reading

I was thinking about how to best start this foreword and after throwing away several attempts I finally decided to start it with a quote by George Orwell since, on one hand it summarizes what I am trying to do here and on the other hand, we will run into him again later in this book: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!“

My name is Michael Morris. I am the author of the book Was Sie Nicht Wissen Sollen (What You Should Not Know) first published in 2011 which was an international bestseller, originally written in German, but translated into several European and Asian languages. I wrote four more books before this one, all originally in German and most came out in various languages in several countries. Yet none of them (despite the great success of the books) has ever been published in English, since the Anglo-Saxon market is very isolated and has its own rules of the game.

I had written my first book after the 2008 financial crisis to inform people about the background of the financial system, which I obviously did very well. I was able to put things that were deliberately appearing complicated into simple words, making them easy to understand for everybody without leaving out the essentials or becoming too trivial.

I would never have written my first book if I had not gotten to know my publisher, Jan Van Helsing, through mutual friends. In a long conversation I explained to him how I view the world financial system and he said that I should write it down exactly like that because now he understood for the first time how the monetary system really works and who is really behind it. So I did it.

It had never been my intention to become an author in the first place, because I had a perfectly fulfilled life and enough other things to do. However, the unexpected success of my first book led me to writing more books because I had built up a readership and I wanted to provide my readers with information that they did not get from the mass media at all.

This, the 2010s, was exactly the time when "alternative media" started to boom and traditional media and politics were beginning to fight those outlets and their contributors over the control of the narrative. From book to book, the headwinds of supposed moral guards, censorship authorities, and the guardians of political correctness grew stronger and I had to watch how fellow authors who expressed themselves publicly became targets of hate and violence, sometimes also physical violence. That is the reason why I, as an author, never showed myself in public and put myself behind instead. It was not about me, but about doing the investigative work that so-called journalists failed miserably to do. Most of them had long since given up on research and were ultimately only the spreaders of preconceived press releases, which were clearly biased, partisan, and calculating.

I would like to make it clear that I have not been close to any political party for a long time and would never personally advocate an ideological group, because in my personal opinion they are all only different facets of the same system that is designed to support a small, rich elite and to suppress most of humanity, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or skin color. What I do in my books is to show the structures, power relationships, and backgrounds that support that elite from my very personal point of view. I am not claiming the truth. I just want to help you add some new tones and shades to your color palette to possibly enrich your personal worldview a bit.

If you are a die-hard supporter of a certain political party or ideology, you will not have much fun with this book because I am guaranteed to disagree with your point of view at least in some areas no matter which party you favor. The mechanisms that I show and prove go beyond banalities, such as political party affiliations or church memberships. So if you are convinced that one party is doing everything right while another is pacting with the devil, do not read this book because it will anger you.

If you are firmly convinced that scientists and politicians only want your best and always tell you the truth, do not read this book because it will be very disturbing to you. I do not want that. I do not want to join the chorus of those whose intent is to spread fear and confusion in order to keep you controllable. If you like it easy and if you like to follow instructions, throw this book away now, because it will lead you into deep inner conflicts and keep you up at night.

This book is intended for people who have understood that there is a lot wrong with what is going on around them and who would like to get more sound information and the perspective of another human being who has lived in different countries and cultures and therefore is able to see and think outside the box.

This book is for people who are able to listen to other people without being at their throat, if they disagree with them. Only if we allow other perspectives and experiences in our life can we learn and develop further. Whoever only consumes the same media day in day out, which only confirms their own worldview, will always stand still. That is why I quote in books from many different sources, with different attitudes and backgrounds. I am listing all of my sources in detail at the end of the book to give you the opportunity to review all of this and to do further research for yourself.

