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Sept. 15, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:00:35
Economist Tuomas Malinen warns the world about the economic implosion of Europe
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Welcome, everyone, to this first interview we've ever had with a Finland-based economist, and he's the CEO of GNS Economics, a company that says our mission is to make black swans gray.
His name is Thomas Malinan, and he joins us from Finland in this.
I think it's going to be a very enlightening interview because Mr.
Malinan has put out some tweets recently that talked about what he believes is coming for Europe.
At least Western Europe in particular due to the energy scarcity and other economic conditions.
And it's not a pretty picture, actually, for those folks living in many of those countries, including Germany.
So, Mr.
Thomas Malin, thank you for joining us.
It's an honor to have you on, sir.
Thank you.
It's an honor to be here, actually.
Well, I tell you what, our audience loved what you had to say, simply because you don't seem to self-censor.
You're not a politician.
It seems to be that you're saying it like you see it.
So how would you sort of give us an overview characterization of how you're seeing the approaching economic reality for Western Europe for, let's say, the winter or the next six months or so?
Well, to be short...
And strict somewhat.
Western Europe, we have had this issue with the common currency of the euro for quite some time.
And it has basically led to the point where...
When the Fed started the quantitative easing, started to buy treasuries, there was a lack of a few years before the European Central Bank followed.
And the stated objective of the quantitative easing in Europe was to increase inflation pressures and yada yada.
But in practice, what the ECB did Was that it started to support the sovereign debt market of Eurozone.
And we had the European debt crisis in 2012, which was actually a banking crisis in France and Germany, who had led quite heavily on Greece and Portugal and Spain.
And then they used the rest of the Eurozone to bail their banks out.
It was the I think this was the most dishonest bank bailout operation in the history of mankind.
But anyway, we are now facing a threat from the war, naturally, which is, through sanctions and all, has caused quite a notable energy crisis, which is likely to get much worse in the winter in Europe.
And in addition, the European Central Bank is trying to get out of the quantitative easing, which is not going very well.
I'll just check the balance sheet of the ECB, which has grown by 13 billion dollars, euros actually, in a month.
And we are suspecting that they have gone into the sovereign debt of Italy to support it, basically.
So, the situation is...
We have a massive energy crisis.
The energy prices have risen by tenfold in many places.
Households are suffering.
Corporations are shutting down their production.
And we're heading into some very deep economic recession.
I'm talking about depression.
And in addition to that, we are threatened by the banking crisis and the sovereign debt crisis, which could lead to the collapse of the eurozone.
A massive currency crisis.
And these may all come ahead within the next, let's say, six to nine months.
And people tend to be completely unaware, especially in the US, of the shock we are facing.
It's like they are looking at the light And the end of the tunnel, not understanding, and it's a freight train coming to you.
Exactly.
Now, you're mentioning, if I could paraphrase what I think you're explaining here, not just one black swan type of event.
And for our listeners, they know, but I'll repeat it, you know, a black swan is an unpredicted, even a non-modeled event.
the simulations.
It is so far outside the zone of what could be expected, and it can't be modeled.
But you're talking about multiple black swans, it sounds like, or at least two.
So one of them is the energy scarcity and crisis stemming from the economic sanctions on Russia and the shutdown of Nord Stream 1 by Gazprom.
But then the other one is, as you say, what appears to be the ongoing, lingering, poor economic decisions, or you could say unsafe economic decisions.
crisis of 2012, which was never really properly resolved.
And now the bank, the ECB is stuck trying to reduce the money supply when industry and consumers across Europe are begging for bailouts because of the energy crisis.
Is that an overview that makes sense?
Yeah, it is.
And we have, of course, a runaway inflation here too, like in the US. Right.
But it's getting worse here because in the US, CPI, the annual change is somewhat stabilized, a little above 8%.
It's growing fast.
It's already past 9%.
And I'm expecting that by December, January, we get to double digits.
Wow.
So we have that too.
And now it seems like there's a speculation of ECB, the biggest hike in its history.
Past week, 75 basis points.
And people are expecting they will continue.
So the households are an enormous pressure.
You know, you have the energy prices, electricity prices.
Then you have inflation eating up your real incomes, and then you have the interest rate shock, too.
Yes, yes.
It's like Europe is currently hit on basically all fronts that you can be hit from an economic perspective.
So it's a perfect storm, actually, which is gathering strength here.
Sorry, if you listen to our politicians say, They seem to be completely out of touch with what's coming.
It's really scary, actually.
Well, absolutely.
I've noticed that, too, where a lot of the politicians in various European countries believe that, oh, well, we can just hand out more stimulus money to people to cover their electric bills.
