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Feb. 3, 2023 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:36:23
Alex Krainer
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Welcome to the DellingPod with me, James DellingPo.
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Well, special guest Alex Cranor.
Welcome.
Welcome to the Deleon pod.
So Alex, I gathered in our very, very brief chat before we started, I don't like to do chat before because I, you know, it gets wasted on the cutting room floor.
Are you in Monaco?
Yes, correct.
I'm in Monaco.
Right.
Well, I mean, well done for being in a position where you can afford to live in Monaco.
What's it like living in Monaco?
Well, you know, if you asked me this question before the pandemic, I would have told you it's the best place in the world.
I have to say the pandemic ruined it a little bit for me.
But to be fair, the pandemic ruined a lot of places.
So I would say, I've lived in many countries in my life.
I've lived in, you know, in the former Yugoslavia, I lived in Croatia, I lived in the UK, in Venezuela, in Switzerland, in the United States.
And I would say that if you took the overall quality of life, As a measure, I would say that Monaco scores the highest by far.
So there are some advantages and disadvantages to living in Monaco, but I would say that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
So I would give it a big thumbs up.
And, you know, the big way in which the pandemic ruined it for me a little bit is it's a small place, real estate is extremely expensive, and it's extremely difficult, next to impossible, to have like a house with a garden.
And so when we were locked down, you know, being locked down in an apartment with no No garden around your house was not a lot of fun.
On the other hand, you know, the government was a little bit lenient in how they enforced the rules, so we were able to move about, but as you know, The parks for children, the sports parks and terrains, bars and restaurants, it was all closed.
So basically all you could do is walk around and go to the supermarket.
So I hope we never have to live through that again.
But apart from that, I'm very, very happy to be living where I am.
And how, I imagine as elsewhere, the percentage of the population, I mean, you're talking about the super-rich, basically, aren't you?
What percentage of these people are awake, would you say?
Ah, well, you know, that's really difficult to say, because I generally don't have many people in my social circles that are completely clueless.
I would say, from my own personal experience, it's about 50-50.
If I look at the percentage of people that are still going about wearing their masks on their faces, to this day, I would say it's about 1 in 20.
And then, you know, the circle of closer friends, I would say everybody's awake.
And I think that the pandemic helped that a lot, because even among my close friends, they kind of considered me to be a bit of a loopy conspiracy theorist, because I've been a loopy conspiracy theorist pretty much for the best part of the last 20 years, even longer maybe.
So they got used to me having Very strange and unorthodox idea about the state of the world.
But I think that when the pandemic hit, and I was among the people who on day zero said this whole thing is a hoax, and it's never going to be two weeks to flatten the curve.
This is not going back.
They crossed the Rubicon.
They cannot possibly retreat.
They're going to have to go all the way with this.
And, you know, like, first two, three weeks, everybody was like, ha, ha, ha, and there you go with another conspiracy theorist.
And then, actually, some of them finally saw the... I'm just going to kill this call.
I don't know... Sorry.
Go!
Stop it!
How do I...?
Oh, it's on.
Hello?
I'm doing a podcast.
I can't talk now.
Don't call back.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't know how to kill my cool.
Sorry, Alex.
Yeah, no problem.
Anyway, so, you know, some of them saw the light and a few of them actually came back to me and said like, my God, I cannot believe that you were right.
So and then, you know, people who remained strictly attached to their You know, world views that they're comfortable with, you know, at some point you give up because there's no changing their minds.
But I would say that those are in the minority.
Well, so you've made your living out of finance and you're a specialist in trend following.
I'm going to ask you to tell me about that in a moment.
But I'm curious actually.
Has it, knowing what you know and have known for a long time about the true nature of the world, has that given you an edge in your finance or has it just muddied the waters actually?
It hasn't given me an edge in finance so much, but you know the way I found an edge in finance is because one thing I have always done I was born and raised in the socialist regime of the former Yugoslavia.
We had a one-party communist rule, and I guess maybe that kind of equipped me with the default mindset of always questioning the narrative, and always looking at what do systems actually do, rather than what they tell us that they should do.
Because you know like, under the communist government everything was wonderful, everything was awesome, it's only that people were not good enough.
You know, like, nobody blamed the system.
People blamed people for the failings of the system.
And so, you kind of get used to questioning the narrative, to always doubting what you're being said.
And so, you know, like, I went to university like everybody.
I studied economics, which I highly advise against.
If anybody is considering it.
I came out thinking that if I understand the laws of supply and demand and how it affects prices of commodities and securities, that I should be able to be a successful speculator.
And then it took me about all of two years to realize that everything I learned in school was worth absolutely zero in the markets.
And, you know, I explored the problem and I realized that markets move in trends.
And I thought, OK, well, why not just try to figure out what these things are, these trends, and how we can try to capture value from them.
And so that's what I've been doing since 1997.
So what does that put it?
26, 27 years.
Can you just explain briefly what trend-following funds do?
as that put it 20 26 27 years can you just explain briefly um what trend following funds do what what trend following entails yeah okay Okay.
So the concept is dead easy.
It's very simple.
Basically, if you see the price of something go up over a period of time, then you buy it.
If you see it go down over a period of time, you sell it or you sell it short, if you can.
And so basically you do that on the assumption that if something is going up, it's more likely to continue going up than to reverse.
And so, occasionally, well, occasionally, not occasionally, but regularly, it's a regular occurrence in the markets that large-scale price events unfold as trends over long stretches of time that can count weeks, months, and even years.
You know, we had a 40-year downtrend in interest rates across the Western world.
You know, that was a big trend.
But normally, the trends you can exploit span several months to maybe two, three years.
And so you very regularly see this, even with stocks, with bonds, with currencies, with commodities, that when something starts to go up, it tends to continue.
We've seen that with Tesla, with Google, with Nasdaq, with the prices of Bitcoin and gold and so forth.
And so all you do as a trend follower is you constantly position your risk to be able to capture the really large moves, which don't always happen.
So a lot of it is just, you know, like you making small bets, making small losses or small gains.
It's almost, in the past I've compared it to fishing, you know, like you go to the sea every day, you cast your nets, You know that from time to time a large school of fish is going to pass under your boat.
You don't know when that's going to happen.
But what you know is that you have to go out there every day, you cast your nets, and then when the large school of fish passes, then you scoop up a large windfall.
So that's basically what trend following is.
And because you never know which market is going to trend when, Trend followers tend to be very broadly diversified, so they'll have a little bit of risk in energy markets, a little bit in metals, a little bit in stocks, a little bit in currencies, agricultural commodities, and so on.