After the publication of my fifth book Fake News in May 2017, I was actually done with writing. I was tired of being attacked on the internet, of being called “right-wing esoteric” or “conspiracy theorist” or “aluminum hat” or anything else derogatory. I witnessed so many people with honest and good intentions being called a lot of things that they had never been. I no longer wanted to have anything to do with all the madness of the global information war and the mass manipulation. I was tired of all the lies and the hatred. I was tired of dealing with the cognitive dissonance that I encountered everywhere when people started to argue. Thus, I was sure that I would not write another book or article. I turned to other activities because I felt I had said everything I had to say. I did not want to keep repeating myself. I certainly did not want to have to say it louder and louder and more aggressively every month just to drown out all the other aggressive opinion leaders who became more and more insolent. I had just had enough of the madness.

So why did I write a new book after all? I just simply could not take it any longer. After what happened on this planet in early 2020, I could no longer remain silent. I had to counter the disinformation and lies about the new cold virus SARS-COV-2. Because this virus was not the real reason for what we all had to experience in 2020, it was just the welcome excuse for something incredible that had been prepared for a long time.

It was Saturday, March 28, 2020, when I wrote the foreword of the original book in German. It was just after 3 p.m. when I sat at home in my office and I looked out of the window with joy. After a week without planes and without chemtrails, the sky was bright blue. The grayish veil that had been covering the sun constantly for years had disappeared, as had the noise caused by air traffic. No airplane, no helicopter, no car noise bothered me in those days. A pleasant silence allowed me to enjoy the chirping of the birds undisturbed outside in the trees. It was completely peaceful there at my desk and I found it tremendous how quickly I had gotten used to the house arrest imposed and the associated benefits of rest and the slowing down of everyday life. The world was suddenly as I remember it from my childhood and youth – at least as long as I did not make the mistake of exposing myself to the propaganda that they have now been calling “news” for quite some time.

Well, as I am translating this foreword for the English version of the book, I have to rewrite everything since it all has changed in the last ten weeks. Today is June 13^th and the birds' singing has been drowned out by sirens for days and although there are still hardly any planes in the sky, there is nothing left of silence. Helicopters and drones are circling above us. Behind us we have days of violence and terror, and we all fear that this is far from over. At a time when it would be important to stand together, the population is artificially divided to distract from the real culprits of this misery. It is sad to see so many people fall for the world's oldest tricks and harm themselves and their neighbors. On some days I feel ashamed to be human.

When I wrote the original version of this book in April and May, I predicted the biggest crash ever. At that point, all governments were still pretending that the lockdown would only cause minor economic disagreements. They acted as if there would only be a small slump in 2020, which would then be offset by an economic boom in 2021. I explained that this was neither possible nor intended. And I explained “why” in detail throughout this book. Meanwhile, a lot of what I predicted has come true.

What we are currently experiencing is the deliberate destruction of the global economy and the previous monetary system. There are several forces at work fighting to transform our entire eco-social structure according to their wishes under the guise of a health threat. The old structures are torn down before it is clear what the new building will look like and who will do it. The Chinese government has created an irreversible situation. The Western counterforces reacted unexpectedly consistently. What is to come after the summer of 2020 will blow most people's minds – and we will need good nerves, good friends and good information to survive it.

Young people in particular, who have not yet experienced a war or a major crisis, who grew up in wealth and abundance and who take freedom and civil rights for granted, will be amazed. Especially for those Americans who have never left their continent and who have not the slightest understanding of other cultures, histories, ways of thinking and customs, a world will collapse because the decades of unrestricted dominance of the USA is coming to an end.

Those who have so far been emotionally troubled by the announcement of a new iPhone or a new mobile app will actually need a lot of toilet paper in the near future. Anyone who previously believed that the biggest problems on earth were CO₂ and slow network expansion will be confronted with their greatest fears and demons. There will be no return to normality à la 2019, that much is certain. However, we may be able to influence what will come afterwards.