Well, you know, you can't print electricity.
You can't print...
And then I'm watching, for example, a warning letter from one of the groups that represents the metals industries, copper smelting, aluminum smelting, iron ore, steel, and so on, issuing a warning saying, essentially, we need bailouts from the EU or this industry will suffer what they said, quote, permanent deindustrialization.
Permanent.
Not just a bad winter, but it's gone.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, the aluminium smelters, I think the production is down some 50% already in Europe.
Yes.
And this will have global repercussions through supply chains.
So it's a...
And the thing is that, like, most people in the U.S. do not understand that there are this term, global, systematically important banks.
There are 30 in the world.
Seven reside in the US, but ten in Europe.
So when we had the last financial crisis, which started from the collapse of the housing sector in the US, seven global banks Almost to collapse of the global financial order.
We have 10 in Europe.
And if you just imagine what kind of hit those banks are going to take with all the corporations and the households and all that are starting to default in the Eurozone and Europe in general.
So the problems in Europe will be transmitted To the US, not just through energy prices, but also through the banking troubles.
And this is something that I don't think the good people of the United States have really understood.
Well, that's a really important point.
No, I'm saying that's a really good point.
A systemic banking risk at a global scale because, yes, U.S. banks have exposure to debt instruments from European banks, and also U.S. banks have exposure to European corporations and their debt instruments as well.
And so here's something I wanted to ask you along those lines.
It seems like there are now increasing calls all of a sudden in the last week for what we can essentially say would be the nationalization of utility companies in European countries.
So, you know, if you want to really destroy the efficiency of a corporation, let the government own it and run it.
How could this possibly make, for example, electricity production more efficient and affordable?
Well, no way.
Of course, it will not.
And the thing is that we have a long experience with socialism here.
Like we had the DDR, Soviet Union, all those completely failed projects.
But there's a thing which has been bugging me or worrying me since past summer, actually.
And it's an agenda term as the Great Reset.
And the past fall, we started to get so worried, so we decided to do an analysis, what it is.
And based on the publicly stated, you know, objectives of the creators that we got really, really worried, because when you do the analysis, looking, for example, the book of Thierry Maleret and Klaus Schwab, the analysis leads to a point where They're effectively trying to create a union between large corporations and governments.
A union of large corporations and governments, which is better known as fascism.
Yes.
So fascism is not something you throw people on camps.
No, that's different.
There's a different term for that.
But fascism is a union of alliance of corporations and governments.
And this is actually what could be forming in Europe through the crisis.
So companies taking a larger share of the corporation, becoming stakeholders, if you may, and they form this kind of alliance above the economy.
And the thing that I'm currently pondering all the time when we're actually writing on new forecasts, which we are updating actually in December 2019, we published a kind of a classic piece on the stages of the collapse, We describe the stages, how did we see the global collapse going?
And now we're doing an update on that.
And it seems that when we are writing it, We have to kind of make two scenarios on it.
So first one is, this is how the crisis would proceed if we would follow the economic logic.
And then there's this other, like, create-reset path.
So this is how the crisis will proceed if the create-reset agenda is really driven through all the states.
And it's a very, like, schizophrenic thing to write as an economist.
But the thing is that when you look at all these developments within the last two to three years, you really cannot...
It's a...
The greatest is a conspiracy theory, I know.
But from the publicly stated objectives, like I mentioned, you all...
Sorry.
You already see that there is a really, really worrying angle on it.
And the thing is that we have to acknowledge the possibility that the crisis at least is creating opportunities to take the great research forward.
I would not go so far to claim that the agenda has driven us up to this point, but at least they are using it again like they did with the coronavirus.
Well, what you're pointing out, I should remind our listeners, and perhaps you and I both, that there can be a fork in the road of history as it is unfolding in front of us.
There can be a pivotal event that can radically change the future or can choose between two possible futures that are very different from each other, as you said.
Exactly.
The things that are happening in the world can create opportunities for those who wish to pursue the Great Reset to accelerate their agenda, which appears to be global economic control and currency control as well.
It seems like they need the fall of the sovereign currencies.
In order to be able to roll out more of some type of global currency or perhaps special drawing rights, SDR-backed, I don't know, digital wallets of some kind.
We don't know what it's going to look like.
But with the massive money printing that's taking place seems to feed right into that.
In the United States, we're at almost $31 trillion in national debt.
And that does not count, of course, entitlements.
Which is what another, I don't know, 90 trillion on top of that or something.
And the ECB is on a similar path, but not the same scale.
So it seems like it's leading to the Great Reset, whether we like it or not.
Yeah, this is something that, you know, I'm a classically trained economist.
I wouldn't like to think about these things, but I've been forced.