And generally, you'll target gross returns of, let's say, between high teens and mid-twenties, depending on how aggressive you want to be.
Wow!
Yeah, and I think Well, not that you earn that much every year, you know.
You'll have years when you'll maybe make 50 or 60 percent.
You'll have years when you get kicked in the teeth and you're gonna lose 10, 20 percent.
But I'm talking about long-term average.
You try to be mid to high teens.
And basically that's... What was your worst year?
Oh, my worst year was minus 12 percent.
Right.
And what went wrong?
Oh, basically what goes wrong is that there's no trend.
You know, like, for example, between 2011 and 2019, there were no trends in commodities markets.
Very, very few.
There was a commodity collapse in 2014, 2015.
But basically, that period, if you looked at the commodity prices, they were basically flat.
And then they started trending again in 2020-21.
You know, like oil price went to 140 and gold went to 1900 and so forth.
So this happened.
But there was a very long period where there were no trends in commodities markets.
And I was running a fund which had a very large exposure to commodity prices.
And so basically, I had a negative 12% year.
On the upside, I had positive years that were up to 35%.
I see why you're living in Monaco now.
Which is tax-free, right?
Monaco is tax-free, yes.
Yeah, well done.
Nice work.
Well, thank you.
I've been lucky as well, you know.
There's no denying that luck plays a part in it as well.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
On the rare occasions I read newspapers, I just read them to just laugh at the crap that they're putting out.
And when I go to the financial section, I'm often blown away by the kind of the normie herd instinct which is being Promoted in the guise of financial expertise.
So, for the last few years, I've been reading loads and loads of financial writers saying how, well, you're better off, you know, putting your money in a tracker fund, in a Vanguard tracker fund or similar, because most financial advisors can't beat the market.
So, therefore, you may as well just follow the Follow these tracker funds.
But that can't be right.
I mean, most people are just having really kind of piss poor, frankly, earnings on their investments.
Well, you know, over the period that I was talking about, so let's call it from the start of QE through maybe 2021, they were actually right.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if you had your money in a passive stocks, bonds portfolio, you did okay.
It is also true that most active investment managers, I'm not saying most active, but the largest majority among the active investment managers.
So to distinguish this between the passive ones, the ones that just duplicate the indices, you know, FTSE, S&P, what have you.
The vast majority of them actually do underperform the benchmarks.
And so, you know, we have loads of empirical studies Confirming this, going back 30 years at least.
So basically the situation is that in any given year, about two-thirds of active managers underperform their benchmarks and one-third outperforms.
The problem is that there's a lot of turnover in this one-third of people who outperform.
So, few of them repeat their outperformance year after year after year.
And so when you look at the longer time stretches of like 5, 10, or 15 years, the percentage of underperformers is about 90 to 95%.
So it is actually very true that active asset managers do underperform.
Having said all that, I will also say that, you know, the reason why Passive Investing has been successful for a long time, up until 2021, is that markets just had one long stretch of a bull market, both in stocks and bonds.
I'm mostly talking about the US markets.
And so all you had to do is sit passively with long exposure to bonds and to stocks and you did really well.
The problem is that, you know, like when the interest rates are at zero and stock market stock prices are reached highest levels in 200 years, Well, then you know that the risks are to the downside.
So at some point you have to think about strategic diversifications because you can't just sit passively in super overinflated everything bubble assets and just assume that it's going to keep going up forever.
It never does.
Every asset bubble in history has burst.
So you know that The previous one was going to burst.
And so at some point you have to tell yourself, OK, I have to maybe diversify and go into undervalued asset classes, which at the time very obviously was commodities.
You know, like if you roll back the clock to 2021, commodities were completely in the doldrums.
And they, you know, the ratio of equity prices to commodity prices has reached a 50-year low.
So So that was like a no-brainer, but unfortunately, you were also right that in the financial press, the group thing is just completely cemented.
So it doesn't matter what the asset valuations are, they keep saying the same thing, they keep repeating the same thing, and they don't reverse course until people get hurt.
Yeah, well I'd love to be able to, because I love my viewers and listeners, I'd love to be able to give them some edge and I think a lot of them, they're not very financially savvy and they've probably got sort of money invested in where they've got their pensions and they've got maybe a Stuff in the stock markets, in a fairly conventional way.
But, am I right in thinking, we're due a kind of epic correction of some kind, and you don't want to be, well, you've already said, the markets aren't going to carry on going up forever.
I'm just surprised that the markets are still as high as they are.
Am I wrong here?
Maybe, maybe.
Are you talking about the US markets or the UK?
Well, I see that the UK market is, it seems to be, everyone's tipping the UK at the market because apparently it's relatively underpriced compared to the American market.
Is that right?
Yeah, correct.
It is correct.
And then also I think that there's a Well, you know, about a year ago I made a prediction.
I wrote an article called The Fall of Global Britain.
And just basically looking at the economic imbalances that are besetting the British economy, I predicted that there would be a crash in the British pounds, which has partly happened.
That there would be a crash in the gilts, which has also partly happened.
But that the FTSE probably would rally.
FTSE hasn't rallied much, but it has actually, between the time I made the prediction now, it's about up between 3% and 4%, whereas the Pound and the GILTS did crash.
And the reason why I believe that is because I think that, you know, given the monetary system that we have, And the unpayable debt levels and the government deficits, you're coming into this phase where the syndrome becomes almost predictable.
And that is that the government is going to continue going deeper and deeper into deficit spending, that the market appetite for government debt is going to Basically dwindle to nothing, and that it's going to have to be the central bank, the Bank of England, that's going to monetize debt by printing up the currency.
And so what you get in these conditions is that the interest rates start going up, the value of the bond prices start crashing, The value of the currency begins to decrease, go lower and lower.
And as people lose faith in the currency, and then you have inflation in addition to everything, people start to get rid of their currency.
They don't want to keep pounds in their bank accounts.
And so what they do is they exchange it for any asset they can get their hands on, and usually a lot of the newly printed money ends up in the stock market.
So you get what we've seen in the past in countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe and Argentina and Israel in 1986, where the country goes into this crisis of stagflation, but the stock market just goes Vertical.
So, that's what I think is coming for Britain, for the EU, and for Japan.
But, I think that even the United States will not be able to avoid this fate.
The same fate is coming for the United States.
I only think that the United States is going to be able to push out the horizon, that they're going to be able to kick the can down the road a little bit farther than everybody else.
Right.