Every crisis is also an opportunity, personally, spiritually, as well as economically. Great crises hold great opportunities and our current challenges cannot be solved with financial, state support. That has never worked in the past and it will not work in the future. It will take more than money to break out of the vicious circle of addiction to a sick system. It will take a lot of information, courage, prudence, creativity, and perseverance.

We are all witnessing an extraordinary event, an experiment conducted on the human race, that has shaken many of us to the core. This is an opportunity to leave our comfort zone, to consciously take a new path, to give up our victimization and to take our lives into our own hands. SARS-CoV-2 is not the cause of the events of 2020, but only the apparent trigger! None of what we are experiencing is happening due to a virus, but due to human decisions, mainly made by a few politicians and scientists to the benefit of a small, ultra rich group of people and to the detriment of most of us.

Thank you for taking the time to read my lines instead of watching the hundredth replay of any TV series. Thank you for not having thrown the book away already. This proves that you have the courage and the will to face these epochal events. We are all in this together. Let us do everything in our power to bring about the change as peacefully as possible!

PART 1 – THE BACK STORY

When I started writing this book in mid-March 2020, I knew that we were facing tremendous changes. It was clear to me that it was not just about a virus and that after eight or ten weeks of lockdown we would not be going back to our old life. If you destroy the entire economic and social fabric of the world, if you abruptly stop all flows of money and goods without having an alternative plan, then there can be no return to "normalcy". It simply does not exist any more. I knew that chaos and suffering were inevitable. What was not clear to me was that it all would happen so quickly. Whatever I write is already out of date tomorrow. But I still write it as a mixture of nonfiction and diary in order to help you see a common thread in all the chaos and not to forget what is behind the facade.

The political decisions made in front of and behind the curtain in February and March 2020 were a deliberate act of destruction. They were a war of aggression on our own population, our own culture and history, on everything that we and our ancestors had built up. The so-called "corona crisis" and the lockdown, "social distancing" and new rules of conduct were never about protecting the population. It was simply a matter of burning the old house down because the landlord no longer wanted and needed it, and the arsonists did not care that there were still people inside.

What we are experiencing in 2020 is the most extensive and probably the cruelest experiment that has ever been carried out on humans, and those who are responsible for it are not humans in my eyes, even if they are portrayed as such. It does not matter whether they call themselves "philanthropists" or "benefactors", whether they have doctoral degrees or awards, they are what they are, namely enemies of humanity. The deliberate destruction of everything that, until recently, we called "our lives" has nothing to do with scientific knowledge or foundations. All the destruction of what we thought was normal is not due to a corona virus. SARS-COV-2 is not responsible for this, but decisions made by politicians and scientists are.

The supposed pandemic did not come as a surprise or unpredictably either. Everything that we have experienced so far in 2020 was well prepared and planned in advance, as I will explain to you in detail. But before we get there, we have to take a few steps back. To understand what is happening at this point in our history, we need to remember how we got here. In a way, this did not come by surprise since it was long overdue. But to explain this in more detail, we have to stop right here and take a good look back. I ask you to follow me on a short excursion through the past decades. Let me help you understand that what is happening in 2020 has been mapped out and would have happened one way or another anyway, virus or not. The crash, The Big One, this economic and monetary black hole that will mercilessly devour large parts of our past prosperity and freedoms, did not come accidentally or unexpectedly. In fact, it was precisely planned and very much desired by some who benefit from it. What we took for granted and "normal" no longer exists. So far everything is going as planned.