But when you start to think, why...
Why didn't the Fed quit the QE on the first attempt?
It accomplished what it's planned to do.
It stabilized the finance and markets and all that when they started in late 2008.
And the first QE ended somewhere in 2010, I think.
There is no point of continuing it.
Absolutely no reason.
And the European common currency has become a trap.
It was a speculated conspiracy theory when the euro was created that this is a trap to create a federal union within the European Union.
And it has proved to be such.
And the ECB has played that role quite nicely, let's say.
But the thing is, there's a good point.
Why so much money printing?
In Eurozone, it's because they have tried to sustain the stability or buy government's time to get their fiscal houses in order, which never happens.
If you provide politicians with free money, he or she will distribute it and not cut and do all those difficult stuff.
That's how politics works.
The issue with the sovereign currencies is an intriguing one.
We really have to watch and see what comes out.
Eurozone is really a crucial thing.
If you just think that the Eurozone would unravel, it would be currency crisis with no parallels in history.
It would be an epic event.
And I think everybody's doing everything to stop that from happening, but it will require that we will turn into a federal union in the EU. Wow.
Okay.
I've got more questions for you on that, but I'd also like to mention some of your websites for people who want to follow your work.
You're on Substack.
The subdomain for that is mtmalinin, which is M-A-L-I-N-E-N. So it's mtmalinin.substack.com, folks.
You want to check out his articles there.
Also, Mr.
Malinin writes for the Epoch Times.
And you can find many of his articles there.
Just search for his last name.
You'll get to his author page.
Also, you're an associate professor at the University of Helsinki.
That must be interesting to go into academia and teach classical economics these days in the middle of magical money theory, as I call it, MMT. Well, I don't.
I don't teach at the University of Helsinki anymore.
This is the Finnish peculiarity.
I hold the title, but I'm not working there anymore.
But it would be interesting.
But we have actually...
Quite harshly parted ways with the University of Helsinki.
I actually received an email a year ago, more or less, from the Chancellor of the University of Helsinki asking me for not to use the University of Helsinki affiliation in my presentations.
And I kind of decided, okay, I will not mention it in all my international interviews, if that's what you wish.
But they got scared.
From my online course on the creator set, it's unfortunately only available in Finnish at the moment, but it was a joke.
You know, the course was based, like I said, on publicly available analysis, which we did within our firm.
Me and another professor and two finance and market specialists, we wrote the damn thing.
And, you know, it was like I am guiding the deep end.
I'm starting to be, you know, in the close, at least, to the tinfoil I had seen, but my associates are not.
And all agreed on the report when it came out and the analysis.
And But universities have turned from the kind of the beacons of free speech to some propaganda machines, basically.
It's a tragic development accident.
It's bad here, but I think it's even worse in the U.S. in some cases, where you have these ridiculous safe areas or whatever.
Universities are not a safe place.
It's a place to question everything.
And they have really, really kind of...
And I have to mention that in 2020, when I was in academia, I studied economic crisis for 10 years.
They had a course, an online course, with several teachers on economic crisis at the University of Helsinki, at the faculty where I worked, and they didn't ask me for it.
I was the most prominent scholar on the topic in the whole Nordics, but they didn't ask me.
So I have become a persona non grata, you know, an unexampled person because I question the general narrative.
And the craziest thing is that I've been an empirical economist for years.
Or empiricist, for as long as I can remember, I go where the data goes.
I don't care how deep the hole is when I go.
If the data leads me there, I will go there.
Well, there's the issue.
This is why you are not allowed to teach, probably, because we live in a world that is no longer driven by data, but rather wishful thinking narratives.
And our agendas.
Well, right.
And they teach this belief that if you say something, it makes it true.
Like, if you say that money printing doesn't cause inflation, therefore, it is true.
And it's as if they've thrown out the entire universe of cause and effect, which, of course, the whole field of economics is supposed to be based on cause and effect, with, of course, human psychology intermixed with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, but I have to take up on this too.
You know, I talked with a few Finnish young professionals here, and do you know what is their biggest fear, career-wise?
No.
False allegations by women.
Wow.
First, I didn't really believe it, but then when several came to talk about the same thing, I said, this cannot be happening.
They said, yes, it is.
And this is the crazy world.
This was actually during the Umber Herd Johnny Depp trial.
Our societies have gone so far off the deep end I don't think people even understand.
So you cannot say what you think is right.
You cannot say what you think the data takes you.
And you cannot say certain things to the opposite sex because you might get accused publicly of something hideous and get your carrier thrown away.
So this is an epidemic of...
Of, let's say, losing freedom in the West.