So, when we see stock markets rising, it's not a sign of robust economic growth and health, it's actually a sign that things are getting much, much worse, because there's nowhere else to go other than the markets.
Yeah, I do believe so, because otherwise you'd have to believe the Venezuela In 2015 and 2016 had the most successful economy in the world, or that Zimbabwe in 2009 had the most successful economy in the world.
That's clearly not the case.
So, you know, the stock market is always, always a function of monetary inflation.
I don't know why it took me 50 years to figure this out.
I'm 52 years old.
I only worked this out You know, maybe three or four years ago, that basically the correlation between monetary inflation by the central banks and the stock markets, booms and busts, is practically perfect.
And, you know, with data going back a hundred years, so every time the central bank eases, it starts to increase the monetary mass, the stock markets take off.
When they start to tighten, the stock markets crash.
And it's been going like that everywhere and all the time, and it's by far the most significant factor determining asset prices.
You know, like everything else, the P.E.
ratios, the earnings, the whatever everybody's looking at is essentially noise on the margins compared to the activities of the central bank.
So, bigger picture stuff.
What's worrying you most in the world at the moment?
Is it Russia impending war organized by the Deep State or are there other things even worse on the horizon?
I am a bit more worried about the Davos crowd than I am about Russia.
Because I understand what Russia is doing.
You know, Russia has legitimate security concerns and it's dealing with them.
It's dealing with them in a way that Most people do not welcome, but it's dealing with its own security concerns.
I don't believe that Russia is going to go continue on to Poland and Finland and Baltic States and so forth.
But I understand what they're doing.
On the other hand, what the Davos crowd is doing is much more worrisome to me because, you know, we're seeing this mindless obsession with control, with QR passes, with vaccines, with consolidating this, you know, control matrix with 15-minute CDs.
And, you know, they want to dismantle completely air travel.
They want us to eat Insects and they want to completely eliminate the production of red meat.
And I'm not I'm not talking about conspiracies.
I mean, I know that this sounds almost surreal, but like you had.
A very important policy paper is published by seven leading British universities including Oxford and Cambridge and Bath and I don't know all seven off the top of my head but the document's title is Absolute Zero and it's basically saying how by 2030 all but two of the British
Airports will be closed, that by 2050 all of the British airports will be closed, that the consumption of beef and lamb will be completely phased out.
A whole series of these measures, which I don't understand where they want to go with it, But I see that they're implementing them.
I see that it's, you know, like, now all of a sudden you have these 15-minute cities.
Nobody asked for this.
Nobody thought that if only we had 15-minute cities, our countries would be better.
This energy transition, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, We have all kinds of problems appearing in production of food, in distribution channels and so forth.
So, you know, they're really jeopardizing the health and functioning of Western societies.
That's what worries me a lot more than Russia.
Because, you know, the ultimate outcome of everything that they're doing could be starvation, It could be infectious diseases like, you know, we thought we would never have in the past, but, you know, maybe, you know, I'm not talking about COVID, I'm talking about maybe the plague.
So that's what worries me a lot more than, you know, geopolitics at this moment.
Yes.
No, I think we're on the same page Alex.
I share your concerns.
What I meant regarding Russia, I'm not thinking that Russia itself is the problem or Putin is the problem.
I mean that it's clear that elements of the deep state within the US and the UK, well they're one and the same really, are Anxious to provoke a war with Russia.
Already we've sent in, I say we, like these people represent me, they don't.
But unilaterally, these scumbags have decided we're going to give more tanks to Ukraine.
The next thing will be, I think, more air support.
It's clear that Poland is trying to escalate the war.
It's that kind of detail that I'm worried about.
Is that the next step of their plan?
I'm not sure anymore, you know.
I thought so, but I see that they're hesitating.
We had this big thing about the tanks, the tanks, the tanks, the tanks, you know.
You couldn't open the newspapers without something about the tanks.
And then when they finally all said like, OK, you know, we'll give... I think when you add it all up, It comes to about 130 tanks, including at least 30 from the United States, which 100% the United States is not going to honor that promise.
But even if they did, let's say that they gave them the tanks, it's not going to make any difference.
You know, Ukraine had more than 2,400 tanks at the beginning of this war.
And in less than a year, they lost 2,400 tanks, or...
Or, you know, for all practical purposes, they lost them all.
So what's another 130 tanks going to do?
Nothing at all.
We keep getting strung along with, you know, now it's the Javelins, now it's the Stingers, now it's the M777 Howitzers, now it's the Heimars missiles, now it's the tanks, now it's the F-16s.
I think that it's all keeping the narrative alive that the next game-changing weapon is going to enable Ukraine to prevail so that they could kind of get our acquiescence to letting this war fester and continue.
Because I think that the vested interest in the West that are stage managing this crisis have an overriding interest in keeping the war going.
They don't care whether they win, because it's already clear to my dog that they cannot win.
And my dog is dead, by the way.
You know, that's how clear it is.
Sorry to hear that.
No, no, that's okay.
It happened five years ago.
But here's the reason why I'm not particularly worried about World War 3 breaking up for real.
Because I think that the Russian leadership has understood That the most precious gift that they could give to these globalists in the West would be a World War 3.
If they attacked Poland or Baltic States or Finland or, you know, expanded the war across the NATO borders.
Because World War 3 would be extremely handy for them to completely crack down on opposition to, you know, Everything could get swept under the carpet.
You know, like, your healthcare doesn't work?
Well, you know, blame the Russians.
Your pension is worthless?
We're at war.
You can't buy medicine?
You know, we have to support the war effort and the boys on the front, and so forth.
And if you wanted to discuss Whether we should be at war with Russia or not, then you'd be suspected of, you know, you're not patriotic, you're a traitor, you're a Putin puppet and so on.
People, you know, like in those conditions people disappear, you know, you can set up concentration camps, you can disappear large numbers of people, you can make political opposition illegal, you can clamp down on the press more completely, you could Shut down any, let's say, problematic social media platform that you don't like.
So you could consolidate power in the middle of failure of your policies because now there's a big bad enemy that we have to fight.
So I think that the Russian leadership is very well aware of this and they're not going to give them this gift.
Yes, yes.
You're right about the World Economic Forum, which I see as just one head on the Hydra.
I mean, there are many similar organisations, aren't there?
There's the Council on Foreign Relations, there's the Trilateral Commission and so on, and I think it was the Trilateral Commission that spawned the WEF, so it's a kind of... I don't think anyone Where we are, seriously thinks that all the world's ills are the fault of the World Economic Forum.
