Many people will remember the Covid policy response as a nightmare involving: reduced access to medical treatment, businesses closures, disrupted schooling and fear generated by Government brainwashing. After the event, it is always worth doing a ‘cui bono‘ (who benefits) exercise to identify who benefited, especially since the hopeless mainstream media have largely failed to do this.
Counterintuitively, the über-wealthy owners of 0.1% of wealth in the United States, increased their net worth by a staggering $6.4 trillion over the 2022-2023 pandemic period. With their net worth growing from $12.1 trillion to $18.5 trillion, a pretty cool $20 million per head for approximately 300,000 people. This outcome is counterintuitive since the lockdowns temporarily wrecked the economy and had a significant negative impact on Government debt, which ballooned due to staggering budget deficits. All things being equal, you would expect stock markets to move lower under these circumstances.
In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of extreme money printing though the stock market exploded and the benefit from this explosion accrued primarily to the über-wealthy, who hold most of the financial assets. Regular folk without significant financial assets tended to get left with the rough end of the stick in the form of elevated inflation. We covered the link between money printing and financial asset values in a previous note (‘Where did the money go?‘), the chart below shows that money printing (red), moves in almost exactly the same way as the size of the wealth owned by the wealthiest 0.1% (blue). Both axes are in trillion (millions of millions).
You could credibly argue that the aim of monetary policy seems to be to prop up the value of the financial assets held by the über-wealthy. Within the group of über-wealthy, gains were not evenly distributed. The world’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, made over $90 billion in paper gains over the first nine months of 2020 due to an increase in Amazon’s share price. A large part of this was thanks to lockdowns, which closed down the bricks and mortar competitors and diverted tens of billions of dollars to Amazon, whose sales growth doubled from around 20% to 40% towards the end of 2020.
Another group which seemed pleased with the lockdowns was that of the social engineers who had since the 1970s wanted to redesign society, including to reduce or even eliminate growth. The Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab co-authored a book, COVID-19:The Great Reset. The book calls for significant parts of the lockdown response to be made permanent; the book’s cover makes clear that he wanted to leverage Covid for the purposes of introducing massive societal change.
They say that you should never let a good crisis go to waste, but what if rather than waiting for a good crisis, some interest groups created or simply exaggerated a crisis?
One thing that has become clear over the recent past is that the über-wealthy have access to enormous lobbying power via their foundations. A large foundation can comfortably spend around $400 million a year on lobbying (philanthropy). As we discussed in our note on green money, the resources of the oligarch foundations dwarf the funding available to regular political parties.
In addition to having access to foundations, the über-wealthy have significant media reach in their own right. This is what several high profile business leaders said in 2020 about the coronavirus:
As we now know, the global infection fatality rate (IFR) was 0.03% for the under-60s: this was not the existential threat that it was made out to be. The fact that Covid was not an existential threat and that the infamous Imperial model was significantly overstated was clear from March 2020, as soon as the Diamond Princess figures came in. Professor Levitt identified that the Imperial model was massively overstated (I was able to help him correct some small errors in the calculations).
We can identify a small group of über– wealthy who on an ex-post basis enjoyed rapid and large increases in wealth as lockdowns favoured their businesses whilst disadvantaging competitors. Furthermore, the eye watering money printing significantly raised the value of pretty well all financial assets. Finally, a group of social engineers who wished to see a “Great Reset” involving reduced consumption also seemed well pleased with lockdowns, the WEF website carried gushing articles about the benefits of lockdowns.
It could be that the quotes above from Schwab, Soros and Gates were alarmist as they were made in the heat of the moment. I was always dubious about this explanation: Bill Gates’s quote was the earliest from February, but the others were later and after actual data were available. These individuals are very wealthy and must presumably be highly numerate and able to accurately assess risks. They would also have access to the best available researchers and sophisticated databases. It feels unlikely that they would get simple ratios significantly wrong, in my opinion.
In any event, a credible case could be made to say that some vested interest groups wanted to see a terrible overreaction to Covid, provided that this was accompanied by enough money printing. It is worth remembering that the pre-existing pandemic response plans explicitly excluded lockdowns as a policy option:
In other policy areas, I have noticed a pattern whereby high profile oligarchs float a policy idea, which subsequently becomes Government policy years later (more about this later).
I am not making accusations, but identifying interest groups that either benefited financially or achieved the policy response that they wanted.
Worryingly, the issue of lockdown effectiveness is being largely ignored, even though Professor Ioannidis et al. have convincingly shown that lockdowns achieved next to nothing. There is a danger that various interest groups are ensuring that this topic is not addressed so that they can repeat lockdowns in the future. Crime requires three elements and we have all three in lockdowns: motivation ($6.4 trillion increase in net worth), method (enormous lobbying resources) and opportunity (venal politicians). Is this too conspiratorial?
Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was an early critic of the Imperial Covid model. He is a founder of the Thinking Coalition, which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach. This article was first published on the Thinking Coalition’s Substack. Subscribe here.