But also, in your field in particular, in economics, I think these days you're not allowed to say that governments cannot control outcomes or that they have failed.
So the narrative must be, well, everything's going to be fine because the central bank is involved and the central bank is God, or because the government cares about us and they would not let bad things happen to us.
And the thing is that it's really about just government taking care of things.
And this is the part of the great recent narrative.
There's always a government-run solution to everything.
Yes.
And that's not how it's supposed to go.
No.
And this is something that You know, there has been a...
Well, we're in the business of forecasting, naturally.
So, actually, my newsletter is Tuomas Mullin's forecasting newsletter, so you can find it on Google.
But we have had one systematic failure in our forecasts, let's say, during the past five years.
And it has been that we have discussed about it, speculated about it, And some of my associates have really pushed that we should take more into account.
But I didn't really see it coming at first, but it's major government interventions, including central banks, into the market activity.
So if you think, like the spring of 2020 in the U.S., We warned late January 2020 that the coronavirus will spread from China and it could cause economic havoc across the globe.
And then we warned of the stock market crisis or whatever.
But if you had told me, let's say five years ago, that the Central Bank of the United States We'll bail out the financial markets of the United States.
I would have told you to take a hike.
Right, right.
But it did.
In just a matter of months, the Fed printed, was it, three or almost four trillion dollars?
A completely insane amount of money.
Bail out every major sector of the financial markets.
And people cheered, most of that list.
Not understanding what kind of precedent it created for central bank intervention, for socialization of the capital markets and all that.
But I think this goes back to a general weakness that has kind of grown into our societies.
We cannot face hard times.
Good point.
You try to kick away the recession as long as possible.
But I'm a trained growth economist, actually.
I've been studying economic growth since my master, which is about 18 years ago.
And what we know from that is that if you try to postpone recession, it just makes the recession worse, and it creates zombie companies, it hinders economic growth, the long-term growth, and all that.
But to go through, you know, economy moves in cycles.
So you have the upturn and the downturn and recession and then recovery and all that.
And it needs to go through all the phases to function properly.
Yes.
But you don't want, the people don't want to see crisis.
They don't want hardship in their life.
And that's, you know, like they said in the big book, the path to hell is paved with good intentions, and we are there now.
And I fear, sorry, I fear that the people pushing for the Great Reset Agenda are using this weakness of humans to drive through their agenda, and where you end up is really a place where you are provided all the basic needs, but your freedom is taken away.
You've really hit upon something here that this cultural commonality among economic policies as well as speech policies.
So when the nature of the psyche of Western nations has become so fragile, they cannot handle to hear words that they don't already agree with.
So they get triggered and they de-platform or they censor or they ban somebody.
But the same thing is happening in economics, as you just pointed out.
So no one can handle a downturn.
No one can handle a recession.
No one has any patience to allow even a natural, let's say, brush fire to burn across the banking system and burn out all the dead wood and allow the new growth of the new forest to come back in, even though that's the natural cycle.
Exactly.
So they're all related.
Yeah, and I have to tell you this, that the last course I teach was in the universe of talent, was it the technical universe, whatever, in 2018.
It was a macro, empirical macroeconomics.
Really hard course on statistical analysis.
And at the end of the course, a U.S. exchange student came to talk to me about the estimator I have just explained and the massive complications it had.
And she told me that, yeah, but this is your opinion on it.
I said, no, it's a mathematical fact.
Yeah, but you could have different emotions about it.
No, you cannot.
And it was the strangest discussion I ever had in a classroom.
She was really brilliant.
And now she was talking to me that, no, this mathematical property can be so symmetrical.
It may come to, you know, get away from it just by thinking that it's all good.
But it's not.
And that was kind of my first experience with the culture that has, you know, kind of submerged into the US university or into society, I think, in some sense, that you can, if you feel something, sorry, if you feel something, The feelings are the reality, not the reality of what is actual reality.
Yes, exactly.
We see this especially in culture in the United States, and this is in the UK as well, but when people choose to self-identify in a certain way, and I'm not even talking about race or gender or anything, but they choose to self-identify as someone who is Going to have a bright future, let's say, even though they're buried in debt and their actions don't matter.
They think, well, someone's going to bail me out because I'm going to be a happy person.
Therefore, a bailout must be coming any day now.
And then to make the matter worse, the CDC, I don't know if you recall this, but during COVID, the CDC... Ordered all property owners in America to halt evictions of their renters who refused to pay rent.
So all of a sudden, private contracts were superseded by an outbreak agency that has nothing to do with finance or economics or private property suddenly nullifying private contracts.
Yeah.
Basically, they were walking over the Constitution of the U.S., Which happened also in Finland, in many ways, like the shutting down of livelihoods, even for a limited period of time, should not happen.