It's just one institution, one evil institution among many.
But you're right, the WEF has been very clear in some of its statements over the years, where it wants to take us, you know, you will own nothing and be happy, the promotion of eating bugs, all this stuff.
I totally agree with what you're saying.
Is their evil master plan going to plan or has it had setbacks?
No, I think it's not going to plan at all.
I think it's gone off the rails quite a bit.
I think it's a slow motion train wreck.
I believe that the plans are massively over-ambitious.
And even in the best of circumstances, you know, you can have a master plan.
And, you know, you're completely right.
World Economic Forum is just one head of the big hydra.
I think that, you know, if you ask me where the bad boys are, it's 100% it's in the It's the international banking cartel on the City of London, Wall Street axis.
That's where it is and it's a very narrow circle of vested interest that's running the show.
You know, it's one thing for them to bring together all these think tanks and to think up these ambitious agenda.
It's a completely different thing to actually implement the agenda Into something that's operating correctly and that is sustainable.
And.
You know, already, if you look at the whole thing with the pandemic.
And the vaccinations and, you know, the vaccinations were supposed to usher in these vaccine passports that, you know, supposedly you couldn't go anywhere, do anything without being vaccine compliant, which would be initially certified by some QR code that you would have to carry on you.
Well, that just kind of fell apart.
That came apart.
Their big pandemic agenda didn't yield the new normal that they were hoping to have.
We've kind of converged back on the old normal.
It's not entirely old normal, but it's not at all what they thought we would have by now.
And so, with the big exception that they managed to cause an awakening in a large segment of the population, Many more people today do not trust the government, the health authorities, the media, than was the case before 2020.
And then, you know, like their geopolitical agenda, they have this overarching imperative of maintaining their hegemony over the Eurasian landmass.
You know, that goes back to Machina at the beginning of the 20th century.
It's the same thing that has been perpetuated even as the Empire shifted headquarters from London to New York and Washington.
They retained the same agenda of maintaining their dominance over the Eurasian landmass.
And so they were extremely keen to prevent any power, or especially a combination of powers, of emerging that could jeopardize their hegemony.
Over Eurasia.
Well, now that has happened too.
And, you know, this war in Ukraine was meant to weaken, destabilize Russia and lead ultimately to regime change in Russia and the partitioning of Russia.
Well, that's not working out very well either.
You know, they threw these nuclear sanctions against Russia that was supposed to collapse its economy.
And the Ruble, none of that came to pass.
And now, I think it's obvious that they're losing in Ukraine.
And, you know, even if you read the statements of these people, you know, various Berserzhenskys and Kissingers and people of that sort, losing Ukraine could be a death blow to the Empire.
And now they're in the process of losing Ukraine.
And I think that if Russia rests the Black Sea coast entirely under its own control and they lose Odessa, that's game over.
And I don't know how they're going to come back from that.
And I also think that the logic of the conflict almost makes it imperative for Russia and China to go all the way, not to say like, OK, so now our security concerns are taken care of and we'll just leave you to your devices.
I think that they're going to have to go after these people.
And I'm talking about this international banking cartel.
And probably over the long term, Try to completely disenfranchise them and completely clip their wings forever, that they can never ever again even dream about forging an empire in the future.
That's interesting.
I do agree with what you say about the axis of evil extending from Wall Street to the City of London.
They're all the same thing and central bankers are clearly a major part of the problem.
They must have allies.
I mean, I've talked on previous podcasts about it being, the world being run by essentially a collection of Mafia gangs and Mafia families.
I can't believe that the Russians and the Chinese are goodies and the Wall Street and the City of London are just the baddies.
There must be some sort of Uh, interrelationship between these various evil families?
Yeah, I actually don't think there is.
I mean, you know, like, this is a very plausible scenario that you describe.
And I, you know, like, I thought for a long time You know, I was kind of in a dilemma.
Are the Chinese and this City of London, Wall Street people actually working together behind the scenes?
Putin was one of the World Economic Forum young global leaders at one time.
Is he loyal to this power network?
And I came to the conclusion that they're not.
Now, I could be wrong because, you know, these are things that nobody writes a policy paper and puts it out in the open, because these games are being played behind the scenes and in secret, and these secrets are often kept from the populations.
But, you know, while the Wall Street and City of London had control over the USSR, Because the USSR was their creation.
And even China of Mao Zedong was their creation.
I don't think that Vladimir Putin's Russia or Xi Jinping's China are under their control anymore.
And I think that the pandemic was one of the really important tests of this.
And I was absolutely astounded at the game that Russia had played with the pandemic.
Namely, you know, when the pandemic started, as I told you, I was convinced from day one that we're dealing with a hoax.
And, you know, you had countries like Belarus who rejected the pandemic narrative and they rejected The World Health Organization directives about how to deal with this pandemic.
And then we saw the IMF try to bribe Alexander Lukashenko's government to go along with it with like, I think it was like a $940 million loan from the IMF.
And Lukashenko went public with this.
And he said, they wanted me to do like in Italy.
In order to give me this 940 million dollar loan, but he didn't go along with it, and he went public with it.
And so, whatever Lukashenko knew, I assume the Russians know as well.
So I was very surprised that the Russians went along with this game, until they were the first one out with a vaccine.
And the reason why I think this is extremely important is this, because the pandemic plan was to roll out the vaccines and after the vaccines to roll out the vaccine passports.
I think the most important element in this plan was to get everybody to have a vaccine and a certificate.
And then to condition everybody's liberty to move about, buy things and so forth on this thing.
Now the important part of this is not so much the piece of paper or the little code that you have on you, but the system of administering it.
Because you know like somewhere in the background there are these servers.
that test everybody's code for the rules and permits.
It's the system of permits, right?
Where it starts with, does James Dillingpole have two vaccines?
Yes, okay, you can board the bus, you can board the airplane.
Or if they introduce a new rule, did James Dellingpole shave his moustache?
Yes, he can board the plane.
No, he cannot.
You know, like whatever they come up with, whatever they invent.
Yeah.
The important bit is to set up this system, this administrative system of permits.
And the only way that you could impose this on everybody in the world is if you have the monopoly over those vaccines.
So we had Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, and I don't know who else, like a handful, all from the Western companies.
And so when the Russians came out with their Sputnik V or Sputnik V vaccine, whatever it is, really, they said that they would give it at low cost to any country that wanted it, and they said that they would even give out production licenses if some nation wanted to produce their own vaccine based on this Sputnik V recipe.
