoop from USA Today:

Taliban's Afghanistan Advance Tests Biden's 'America Is Back' Foreign Policy Promise

You don't say! Did he misread the prompter, or mishear the guy in his ear? "America is on its back", surely?

But don't worry, the world's most lavishly over-funded "intelligence community" is on the case:

Kabul Could Fall To The Taliban Within 90 Days, U.S. Intelligence Warns

Thank you, geniuses. That was Thursday. So it turned out to be well within ninety hours - which is close enough for US intelligence work.

. . .

One of the depressing aspects of the Swamp is that everything becomes a racket - including even your armed forces. Look at that buffoon at top right, the guy who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Thoroughly Modern Milley: that's an awful lot of chest ribbonry for a nation that hasn't won a war in three-quarters of a century. During his recent wokier-than-thou Congressional testimony on "white rage", I wish someone would have asked Thoroughly Modern what they were all for:

Well, this is for Korea... Vietnam... This small ribbon's for the Jimmy Carter helicopters-in-the-desert fiasco, because that went tits up far quicker than it usually takes... Here's the Pentagon Female Empowerment Award I got for introducing Take Your Child Bride To Work Day to Jalalabad... This one's from the Association of Non-Binary Staff Colleges for Most Transitions in a Single Battalion... Oh, and this most recent one is for getting into a Twitter spat over Tucker Carlson...

If you don't have total contempt for Milley and the rest of the brass right now, you're part of the problem.

And here’s a chilling scenario:

America is not "too big to fail": It's failing by almost every metric right now. The world-record brokey-brokey-brokeness manifested by the current spending bills is only possible because the US dollar is the global currency. When that ends, we're Weimar with smartphones. Clearly, Chairman Xi and his allies occasionally muse on the best moment to yank the dollar out from under. If you were in Beijing watching telly today, would you perhaps be considering advancing those plans?

. . .

Click here to read the full column.

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