You have the right to conduct your business.
And all that, based on constitution.
Let me interject, though, Mr.
Malin, this means to someone who is prospectively wanting to purchase a property in order to rent it as an income source must now consider the fact that this market arrangement no longer functions, right?
And so when the central banks purchase mortgages or purchase stocks, which is what's happening in the U.S., the Fed is buying stocks, buying the stock market.
Then any rational investor would say, well, this market's no longer functioning.
Or do you recall when the London Metals Exchange, the LME, reversed all the contracts on the nickel metal there?
Because one of the major investors who had bet on the short side, which was a Chinese investor, had lost so much money that the LME had to reverse thousands of trades, handing losses to people who had technically won those trades that they had gained.
And that was all reversed.
I mean, what does that message send to all of Western civilization?
Sorry about the animal noise in the background, but I have coyotes out here.
It's late night in Texas.
But what's the message to Western civilization about the functioning of markets?
Well, that they don't function anymore.
There's a force that can, at will, stop them from working and turn winners to losers and other way around.
So it's really a chaotic system.
We have been taken into.
And this goal comes back to the greatest.
Again, the idea that leaders can walk over constitutional rights or markets or whatever.
That's a really, really scary one in the sense that constitutions were formed by the Magna Carta in England.
It was first formed to protect landowners from the whims of the crown, if you may.
But it spread to kind of govern the people against the atrocities of the governess or the people who govern them.
And That is something that, like, for example, the US Constitution has been the, what's the word?
Well, the stone, the foundation of the nation for a long time.
In Finland, too, we have a very strong constitution.
And undermining those, I think, has been the most important thing that was done during the COVID crisis.
And it all plays to the greater said that you are not protected By laws anymore, but you will be on the mercy of the rulers again.
And this has been, this is like the natural state of humanity if you look at the true history.
Correct, yes.
Yeah.
So, and the thing is that I fear that behind all this is some, you know, malleable and idea of getting the world back to a It's just those that govern and those that are governed.
No middle class.
Yes.
Something like that.
And while, yes, conspiracy theory, still this is something we have to acknowledge.
And all these things that if you want to get to that point, you will destroy the constitution, you will destroy the market mechanism, and then you will destroy the small and medium-sized businesses, and then you are basically already there.
Well, and that's exactly what's happening across Europe with these electricity prices coming from natural gas scarcity.
So, you know, pubs and cafes are shutting down all across Europe right now.
In France, they're paying, I think, 10 times higher, you know, a thousand percent increase in electricity rates and And we're not even into winter really yet at this point, so it seems like that's going to go much higher.
In Switzerland, we have the government threatening to imprison people for three years for heating their homes above 19 degrees Celsius.
I almost hate to bring this up, but I don't even think that the Nazi regime of World War II imprisoned people for heating their homes.
No, I haven't heard of that.
They did a lot of things, but they didn't do that.
This is crazy.
This is a really scary precedent here, too.
Well, it means in order to enforce this, the Swiss government is going to have to have, you know, temperature police to run around with, I don't know, thermal sensors, pointing them at your apartment.
It's too hot.
You go to jail.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I know this is naturally, at this point, this is just one dystopian scenario.
They have threatened to do something like that, but it would be really massive if that would become a policy.
But the thing is here now that we should understand that this is, in Europe, this is all deliberate.
The sanctions put against Russia for starting a war in Ukraine Have hit back with sanctions, naturally.
And we would not be in this mess without the green policies implied, especially in Germany.
Setting down the nuclear reactors, relying on Russian gas for God's sake.
Every single thing, even a child, would have, you know, know that you do not do that.
You do not become dependent on Russia.
It has been a kind of, you know, aggressor for 500 years.
We live right next to them.
We've been a part of Russia.
We've been a part of Sweden and all that.
We know them better than anyone in Europe or in the world, you may say.
Yes.
And Germany has pushed their own ways, own things, Failed ways once again.
And I've been tweeting about this in the past days, that does it really, do we really have to follow?
Germany into the abyss for the third time in later over 100 years.
And I'm talking about the First World War, the Second World War now.
That's right.
Germany has been involved...
Well, the First World War was a bit more difficult, but then the Second World War basically started it and really pushed us, pushed Europe into the abyss completely.
And now they are...
Germany is...
They are ruthless.
They have like...
If there would have been a Eurozone, the old currency would have probably been, you know, about 20% higher.
The value of the FX rate, the foreign exchange rate, would have been about 20% higher than it was when Germany was in the Eurozone, or has been in the Eurozone.