And so now, what this means is that now you're, maybe if you get vaccinated with the Russian vaccine, now what?
Now they either have to let Russians into the administration of this permit system, or they have to give up the control of any country that has included the Russian vaccine in their vaccine schedule, if they allow their citizens to be vaccinated with the Russian vaccine.
And you know, to come up with a vaccine for COVID-19 in such a short period of time, and ahead of the vaccine manufacturers in the West, means that you had to have read the agenda correctly.
And then you had the choice.
You could say, like, no, you people are mad.
We're not doing this.
Or you could say, OK, we'll go along with it, but we're going to collapse their agenda in this way and then plan it.
So, you know, I think there's a lot of Conflict between the ruling elites in the West and in this emerging multipolar world.
And I think that if Vladimir Putin really was part of the same control matrix, that he would have simply accepted the Western vaccines, or alternatively, That the Western centres of power would have accepted the Russian vaccine under the same permit administration system.
And the agenda would have continued, you know, seamlessly.
But it didn't.
Yes.
Yes.
And the same goes, presumably, for the Sinovac.
Yeah, I think so.
And I also think that there's something to this insane Chinese zero-Covid policy, which they finally dropped.
But I think there was something to that policy that had nothing to do with the virus or public health, because I think you have to be really mad to think that you can stop a virus from spreading by these So there must have been a different agenda behind Chinese policy.
I couldn't guess what it is.
I can speculate about a few things, but I don't really know what it's about.
I'm just 100% sure that it wasn't what it says on the tin.
Yeah.
Okay, what's your favourite speculative theory?
Well, one of them was... favorite, it's hard to say, but one of them was...
Basically, you know, they curtailed their exports to the West of certain things, you know.
And, you know, it wasn't sanctions, it wasn't boycott, it wasn't embargoes.
They could just say like, well, sorry, we have lockdown, so you can't have these chips and you can't have these pharmaceuticals and whatever.
They were, you know, the West ended up Having shortages off.
Another possibility is to deal with internal dissent.
Because, you know, before the pandemic, China had a very serious problem of unrest in Hong Kong.
With the lockdowns, they cleaned up.
And now we don't have that anymore.
So I think it was maybe dealing with internal dissent, internal security.
And maybe there are other possibilities that I can't really fathom at this point, but maybe we'll find out in the future.
But Alex, I'm really glad you said this.
I mean, I know that my viewers and listeners are always looking for a bit of hope, or hopium, as cynics would sometimes put it.
But I think we've got to take our victories where we can, and we've got to acknowledge our victories When they've happened and I think you're right.
I think that the plan as I understand it was for them for us to be we were still supposed to be locked down.
We were still supposed to be shitting ourselves over this deadly virus going around and I think many more of us were supposed to have taken up the the plot shot then have taken it up and I don't think they're going to happen.
I mean the number of normies I know Who had a bad reaction to the first jab or the second jab and say, I'm not going to go there again.
And they're not down the rabbit hole.
They've just sort of taken a practical decision.
They're not going to go there.
I think they've lost that battle, don't you, to make us all vaccine slaves.
Yeah, and I, you know, I agree with regards to vaccine, but I'm also optimistic with regards to the bigger picture.
Because You know, I think that something is happening on the global level that is difficult to completely comprehend at this point.
But I see that the people who would turn the world into an empire and turn us all into their indentured slaves are rapidly losing control.
I see that people
are waking up, you know, the difference between what we're living today and history as, you know, the episodes like the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution in the USSR and so forth, where, you know, totalitarians were partly successful in their plans, is that today we have this thing which is Internet.
We're able to communicate point to point.
We don't depend on printed word or radio or television broadcasts from a single center, where the narrative can be easily controlled.
So, maybe a hundred years ago, one man in a million understood what was going on, or woman, or any gender in between.
But today I think we're talking about a significant percentage of the population.
I don't know what it is, but even if it's three or five percent, that's a lot compared to where we were a hundred years ago.
This is almost like humanity has spawned a nervous system.
As a super organism, it used to be a dumb sponge, and today it has a nervous system.
It can react instantly, point to point, to things that are happening in remote places, but we still get to know about them.
We get to dig up information almost instantly.
And so, I think we have no reason to be pessimistic.
And I would even go farther and I would say that We should consider cultivating optimism as a duty, as a sacred duty, because we have tools and resources that no generation before us ever had.
And we have the possibility of leaving the world a much, much better place than it was for the last few hundred years, or maybe ever.
And just the fact that this possibility exists, potentially, should be an obligation, a duty for every one of us to contribute to that.
And I think that the most important way to contribute to it is to discover truth, Think through the problems that societies are facing to try to come up with quality solutions and to communicate these quality solutions.
So, you know, this would be the opposite of being a dumb compliant robot who's just doing what he's told by the people who, you know, probably don't have his or her best interests at heart.
Because if we do that, then our children will live into a future that's not worth living anymore at all.
I agree about the stakes and I agree about the need for optimism and also the need for not having fear, because fear is one of the weapons they use against us.
Where are you on CBDCs?
I'm not terribly concerned about CBDCs.
I think that that's going to be another part of their agenda that's going to be failing.
And the reason I say this is because the CBDC currencies, as they have envisioned them, are not just electronic money.
We already have that.
You know, all these Google Pays and credit cards, all of this is just basically electronic tokens changing from one account to the other, right?
That's not the issue.
The issue is programmable CBDCs, programmable electronic currencies that would again be connected to this administration of permits, right?
So that Not that you have money in your account, but that you can dispose of that money subject to the system of permits that they impose.
Well, that's going to be an extremely, extremely complex and difficult problem to resolve.
And again, you know, conceptually, it's possible.
Right.
You can create these databases where everybody has their account and everybody has their schedule of vaccines and carbon credits and whatever they decide that has to go in there before they figure out how much of what you can buy.
There's a number of reasons why this is impossible.
First of all, the technological challenge.
I've spent a good Chunk of my life managing an AI research project.
Creating and maintaining quality software is not easy.
It's actually very difficult.
And so that's already the problem number one.
And you know, the size of the challenge matters.
You know, if you want to have electronic money in a dumb account that you spend At your discretion, that's one thing.
If you want to take away discretion from the person and give it to some permits administration bureaucracy, that's a completely different problem.
Then there's also, it will create a kind of a perverse system of incentives on the other side, so where people are selling things.
They will compete for compliant buyers.
So, I don't know, the car manufacturers are going to cheat on their carbon emissions.