"Everybody wants us to go back to normal, the way things were before anybody heard the word coronavirus or COVID-19. But you know what? We weren’t normal back then. The economy was sick before the virus infected us. It was a bubble. There was nothing normal about that bubble. And the problem with bubbles is once they pop they’re not going to reflate. You need a new bubble. You need a bigger bubble. That’s what the Fed did. They inflated the NASDAQ bubble. That popped. They inflated a bigger bubble in housing. That popped. And then they inflated a bubble in everything. Well, everything has already been in a bubble. There’s nothing left to bubble up. It’s over.”⁽¹⁾

Peter Schiff (economist and bestselling author) March 23, 2020

The 90s – Pride Goes Before a Fall

The “NASDAQ bubble” to which the economist Peter Schiff refers in the quote is often referred to as the “dotcom bubble”. In the second half of the 1990s, more and more money flowed to the stock exchanges, especially in the shares of the so-called "new economy", those companies that dealt with the emerging Internet, laptops, mobile phones and their applications. In the mid-1990s, the mood was exuberant since the Cold War was supposedly over, the Berlin Wall had fallen and everyone was allowed to travel wherever they wanted. The residents of the former Soviet Union had a lot of catching up to do in Western goods, so they continued to consume until they dropped. The youth of the 1990s were the first generation in a long time to no longer go out on the streets and protest. Instead they withdrew themselves from society and spent their time in extended dance events, so-called “raves”, staying awake with artificial drugs moving to monotonous music and happily grinning to themselves. And what should the cool and numb young prosperity children with the dilated pupils protest against in the first place? The poor people in the Eastern Bloc were liberated, there was MTV, VIVA and all these new television channels that entertained a new, self-satisfied generation around the clock.

Those were the years of Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Matrix and Titanic. Those were the years when apparently most educated citizens had given their brains to the cloakrooms of the "clubs" and never picked them up again. But while the young were having fun, the old created precedents. The 1990s were the age of neoliberalism and globalization – two concepts that hardly any politician really understood in its full scope. “Neoliberalism” meant the principle of the state's withdrawal from the economy. This removed national borders and left the world to the large, supranational corporations. The idea behind it is that the economy can regulate itself better than politicians or political bodies. This led to laws designed by corporations for corporations, which were to the detriment of both the state and the citizens. All of this went hand in hand with massive privatizations. State sold their holdings in companies, even those that were of the utmost importance to the common good – such as public transport or the drinking water supply. Depleted politicians squandered everything that their parents and grandparents had previously struggled to build up. They had no idea how serious the consequences of their frivolous actions were, and they did not care because they were never held accountable for them anyway.

The word "privatization" comes from the Latin word "privare", which means to "deprive" or “robb”. In privatizations the general public gets robbed! Hermann Scheer, German politician and holder of the Right Livelihood Award, the so-called “Alternative Nobel Prize”, said in the documentary Let’s Make Money (2008): “In the neoliberal age everything is shortened. Everything. Everything is reduced to the fastest highest possible return, no matter what it costs! "

And it costs a lot! “Globalization” basically describes the abolition of national borders in order to make it easier for large corporations to network, interconnect, and act internationally. It enables them to produce where it is cheapest and to set up their official company headquarters where they do not have to pay taxes. It basically means the creation of a secret, undemocratic state in the shadows. It is therefore run by a hidden government, which I call the “Secret World Government”. This "secret state" created its own laws, its own environmental standards and its own social tariffs. The large corporations in the United States and Europe bought one former government-owned or co-owned competitor after the other thanks to state deregulation, thus eliminating their competition. Their goal was to achieve monopoly positions, to set prices freely and to exert even more power on elected politicians.

Western economy boomed in the late 1990s. Until then, stock corporations had mainly been located in the manufacturing segment and had been geared towards long-term, solid growth. Now, overnight, numerous new companies popped up that offered computer programs or services related to these new technologies. Everything went very quickly. Within a few years, a gigantic growth market developed, which was driven by a new zeitgeist and by the craze for consumption, especially among the younger generation. Thousands of small companies that often had nothing but vague ideas for new developments went public. These so-called “start-ups” sparked a hype that led to the fact that their shares were literally torn out of the hands of these windbags. Banks gave cheap, unsecured loans that were used to create more companies and buy more shares. This attracted more speculators and more windbags. Completely worthless companies, which apart from ideas only had a few desks, computers, and telephones, became millions dollar companies overnight – at least on paper. Newly rich “dot-commers" threw money around and the world fell into the delusion that everyone could get rich overnight if they just did it right. The computer magazine WIRED was something like Vogue for all the nerds and geeks who, while everyone else was dancing to techno beats all drugged up, wrote programs on their small machines at home and thus changed the world. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Dell or Yahoo were the high-flyers in which everyone wanted to invest and participate.