So Germany has, the export machine of Germany has greatly benefited from the But when it came to the fact, like in 2011, 2012, that weaker countries like Greece couldn't function, couldn't survive in the euro, what a proper leader of Europe would have done is that she would have...
Germany said that, okay, you need some subsidies, you need some support, which is how, you know, these big currency unions work.
You need to have a transfer union, too.
Germany did no such thing.
It pushed Greece to the brink, basically forced the ECP to bail them out, and it was really, really ruthless on Greece, on negotiations.
Yes.
Germany has like stormed through Europe during the past 20 years with the euro, let's say last 10 years.
And now it asks for us to bail them out.
This is like beyond, this is a taboo.
You cannot really talk about this.
But Germany is the psychopath of Europe.
Honestly.
They are messing us up once again.
They are the ones who relied on Russia to provide the electricity, and they are the ones who went to the crazy green policy to shut down the nuclear reactions.
And all the things that...
I've been asking one question about the Ukrainian war.
What was the thing that pushed Vladimir Putin to attack?
He is no crazy person.
He's extremely smart, that we know.
So what was the reason?
Why was he pushed to that?
No one talks about that.
There's always...
My mother is a former lecturer in history.
So we've been talking about wars a lot, and there's always two sides.
So there are many things we don't understand.
And I was suddenly pushing these sanctions, which are basically an economic suicide for Europe, possibly also for Russia, but especially for Europe.
And the biggest thing is, Germany is now expecting that, because they have a massive deficit on the electricity creation during the winter now, That the hydroelectricity of Norway will bail them out.
We have this area called Nordpool, which is the Nordic Electricity Exchange.
It includes also the Baltic countries.
And we are not in the integrated European electricity market.
We're just exporting electricity there.
We could close down the cables to go into Europe, Central Europe, anytime we want, and we would have decent electricity prices.
So Germany, because of her mistakes, is dragging us to the gutter too.
When our politicians are too cowardly, To, you know, take a stance and protect their own citizens.
So I've been telling that Europe is in a situation where we either sink together or swim alone.
Yeah, and it's not going any...
There is no response.
The politicians...
But it's crazy because this is man-made, the crisis here.
Yes.
Excellent point.
It's man-made.
And I'm thinking that after one winter of de-industrialization, Germany's electric draw on the Nordic countries may no longer be so large because the factories will no longer be functioning.
They won't be there.
Yeah, that's true.
And I don't...
And I'm just thinking that...
Do the Germans really understand what's about the heat?
You know, and...
And all the Europeans.
Well, what did you see these tweets that really caused me to reach out to you?
I don't know, it was 10 days ago or less or something.
You were tweeting that You had just seen something, I think some new data, and that you were very concerned that Europe was really facing a catastrophic winter and that things could start beginning to unravel within weeks or months, I believe you said.
What was it that you saw then that initiated that?
I actually explained it in my Epoch Times article.
There are several things coming together.
But it was like, the first thing was that we don't...
Theoretically, Europe could export all the gas coming from Russia.
We don't have the terminal capacity for the LNG to get here.
And then there was the electricity, too.
So, rolling back blackouts, Lou, because we don't have enough electricity production in Europe to cover all that.
And the most insane thing, I think, came out yesterday...
It's that European Commission is proposing a mandatory cut on electricity demand for each country.
I think it was 15%.
They have no such powers.
They have nothing.
The Commission cannot actually...
There's no way they can enforce that.
And it's really like stuff from the Soviet Union.
It's really completely insane.
And still the propaganda machine for the European Union is so massive that people are always saying, okay, I have to cut this and that and all that.
To fight the war against Russia, which is an energy-independent, energy-community-independent nation.
I don't think we can.
They have never succumbed under any economic coercion, and I don't think that will happen this time either.
Not sure, though.
And all these crazy things are happening, and we are just getting more centrally governed here.
So it's a really scary picture for Europe.
Really, really.
Is there any chance, in your opinion, or any willingness on the part of European leaders to even attempt to sit down and negotiate peace with Russia and drop the economic sanctions and restore gas flow before January?
Or is that not going to happen at all?
Well, there's kind of a Black horse in the race or something like that.
It's Italy.
So they have got the dependency of rust and gas something like 50 to 20%.
It was former 40%.
And they have LNG and gas coming from Algeria and those sources.
But the thing is that they cannot...
The infrastructure within the country is such that they cannot...
Distributed from the south to north in sufficient quantities.
So either Italy will negotiate a deal with Russia, or the new government, Italy, will negotiate a deal with Russia, or the industrial hub of Italy will basically shut down during the winter.
Wow.
So I think they will make a deal.
It would be really, really stupid not to do that.