It's a bit convoluted, but it's going to create perverse and Perverse incentives on the part of providers of products and services, and it's going to reward the worst cheaters.
It's going to trigger like an arms race of cheating to be able to get to the market, right?
Because you're going to want to sell a product to me But whether you're going to be able to make that sale or not is going to depend on whether I'm allowed to make that purchase.
And so you're going to have to make that purchase so that it complies.
And anyway, you know, I I'm sorry that I I'm not able to explain it better, but I'll write up an article about this one day.
But definitely CBDCs are dead already now.
They're never going to happen.
And if they if they If they launch them, it will fall in a very short period of time.
Right.
Well, that's another piece of cause for optimism, let's say.
So, is that good for... where are you on cryptos?
Ah, well, I'm not... you know, I would say I'm agnostic.
I think that cryptocurrencies are a brilliant and very useful invention, a very important technological advancement for human societies, potentially.
But I think that as the As an object of speculation, I'm not particularly excited about them, because today most mental energy devoted to cryptocurrencies is looking at them as an object of speculation, investment.
And investment vehicles.
And I think that they will be useful as a means of exchange.
But I think that that's only in the process of evolution.
It has to... I'll be excited about cryptocurrencies when I can walk into a shop and buy a cup of coffee with my crypto wallet.
And when this is easy and pervasive, today it's still kind of...
Confined to, let's say, the avant-garde of society.
And I regret I'm not even in that avant-garde.
I don't own a single Bitcoin.
I was looking at investing into a Bitcoin fund in 2016.
And then I didn't for, you know, personal reason.
I was going through a divorce and it was just going to be a big mess.
- I feel like a fool. - You could be quite rich by now, Alex.
I would have done very well.
I would have made about a hundred percent, not a hundred percent, a hundred times.
But you know, I also don't know that I would have kept that investment through to 100 time appreciation.
Because, you know, how people are, like, the thing doubles and you think, like, oh, my gosh, I made so much money, I cash out.
Nobody thinks it's going to go out 100 times.
I'm with you.
I've been there.
Yeah.
Well, that's why I'm a trend follower.
That's another reason why I'm a trend follower, because, you know, in my day job, I don't wonder about how much something's going to appreciate or not or where the price target is or, you know, whether 20% or 50% gain is good enough whether 20% or 50% gain is good enough to cash out.
I just follow the algorithms and that's that.
Yeah, yes.
That's much... it's much less emotionally draining as well.
Absolutely, yeah, it is.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm curious, just going back to the... what I call the axis of evil, these central bankers and Wall Street and the City of London, who's...
These people go back a very long time.
I mean, you know, you could probably trace them back to the Phoenician Empire and before that to the ancient Egyptians.
We needn't go back there.
Have you ever met any of these people?
No.
Not the high echelon.
I've met people who were part of the network of these vested interests.
But, you know, who kind of have like a sinecure running a hedge fund, or some kind of an endowment, or a bank, or a brokerage, and who maybe don't really like to know what they're a part of.
They know where the money comes from.
They know, roughly, where they need to keep their loyalties to keep their privileges.
Yes.
Basically, they don't tend to like to discuss it.
They don't tend to like too much specific information about the network that feeds them.
And, you know, I'm not particularly close to any of these people, and I don't, you know, like it's not my role to educate them or to try to steer them away.
I think that everybody has a role to play in society and even the evil side has a role to play.
Because I think that for humanity to transcend The tragedies of the last few hundred years of history, or even a few thousand years, and I agree with you, the continuity of this goes back to, I don't know if it's Egypt, but definitely the Roman Empire and the Babylonians, and like that.
But, you know, they have been mobilizing The energies that have brought us to this point in history, and part of that includes creation of the Internet and the coming together of humanity.
And I think that if we were living in perfect contentment and in perfect liberty in the Garden of Eden, that is the Earth, We probably wouldn't have created any of that.
I don't know what their role is.
I think that their role is coming to an end at this juncture of history, but it's not my job to be going about and judging people and reprimanding them and condemning their role.
Yes.
I suppose what I was sort of leading towards is that I had a conversation with a friend of mine, I think about 18 months ago.
And he said, I know somebody who's very well connected in the world of commerce, you know, one of those organizations that has access to all the kind of business leaders and so on.
And this person was telling him that Although the news short to medium term was very bad, that the global economy is much more stuffed than people have any idea of, that the evil master plan really is as evil as our worst imaginings.
Yadda yadda, and vaccine injuries and all this stuff, you know, so lots of things to worry about.
But you said that the people, the sort of the movers and shakers of this world are beginning to wake up to, the big players, people like you, I guess, Alex, are beginning to wake up to the fact that the plan does not include their having a seat at the top table.
And they're realising, hang on a second.
We are going to be as badly fucked over as the useless eaters.
And we'd better do something about it.
We don't like it.
Are you seeing that going on?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Well, you see this...
You spoke with Tom Longo and I think that one big reason why their agenda is unworkable is because part of the plan with the CBDCs particularly was that there should be one central bank for the whole world that would hold individual bank accounts for every citizen.
And that, you know, everything that we talked about, the CBDCs, would be linked to one bank for everyone.
So that's the big ambitious agenda, which was, I think it was meant to be initiated around 2050, not yet now.
I think that they advanced it in panic.
But that implies that, you know, JP Morgan's and Barclays Bank's and HSBC's of this world would become redundant.
So all these bankers who, you know, draw massive salaries and huge bonuses and all these privileges by working for, you know, Barclays and HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland and all these institutions like that, suddenly would become like all the other useless eaters, as you said.
And so obviously they're not interested in that agenda and they are very interested in actually sabotaging that agenda.
Whereas the evil masterminds, they can't make the agenda happen all by itself.
They really depend on this deep hierarchy of command and control to execute flawlessly to make all this happen.
And they even depend on people who at some point realize, wait a minute, I'm being asked to saw the branch that I'm sitting on.
Well, I'm not going to do that.
And so, you know, the whole juggernaut starts to come down like a house of cards.
Yes.
Well, exactly.
Exactly.
The banks, I mean, they really...
I'm old enough to remember when one had a high street bank and the manager knew everyone.
I grew up in a village and there was a village bank.
In fact, there were two banks.
When you wanted to open a bank account, you met the manager.
The bank was a benign thing.
I realised there was a difference between retail banks and investment banks and so on.
The big players, the big names, some of which you've mentioned, the things they do are...
Genuinely worthy of the Mafia, aren't they?