America Online, later called “AOL” advertised with its famous slogan “You’ve got mail!” and demonstrated how easy life had become all of a sudden due to the Internet, to the World Wide Web! The number of Internet users grew rapidly and increased twentyfold between 1995 and 2000. Expectations in sales and profits of the new companies were therefore correspondingly high. Everything went incredibly fast and everyone was out of their minds and wanted to get rich overnight. This was the time of the rise of a new empire, the Silicon Valley, where awkward geeks could become superheroes overnight and were now called "nerds". Suddenly everything seemed possible. Who cared about commercial experience? Let's reach for the stars!

Figure 1: The Dow Jones 30 Industrial Stock Index since 1928 shows the slow rise in stock prices into the 1980s, which then accelerated steadily, leading to the three massive slumps after strong periods of growth in 2000, 2008 and 2020.

But as mostly is the case with high expectations ... they are met with disappointment! The turn of the year from 1999 to 2000 held a certain magic for some and had long been anticipated. After all, you didn't often have the opportunity to witness a millennium change. Although this New Year's Eve was celebrated extravagantly, the countdown to midnight was followed with great concern. Anyone who was old enough in 1999 to remember this turn of the year will surely remember the fear of the Y2K bug (millennium bug).

What was that? Well, more and more companies and public institutions were now dependent on computers, but there was still a limit when it came to memory space and the sophistication of programs, and the high speed of development came with a lot of flaws and uncertainty. Nobody knew whether it would take revenge on December 31, 1999 at midnight or not.

The problem was that the year numbers were not displayed in full on the computers but only with the last two digits. The year 1999 was only displayed as "99" and now nobody knew what would happen if all computers changed to "00" at midnight (instead of 2000). Programmers had tried everything in the weeks leading up to the turn of the year to prevent possible consequences, but no one knew if that would be enough. A widespread collapse of computer systems was feared, maybe with the loss of a lot of data or even power outages. For computer companies, 1999 was a good year at first glance, because their clients around the world spent over 600 billion US dollars to avoid Y2K breakdowns and computer crashes. ⁽²⁾ And that was a lot of money at the time!

And then… five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year! No power outage, no computer problems, we’ve been lucky again. We entered the new millennium in full illumination and some of us got the feeling that we were just invincible; while in reality they might have just been lucky.

In the last few months of 1999, many companies had already cut their investments and advertising budgets out of fear of the unknown and unpredictable. And although everything had worked out fine, a new market euphoria just did not want to arise. Skepticism had grown among investors and the carelessness of the nerds was not good enough to wash it away. Every bubble that is inflated to burst must pop at some point. The “dotcom bubble” popped in March 2000. The big investors realized that the party was over, so they sold their shares. The prices fell, which led to panic sales among the small investors. The courses crashed, it all went south and the devil takes the hindmost. Many companies vanished almost overnight and with them all those dreams and hopes of a life of plenty.

This was the first of the three big bubbles that had burst in the past twenty years! (See Fig. 1) But of course it had not been the first in history. Recklessness and greed had led to great expectations and big disappointment before, like the Dutch “tulip bubble” that burst in 1637 or the crash of 1929 that resulted in the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. Along with it came mass unemployment, social unrest, political and banking crises and massive deflation.

We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. The benefiters of that behavior are always the same rich families. Money doesn't just go away. If some lose it, it ends up in the pockets of others.