So I'm seeing that the The common stance of the European Union will rupture during the winter because every sane person would do that.
But the stubbornness to push Russia and Europe against the wall is just unbelievable.
Russia has been an aggressor, like I said, for 500 years.
When I started the war in Ukraine, we actually warned it two weeks prior that the war is likely to start.
Well, we won our subscribers.
And I was just, okay, now we have war in Europe.
I wholeheartedly supported the Ukrainians of the struggle because everything basically should do that.
But still, the response of Europe to it, It's just overwhelming because you win or lose wars with weapons, not with economic sanctions.
And it's, I don't know.
Yes, but can you stay with us just a few more minutes?
Yeah, yeah, I'm in no hurry.
Okay, this is fascinating.
I know our listeners are going to want me to ask you a couple more questions, but...
Did the European leaders, are they so disconnected from economic reality that they miscalculated?
They thought that these economic sanctions and disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system and trying oil price caps and all these things, they thought it would devastate Russia's economy.
And of course, it has not.
Russia has found plenty of other buyers, Turkey, India, China, whatever, for energy.
And with energy prices higher, Russia only needs to sell a lower quantity of energy to make the same amount of money as before.
But Europe is suffering.
It seems like Europe is suffering the kind of economic devastation that they intended to inflict upon Russia.
So, did the European leaders simply miscalculate?
Or how did that even happen?
I mean, I don't know.
You know, we're told that they know what they're doing, they're smart, they're educated, they're academics.
What happened?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's just that the propaganda against Russia here is massive.
Partly it's very understandable because they started the war in Europe after a long time.
But it's the propaganda, like there is a ministry of...
Anyway, one of the economic ministers told in the parliament just past week that we are in a war against Russia, where we are not.
No one has declared war against Russia here.
But the propaganda and all the agenda, they're so tough now.
And I don't know, you know, and they're feeding on the fears of people, basically, again, like propaganda always does.
And it's really interesting from a geopolitical perspective what is happening here, because Europe and Russia are basically destroying one another economically here.
And it cannot...
It will benefit the U.S. for sure.
In the longer term, the kind of emerging union between Europe, Russia, and China has now completely broken down.
So there was actually one, I don't remember who, in one newspaper, but I think it was April, an older business columnist in the U.S. wrote that this is something that, for example, CIA has tried to do for a long time.
And I don't know.
I have no competence of assessing that.
But it comes to the point of why Vladimir Putin attacked and why the response has been so massively ill-guided in my thinking economically.
So it's just all based on the question that what is striving?
Who is striving?
What is happening?
Yes, and here's an observation to run by you that's related to that, which is You know, let's take the old Soviet Union wanted all the countries to be communist, centrally planned economies.
Well, you've got the metals smelting and, you know, steel factories begging for essentially some type of subsidies to keep them functioning through the winter while they produce nothing because there's not energy to run the smelting operations.
The energy is too expensive, at least.
Yeah.
Right, so they're begging for governments to pay them to not work, which sounds to me a lot like the old Soviet Union, does it not?
Yeah, it is.
We have the kind of a DDR of East Germany.
The same policy is applied, basically.
It's really, I don't know.
And it's really interesting to see how this plays out during the winter.
We will probably see stuff that we...
I couldn't imagine happening, like blackouts and what the governments are going to do and all that.
It's part of some bigger game, I'm sure.
We just don't know what it is yet.
What do you think about the risk of civil unrest?
Because this has been cited by the UK government in particular.
Very high.
I know people who know people or police from the riot police of Helsinki, for example, and I heard that they are scared, the riot police, that is, of unrest during the winter, because people have already been pushed so hard by the coronary restrictions because people have already been pushed so hard by the coronary restrictions and And the anger is boiling below the surface in Finland, that's for sure.
Okay, so the combination of all these things that you've talked about here today seems to be quite a doom and gloom scenario.
How does Europe come out of this?
What structural changes need to take place to solve these problems?
Well, the market-oriented approach would reach us to have a really bad...
Well, first, let the...
Get rid of the sanctions, which is not going to happen.
But if that's not going to happen, then we need to have a deep crisis with banking crisis, debt crisis, currency crisis.
Let the eurozone break up.
Let all these things clear themselves up, if you may.
And let's return to the market economic principles here in Europe through a very deep crisis.
The other option is That everything becomes centrally governed, and we enter some kind of dystopia.
And I'm feeling this, the latter one, is where we are heading.
Right, so people would still freeze and starve.
It would just be under government mandates.
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
Our living standards would be permanently brought down.
So, most of Western Europe would look like East Berlin in 1984 or something, right?
Something like that, yes.
Here's the analogy.
Really crazy times.
Really crazy times.