The way they treat their customers now, the way that they deny them access to money in their own accounts, the way that they seem to be participating in this game of slowing down the velocity of money, which I'm sure is again part of some evil master plan.
The things they get up to that would close down any normal business because it's criminal.
Do you think they're going to go on getting away with this stuff?
For some time yet, but I think not forever.
I think it's no exaggeration.
I mean when I say it's not an exaggeration to say that these large, too-big-to-fail banks are actually organised crime.
They are the key enablers of organized crimes.
And just to give you an example, if you look at the Mexican drug cartels, so they generate something like 400, I think the number is $400 million I think the number is $400 million in sales per week just in the United States, right?
Bye.
And so, all these drug sales are happening in cash.
And so, these cartels are hoarding absolutely enormous amounts of cash.
We're talking about billions, tens of billions of dollars in cash.
So basically, there's really a limit to what you can do if your wealth is in cash.
You know, you can buy a nice car, and two nice cars, and ten nice cars, and a villa, and another one, and ten villas, and, you know, so much nice food, but that's about it.
That's as far as cash will go.
Whereas these Mexican drug cartels, they have, you know, their private militaries with submarines, with helicopters, with heavy weaponry, And the only way that they can do this is if a banker will launder this cash for them.
Because you cannot buy a submarine for cash.
You cannot order a helicopter and bring four pallets of cash to pay for it.
It has to go through bank accounts and it has to look clean.
So, the banks are enabling drug cartels.
And it's not that they're just, you know, there's another problem if you have money in cash.
Suppose you're a drug dealer and you have a warehouse full of cash.
Well, you have to pay men to defend your cash.
And so suppose you paid me to defend your cash warehouse.
Well, me and my buddies, we can say like, you know what, why should we work for James and a miserable salary when we can just help ourselves to all this cash and Take it to another location and then we can be our own drug lords.
Right?
So, you would not be able to defend a large drug cartel if your wealth was in cash.
So, by virtue of you being able to launder this money and concentrate it into one or more bank accounts, you become the key The keyholder, right?
Because now there's no cash.
I cannot rob you.
I need you to pay me money and you get the money from the bank.
And the bank won't give me any of this money.
So, you understand?
The bank actually anoints you The top of the hierarchy of the cartel, because they will only do business with you.
If I walk in there with my buddies and say... Yes, yes, I see that.
I want a hundred million dollars from James Dellingpole's account, they will say, no, we deal with James.
So... Quite right.
You understand?
And then there's also this KYC thing.
So if some business in Mexico generates billions of dollars in sales, you can't not know their business as their banker.
You're legally obliged to understand where this money is coming from.
And they can't tell you we have taco shops all over Mexico.
You have the legal obligation to actually verify that these are taco shops or whatever they tell you.
Or if it's a suspicious business, you need to know that too.
People at the top of Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Wachovia, Banco, they all know where the money is drawing from.
They all absolutely know that they are enabling these drug cartels, except that they are actually Superimposed to the drug cartels.
They are actually the people in charge.
Because they can tell them one day, you can't have your money or your laundry fee is going to be 50%, not 30%.
50%, not 30%.
And so it's the banks that are enabling this, that are perpetuating this, and that are actually designating the leaders of these cartels because they choose who they're gonna do business with.
And once they agree to do business with you, you're in charge, because you're the money man in between the whole, you know, and it's up to the bank to enable that.
Yeah, yeah.
We should actually do a whole other podcast on the banks, because, I mean, I think it's an extraordinary story.
It's a rabbit hole that, you know, you can go very, very deep.
Yeah.
So we'll save that for another day, but Alex, You're Croatian originally.
I went to Croatia a couple of years ago and it was just when Europe was in the grip of Covid bollocks and where people were wearing masks and stuff.
And I was delighted by the response of the Croatians.
I mean, OK, so you had to wear a mask in the supermarket.
I didn't, but nobody ever stopped me.
But it was really good to go to the coast and see bars open where Britain was largely closed down.
Almost nobody was wearing a mask.
And I was thinking, is it The Croatians, I thought, were pretty based.
And I'm wondering, is it because Eastern Europeans, people from the former Yugoslavia, have had experience of totalitarian regimes and are just much more sceptical of authority than we are in the West?
I think that partly it may be that.
But I think that there's another peculiarity about Croatians.
Well, you know, 30 years ago we had a war.
In our country.
And so that kind of brings you to the... Well, we started our conversation on this point that I think that that experience kind of disposes you to be a bit more questioning of the official narratives, you know, not to just like say like, oh, well, you know, if the government says so, then it must be true.
We kind of expect to be lied to.
But then I think one thing that is very important Which is overlooked is that people in Croatia spend an inordinate amount of time socializing in cafes.
And they talk to each other.
And they exchange information and experiences and ideas and knowledge.
And so I think that the The lies become exposed quicker and the truth percolates through the population quicker in that way, and for that reason.
And it's another reason, you know, like, one other peculiarity about Croatia is that, you know, like, when smoking got banned everywhere, you cannot smoke indoors anywhere, practically, anymore.
In Croatia, They had to go back on that rule because people were like, what is this?
We're not having this.
So instead of, you know, like they reversed the ban on indoor smoking.
They kind of made it like, well, okay, if you have a good enough air, you know, ventilation system, then people can still smoke indoors.
And so today, if you go in Russia, they're still like, Many, many cafes.
I don't know if it's most of them, but many, many cafes.
You can sit indoors, inside, have a coffee and have a cigarette.
And so I think the reason, yeah, you're right to note that the response to COVID lockdowns was much, much softer in Croatia.
And this whole masking business, yeah, most people didn't wear masks at all.
Except, you know, inside a bank, inside of a supermarket and so forth.
And if you went without a mask, generally nobody said anything.
And I think that the reason is partly because people socialize a lot and talk to each other a lot.
And so this makes it easier to kind of, you know, I guess detect a hoax in the making.
By the way, on the subject of smoking, I reckon that the real reason they've waged war on tobacco is not because they give a toss about public health.
It's because they know that smokers have the best conversations.
And I think it was part of a wider war on pubs, because pubs really, really needed smokers who are the most You know, active in their social lives, and so on.
They like a drink with their fag, and so on.
I think, because the evil cabal think very long term, I think, yes, let's attack smoking so we close down the pubs, stop them congregating.
You reckon?
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's exactly my suspicion.
I don't normally share this suspicion because it's one of those ideas that kind of I get it out of my butt.
It's just a suspicion.
But it's a suspicion.
The one thing I'm very certain about, it's not about our health.