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Good article.
But it seems to me that what the relative failure of Brexit showed is that the EU was just one symptom of the globalism that is deeply entrenched in the whole of the West, with its centre not in Europe, but in the USA.
In fact, from many sources it appears that Britain’s Establishment was, and is, the primary European agent of globalism. Hence the concerted opposition to Brexit, the cheerleading of Britain above all the EU nations for a war against Russia and/or China, and of course the lockstep response to COVID.
Even the claim that Britain was the US “mole” in the EU does not seem implausible to me.
None of this alters the message of the article that “we” need to fight for our liberties, but the “we” needs to be carefully defined as the common people of Britain, rather than the political system, which represents them no more than the EU did.
Britain is indeed the primary agent of globalism, and a lot else I may add.. managed through its ‘good offices’ (sarc) in the City of London. Dare I mention the Rottenchilds et al. There’s a very good reason Britain was called Perfidious Albion..
What is missing here is leadership. It’s not leave or remain, it is the ability to take decisive action rather than politically correct action. One of the few politicians I see with it today is Ron DeSantis. Structures can affect ability to deliver but I do not see any conviction other than to how a message is received in the polls.
Ah.! The rise of the focus group.! People who have no clue, trying to find one in what know-nowts think. Its a poor substitute, but I think we saw during Covid that Government policy was pretty much led by public opinion polls…
Yes and when politicians pander to popularity, playing both sides as circumstance dictates, you get this mess.
But they are not pandering to popularity, they are pandering to the margins.
How popular is grooming and sexualisation of our children, Pride flags, parades, reducing the electricity supply and higher electricity prices, inflation, mass immigration… well a long list?
Public opinion was created by government policy: if the government had been honest about the trivial threat posed by the disease there would have been little support for the extreme policies put in place.
Ron DeSantis is most definitely not his own man despite giving the appearance of being one. No, just like so many others, including Robert Kennedy, he’s firmly under the control of the Zionist lobby..
So far Brexit has brought us COVID jabs a month before other EU countries… and nothing else,
So I would say Brexit so far has been a massive con perpetrated by a bunch of salesmen completely incapable of delivering what they sold.
The economic impact of Brexit has been virtually nothing. Despite the IMF, the World Bank & indeed our very own OBR & BofE consistently predicting that we’ll underperform our peer countries we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low).
EU peers, such as Germany, are in recession, we’re a nano % above it.
None of it’s made much difference. Of course, we’ve spent far more than the promised £350m a week on the NHS & look where that got us.
Covid was an accelerant, we’ve got to the economic state we’re in 10 years earlier than we would otherwise have done. The vaccines accelerate heart problems & possibly cancers. The authoritarian tendency heralded in by Covid nonsense accelerated the imposition of net zero, CBDC & WHO pandemic treaty & the panoply of global restrictions coming down the line.
Brexit has, so far, been a sideshow.
“we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low)”
The chart “G7 real GDP % change compared to pre-pandemic level” in the publication linked below shows a different picture. Comparing Q1 2023 with Q4 2019, UK is -0.5%, Eurozone is +2.2% and USA is +5.4%.
I guess it depends on the start and end dates chosen for comparison. And, as you imply, with the massive intervention of the covid policy measures, it is pretty much impossible to identify cause and effect as regards impact on economic performance.
GDP – International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
Its called BRINO Stewart.. Brexit in name only, they’re still all ‘in it together’ against us plebs.
Well that is true, except that does not devalue Brexit.
Brexit has been a massive con because it has not been enacted. End of.
Except we don’t actually have Brexit yet. So all of the squirming leftists blaming every bit of bad news on Brexit are WRONG. (as usual)
What we do have is many of the negative consequences of Brexit, such as lost trading opportunities with the EU due to being outside the single market.
What we don’t have of course is Ursula Von der Liar.. not that that makes a difference, they’re all equal on the corruption stakes..
The EU is a protectionist Customs Union – it is mercantilist by nature.
You confuse free movement of goods with free market trading.
When a central authority fixes the conditions of trade to exclude market disruptive innovation and technology, to stifle competition internally and exclude it externally, forcing consumers to shop only within it, a near autarkical ‘single market’ exists. That carries no benefit for consumers who have to pay more for ‘access’ to this wundermart, have less choice than otherwise if they were able to trade freely outside it.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. The interest of producers is to be considered only as much as it benefits consumers. – Adam Smith.
The EU is the exact opposite of that truism. Only those who are bonkers can imagine this is desirable.
I don’t understand people who think paying more to consume goods and thus making themselves poorer just in order to be part of an ideological Fascistic club is a benefit to them.
Funny old World.
Absolutely..
That’s not really true.
Selling goods to the EU is now harder as it requires customs procedures and duties that weren’t required before.
Also, British nationals can’t spend more than 3 months every 6 months in an EU country without having to go through some immigration process.
Also, the reverse is true for EU nationals in the UK.
That’s just the ones I’m aware of.