"They were heroes for a short time. Internet pioneers. People to whom investors threw the money. For half a decade, the 'World Wide Web' sparked dreams of investors and founders. But shortly after the start of the new millennium, mass dying hit the new economy. Dotcom mania ended. The consequences hit companies and employees all over the world: stock market crashes, bankruptcies, layoffs, and desperate attempts to survive with the company. In retrospect, everyone quickly agreed, even those who had benefited from the boom, that it couldn't go well in the long run. Once again, investors had been in a state of greed, as if the 17th century tulip fever shouldn’t have disabused them. Again, entrepreneurs had ignored businesslike conduct to their own disadvantage. Criminals had ripped off again; governments, controllers and experts had closed their eyes and ears. Just a bubble like any other. And yet it was completely different. Because this time it didn't just leave destruction behind. The excesses of the 1990s laid the foundation for a real new economy: the digital economy, which a decade later infused every corner of the world, every apartment and every company. Internet technology owes its breathtaking progress to the maniacs of that time, who took the impossible for granted. Quirky startups like Google and Amazon grew up to corporations that dominate the world today."⁽³⁾

Ines Zöttl (business journalist)

This powerful new entrepreneurship now directs politics and the rest of the economy as they please, making them look like a flock of scared sheep. With supersonic speed, self-made billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk put their soaring dreams and their mostly libertarian and completely anti-social attitudes into practice, while the rest of the world is just stunned and does not understand what is going on.

The two mentioned here are the bosses of companies that were long in deficit, but thanks to an unprecedented hype made their company's shares the most expensive in the world. This even allows them to compete in space with Russia and China while the official US space agency NASA watches from the sidelines.

The Second Big Bubble – When You Fight Fire with Oil

The bursting of the dotcom bubble was followed by a three-year slide in the stock markets. A lot of money and trust had been destroyed. The central banks cut interest rates to stimulate consumption. They flooded the markets with new, fresh money, but the measures quickly fizzled out. That soon wouldn’t matter anymore because the economy was outpaced by a different kind of reality. On September 11, 2001, the entire Western world fell into shock. All of us old enough have our own story to tell about “9/11”. The collective field of fear and sadness, the horror and the helplessness shaped our entire life for weeks or maybe for the rest of our lives. A gray veil was laid over the world as we knew it and changed our perception of what we called reality. After that event, we never found our way back to our old lives. If only we were willing and able to learn from history, 9/11 could have helped us understand and master the events of 2020!

9/11 changed the world forever. One of the immediate consequences was the closure of all public buildings such as schools, offices or airports. This was followed by restrictions on freedom of travel, more surveillance of citizens hypocritically called the "Patriot Act". The economy stalled, resulting in falling prices. This is how “deflation” arises.

Of course, nobody blamed the most unpopular US president of all time, George W. Bush, for this slump, because, hey, it was an unpredictable event, right? That was "Force Majeure"! No, this was not the time for blaming games or political disputes. No, in times like these everyone has to stand together. In an event like this the impossible becomes possible. Nothing is questioned by the press because that would be immoral. The media now has great responsibility. The collective mourning has to be orchestrated and everyone has to participate and play his or her role. Anyone who was in the US in September 2001 like me will know what I mean by that. That sea of flying flags, the hypocrisy and the patriotic fuss were celebrated to the point of absurdity. I do not intend to hurt anybody's feelings, but I will never forget how critical, well-informed, well-educated and intelligent people turned into totally irrational flag waving tin soldiers in the blink of an eye.