Because if it were about our health, they would be phasing out sugar, they would be phasing out fast food restaurants.
They would be encouraging us to exercise.
And vaccines as well.
Yeah, there you go.
And they would tell us, like, make sure you get enough sleep, that you exercise, that you eat healthy food and so on, which they never do.
So it's not, I definitely agree with you, it's not about our health.
But yeah, I did notice that when people smoke, they spend a lot longer sitting down.
Having a coffee.
You know, because if you don't smoke, generally you get a coffee, like three sips, and okay, let's go back to our desks, let's go back home, whatever.
If you light up a cigarette, then you kind of like relax, and then you start, and I, the only time I actually mentioned this theory was to one of my colleagues at work a couple of years ago.
And so we were in a strictly non-smoking hedge fund office and nobody smoked.
And then this guy, our IT guy, came and he was a smoker.
He was married to a Chinese girl.
And in China, apparently, cigarettes are quite a thing.
You can buy cheap cigarettes, you can buy really expensive cigarettes.
And it's not uncommon that people give you a carton of cigarettes as a birthday gift.
So he got from his in-laws these Chinese, really fancy, expensive Chinese cigarettes as a birthday gift.
So he was going out, and I said, like, hey, hold on.
I want to try one of those things.
So we went out of the office to stand like outcasts in front of the office and have a fag.
And it was the first and only time that he and I had a meaningful conversation for about, I don't know, 15-20 minutes.
And I was telling him about this.
And he was like, well, you think?
And I said, well, do you notice that this is the first time you and I have had a meaningful conversation and we've been working together here for three years or so?
And he was like, my God, you're right.
Because everything else is like, good morning, good evening, bye, see you tomorrow, and that's it.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It like, it punctuates the day.
It's a special moment that requires time.
You really socialise and talk to people because you're not just going to eat a sandwich or drink a coffee and then go back to your desk or go back to your house.
You know, like when you smoke, maybe you sit down and chill, you relax.
It's almost like a ritual, but it's a very social ritual.
And so I tend to agree with you.
That is also my suspicion, that they came down hard On smoking to further atomize society, to further isolate people from each other and to maybe mop up the place where people maybe socialize the most or maybe speak in the least guarded way.
Yeah, yeah.
Alex, before we go, you're not a financial advisor, so obviously if people take your advice or otherwise, whatever the disclaimers are, but if people want to protect themselves financially, what should they be thinking of right now?
Well, I can give you an empirical fact.
Far and away the best protection against inflation is through exposure to commodity futures.
Now, this is something that I wouldn't advise individual traders to gamble with.
You know, you want to hire a professional money manager, and I'm not selling my services because I think I probably couldn't provide this service to ordinary investors in the UK.
But you know, you do have good quality funds that specialize in managed futures.
They're called CTAs, Commodities Trading Advisors.
Unfortunately, it's a thing where the minimum investment is rather high.
I think it's on the order of about $100,000.
For ordinary investors, I would definitely advise them to have some allocation to gold and silver.
Not something to trade with frequently, but just to have it for the rainy day.
Because when societies go into very severe social and economic crises, these crises don't last forever.
They last usually one, two, three years.
And usually, maybe one year will be really, really tough where there's going to be shortages of food and, you know, real, you know, survival issues.
And in those conditions, you want to have some gold coins, some silver coins, you know, maybe to be able to buy food, maybe to be able to bribe a public official or You know, a boat captain or a train steward or something like that.
You want to downsize your expenses.
It's definitely one of the things.
I would like to warn people that real estate is not really a hedge against inflation.
And the stock markets are also not a great hedge against inflation, because even though stock markets do tend to go vertical in inflationary environments, the loss of purchasing power of the currency usually far outpaces the rise in stock prices.
So, you know, everybody gets wiped out.
So, gold and silver bullion, if you can, even a small plot of land that you can use to grow some food on, And personal skills and services that you can exchange with other members of your community, whatever it be.
People will always need other people to help them fix the roof, fix their car, you know, repair the shoes or mend the clothes.
teach their children, cook, whatever it be.
So, you have to get used to the idea of relying on yourself, but if you can have a small plot of land, or a larger one, and to have some gold and silver bullion, coins preferably, not, you know, the bars, they can be fake.
So, you know, careful with that.
That would be my advice, yeah.
That's good advice, Alex.
No, thank you.
Thank you for that.
So tell people where they can find you and what you do.
You've got a service, haven't you?
The easiest way to find me is on Twitter.
I'm at NakedHedgie.
I have a sub-stack called Alex Craner's Trend Compass.
And I have a website for investors called iSystem Trend Following.
I also have a personal blog called The Naked Hedgie.
And I have a YouTube channel, but I have to... Part of my 2023 resolutions is to be more active on my YouTube channel.
But it takes a lot of time.
It's a lot of work, actually.
So I'll work on that.
You know what, Alex, I'd love to be working on my YouTube channel, but I've been cancelled on YouTube.
Oh no!
I mean, and it wasn't even anything I'd actually done.
Or rather, they managed to troll through my videos, and they found something I'd done like 18 months before, which said naughty things about vaccines, and it wasn't even a podcast I particularly cared for, it was just one among many, and they used that to To knock me off.
It was extraordinary.
It was my final strike.
Because they want people like me off, and they want people like you off as well, I imagine.
Sorry?
Well, their aim, undoubtedly, and I've experienced this with a lot of my other accounts I'm about to explain, is to demonetize people like me.
They don't want us earning a living from doing what we're doing and sort of bypassing the mainstream media.
They want the mainstream media to be the gatekeepers of information.
And so I remind my beloved viewers and listeners, please, please, please, Find what way you can to support me, whether it's on Substack, or on Subscribestar, or on Patreon, or on Buy Me A Coffee, or on Locals.
I think I've covered the basis there.
I really appreciate your support, and I do need it.
It's my sole source of income.
So, yeah, thank you very much for those who support me, and please think about it, those who haven't yet.
Alex, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
James, great pleasure to be with you.
Thank you very much for having me.
I enjoyed this conversation.
And to all the viewers, please support James Delingpole.
His podcast is doing humanity a big service, and I think that the people who Research and disseminate truths are perhaps the most valuable members of society at this juncture in our history.
So, warm greetings to everybody from Monaco, and again, James, thank you for having me, and Godspeed, and I wish everybody to stay free and healthy and prosperous.
Yeah.
Amen.
Amen, brother.
Thanks a lot, Alex.
Pleasure.
Bye, everyone.
Pleasure.
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