So actually, “Brexit” has happened. I think what you mean is that it has been a gigantic flop, which I would agree with.
We could debate the reasons for that, but I would put somewhere near the top of the list, if not at the very top, is that those that sold us the tale aren’t delivering. I don’t want to hear excuses about the EU not cooperating, or international organisations undermining us, the the globalist elite infiltrating our political system.
They sold us something and they haven’t delivered, They should have had a better plan for delivering. What did they think, that they wouldn’t face some resistance? That everyone would go – oh, ok, off you go then..
It’s been a giant scam by a bunch of stupid, amateurish tossers.
We’ve been governed and administered by remainers since the referendum.
Boris Johnson is not a Remainer. He’s an incompetent twat and a giant bullshitter whose bullshit eventually caught up with him.
Gove is a serpent who stands for nothing but himself as demonstrated by the way he weasels his way into positions with every government, regardless of its policies.
The British public was scammed by those two tossers who in reality couldn’t organise a piss up in a brothel.
And Farage has just washed his hands of the whole thing, He’s given up.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsscotland/brexit-is-biggest-act-of-self-harm-in-history-of-uk-and-it-will-take-decades-to-recover/ar-AA1cUUv9
Not the COVID response? Not the policies of successive governments?
The main achievement of Brexit was highlighting that a) the public cannot always be nudged and b) there will be an endless push to ‘correct’ the public thinking.
The combination of Net Zero, lockdowns/jabbings and population replacement makes Brexit seem like a paper cut in comparison.
Speaking with my Francophile hat on.. many of my French friends are actually envious of Brexit and want Frexit.They say they were stuffed by Sarkozy and the Lisbon Treaty, and as an aside.. absolutely detest Ursula Von de Liar..
Why keep pushing this wretched ‘covid’ thing, you’re inferring there was actually a pandemic. There wasn’t.. it was a hoax, carried on the back of fake PCR testing. Fake like everything else spewed forth by governments, WEF, WHO, UN, and every other Tom-Dick or Mohammed worldwide..
There was no pandemic. Posted yet again the graph below to prove it..
Is that chart for the UK? Please clarify…
Yes.. compiled by the BMJ – British Medical Journal using ONS statistics, and first published here by our own Will Jones..
thanks
Bang on Will.
Britain is suffering from Long EU.
Symptoms: continued authoritarianism; erosion of the Common Law; protectionism; indentured servitude for its citizens; corrupt Uni-Party State; State direction of the economy to benefit cronies; alliance with global vested interests moving toward global governance.
I think we need a vaccine.
I tried to read this. But I’m tired of Brexels with no clue about the actual workings of the EU flaunting their ignorance. Apparently, they don’t have any other properties. Hence again: The EU is a confederation of states and not a federal state and it doesn’t have a government of its own. EU-wide policy decisions are made by the council of representatives of the elected governments of the EU member states and the EU commission is just the head of the EU administration which is responsible for the implementation of these policy decisions. This EU adminstration is also small enough that one could comfortably loose it in a corner of Whitehall and would need to spend some time searching in order to find it again.
What on earth has Brexit got to do with the covid pantomime?
C1984 was magicked up in order to pave the way for the initial wave of cull injections. With that undertaking out of the way the Davos Deviants could move on to Digital ID’s and CBDC and once those are in place the gates can be banged shut and the real depopulation process can begin.
That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Exactly.. well said Hux..
Thanks Will.
While we’re at that: The other fairy tale.
There are no German ambitions for European unification. The German ruling caste, which was forcibly installed by foreign powers who had fought to more-or-less avoidable world wars solely for being able to do that has ambitions to get rid of Germans as people and Germany as their nation state. This is meant to be accomplised by funneling loads and loads of German money into the EU (among other things) with the goal to reduce Germany to nothing but an EU region predominantly populated by a random selection of outcasts from all over the globe.
From my reading of history, not the stuff we get rammed down our throats from school age in the UK, I’d say you make a very valid point. Maybe one day the truth will out. I for one hope it does, and hope again that I’m still around to witness it..
I think the Brexit vote was a rare occasion on which a large number of voters ignored the advice of the establishment. Sadly that didn’t carry through to Covid. We need to be less trusting and more sceptical of the motives of each and every organisation, public, private, national, global. The larger and more global the less trusting we should be.
tof – I thought you accepted that the C1984 was a Scamdemic and if that is the case why are people rambling on about how the pantomime was run?
Definitely a scam, yes, which I think could have been thwarted if people had been more truculent.
Excellent article but……
”Boris Johnson would undoubtedly point to his vaccination programme as the prime example. He moved swiftly ahead while the EU was mired in internal processes” and no mention that it was in fact one of the most unmitigated disasters inflicted upon the British people since WW2. 2,300 plus deaths thousands upon thousands of adverse reactions causing many many life changing injuries including amputations and no proof anywhere (oh except of “the models”) of any life saved. The elephant is still very much in the room even in TDS.