All right.
Well, I hope...
First of all, I thank you for taking the time to share all this with us.
This is fascinating.
A little bit concerning.
Could I just make one last personal note?
Absolutely, please do.
Yeah.
I have...
I have an international man, let's say a woman, going on.
So there's a woman I would like to find.
I know this sounds really strange, and it is, trust me.
So I know from her, just her first name, which is Laura.
We first met in April 2019.
Last time we spoke was in January 2020, and last time we saw each other was in June 2021.
But the thing is that all the relationships that I had, she just keeps coming back to mind.
So if your first name is Laura, you're about six feet tall and blonde, And recognize yourself from the storyline I told you.
Please contact me.
I would like to get this mystery solved.
Thank you.
Well, that's fascinating.
Okay, so you're looking for a very specific woman who is tall and blonde, and her name is Laura.
And anything else?
Is she an economist?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I really don't know.
A few things about her.
I never had anything like this.
I never believed in anything like love at first sight or all that.
I call it crap.
And this one person has forced me to reconsider because a divorce in New Year 2019-2020 And they had a one longer relationship after.
But this person, Laura, always comes back to my mind.
She might be away for a few weeks and then she gets back.
And the strangest thing is that I sometimes even miss her.
Although I don't know her.
And this is stuff if someone would have told me again five years ago that I would be speaking this to a U.S. podcast, I would have proposed to take a hike again.
Okay, but wait a second.
Maybe our audience can help you.
But first of all, is she American?
No.
Okay, so what nationality is she?
Finnish, but I don't think she's in Finland anymore.
Yeah, I don't think she's in Finland anymore.
Okay.
All right.
And then the other question our audience is going to ask is, for the whole interview, you were talking about being driven by empirical data, and then this.
This is a little out of character for you, I believe.
It is.
I think it makes me, you know, reminds everybody that I'm just a human.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
This has been a...
This thing with her, it's been a humbling experience.
Okay.
Because I will say, like I told you before I started recording, I might be at times a ruthless bastard.
I tell you, a really outspoken person.
And this one woman has completely like melted me in a sense.
Yeah.
Just a few days ago, I told a friend who kind of proposed that I would come public with this.
I said, never.
I will never do that.
And now we're here.
You shouldn't be too strict to yourself.
This is funny.
Let's see where it comes out.
Well, one question then, how can they contact you if they...
Easily, just Google me.
From wherever you are, you can find me through Google.
You can write my phone numbers, emails, all that.
So I'm becoming a kind of global person.
This interview will probably push it further.
But, you know, I like to find through Google.
Then let me mention that the spelling of your first name is quite unique for those who want to reach you.
It's T-U-O-M-A-S as if it were Tuomas.
It's pronounced almost perfect.
Are you sure you don't have Finnish relatives or roots?
It is possible.
My ancestors are mostly European.
But the other thing I want to warn you, there might be several Lauras that contact you here.
A few women have already wrote to me that would help if they changed their name.
Yes, right.
There may be self-identifying Loras right now who are like, hey, this guy sounds awesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But if you're finished, you're six feet tall, blonde, gorgeous in any way, you can name Loras just rightly.
I don't mind.
Okay.
All right.
Well, then you have to promise us if this connection is made, you have to come back on.
I cannot come back.
This has been a treat.
Okay, absolutely.
Well, we hope you find Laura, and we especially hope that Laura seeks you out because she's living somewhere in Europe and wants solutions to these issues and finds that you're the guy who's got the answers here, at least some of them.
So it could be a match made in heaven.
We'll see.
We'll see how it goes.
But it's a mystery.
I like mysteries to be solved.
Well, this is the first such mystery that we've had on my show, but we're happy to help you.
And for all of you listening, put out all the feelers for a Finnish Laura who is tall and gorgeous and somehow not in Finland any longer.
For some reason, we're going to track her down.
I think this is a...
Good way to end it.
This is like a very human thing, you know, and, you know, we all have our soft spots and after all this brutal economic data and all the horrible forecast, we just have to, I think this is, this remembers us all, reminds us all that I think love conquers all also.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
And, you know, I'll even mention, it's interesting, your company, GNS Economics, it says, we reveal the hidden risks in global markets for better business and policy decisions.
So, you know, I think your philosophy is that you help others find opportunities when there's an unknown that they're facing.
Yeah, that's what we do.
And that's what you're demonstrating here with us, too.
Big unknown, but lots of opportunity ahead.
Definitely.
Okay, well, outstanding.
I really enjoyed speaking with you.
And I mean, we had a great time and hope you come back on again.
We'll do that.
I'll do.
Okay.
All the best.
Yep.
Have a great day there.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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