I do not care if you believe the official fairy tale of the evil, bearded men who, with the help of Allah, overrode all laws of physics, because the consequences of this major event remain the same no matter which tale you favor. Regardless of whether you prefer the narrative of an “attack from the outside” over the expertise of organizations like “Firefighters for 9/11 Truth” or “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth” who prove that the twin towers were blown up from the inside: it is difficult to argue about the consequences of 9/11.⁽⁴⁾

What do I mean by that? Well, in March 2003, US troops went to war against Iraq – justified by 9/11 and the fabricated story of Saddam’s mysterious “weapons of mass destruction” that had never existed. The Western media in broad has failed completely by letting this obvious bluff slip and therefore supporting the perpetual US war. For the next thirteen years, the United States intervened in one country after the next, artificially triggering crises and overthrowing the parliaments and leaders of other countries. George Bush, Jr.’s lies changed and reshaped the world! He and his allies tried to sell us all these wars, as “liberation” of oppressed peoples. They blessed us with their fairy tale of a “good war” that would bring the poor fellows “democracy” and freedom and joy and solid Western goods. But in order to make that happen they had to destroy the countries and their cultures first. Well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, right?

Without 9/11, George W. Bush would have never gotten re-elected, but the media used a good crisis to turn a clown into a hero overnight. In 2004, the heroic “crisis manager” was allowed to keep the chair in the Oval Office warm for another four years, continuing to act as if he understood the instructions that he got from the background. For the most part, the "temporary measures" that were imposed by US institutions after 9/11 in the wake of the state of emergency were never taken back! Since then anybody travelling on a plane is a potential terrorist. We got used to stripping in front of everybody, to taking off our belts and jackets and shoes, to being yelled at if you not do so fast enough. We got used to naked scanners and pat downs, to all these different tools of intimidation. None of these "temporary measures" due to a supposed terrorist attack have ever been taken back. I emphasize this because it is important to remember that with regard to the events of 2020. Stay-at-home orders, curfews, social distancing or facial masks may become our new normal just like naked scanners at airports did. Cuts in citizens' freedoms and rights are never temporary unless the public insists on it.

After 9/11, Homeland Security called on local law enforcement units to actively support them in their "war on terror" and in their "war on drugs". Little by little, the police officers were secretly trained to control and spy on the population in a “war on liberties”. A climate of distrust had been created. This made the police increasingly unpopular with the population. But press and political players made sure that a potential danger from an unseen enemy always remained present in order to hold the majority of the people in a never-ending state of fear, therefore believing that the drastic measures were for their own good.

Since 9/11, US law enforcement officers have the right to confiscate or imprison, even kill, US citizens without charge or trial! Between 2001 and 2014, US police officers confiscated more than $2.5 billion from US citizens during vehicle inspections, so called “highway interdictions“. Most, but not all, victims of such “stop and seize“ piracy acts were of black or of Asian descent. Most of them have not seen their money or valuables ever again, even after legal proceedings. They are fair game for the police. Since 9/11, we are standing in the middle of an economic, currency, belief, and information war. We are getting crushed and squeezed and the screws are tightened more and more. The omnipresent surveillance of the citizens is constantly taken to the next level and has not even found its limits with Orwellian social media. This war has never been against an external enemy. This is a war against all ordinary people independent of race or color or religion or nationality.

Since the USA hardly produced anything during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the country was completely dependent on foreign countries and its economy was only geared towards services and consumption, which is a very dangerous road to take. A lot of new money was created because wars are expensive. However, this money not only went to armaments, but also to the banks that were supposed to put it into circulation in order to keep the service industry afloat. If more money is pumped into the economic cycle, it has to flow somewhere. Saving it was not attractive due to low interest rates. Some investors were still on bad terms with the stock market after the last crash, and people couldn't consume enough to use up all the money that was in circulation. But the banks knew a way out of the dilemma: they had started making real estate loans more and more attractive in the late 1990s and now they aggressively expanded this line of business. The big banks came forward and the small banks had to follow in order not to lose their customers. The new economy was toast and the real estate market became the next big thing that everybody wanted to participate in.

How do you create a bubble in the real estate market? Quite simply, you lower the requirements that borrowers have to meet in order to be able to borrow money. Did you have to contribute at least 30 percent to a home loan before you were now eligible for a home loan, even with holes in your pockets? No. Banks suddenly financed real estate up to 100 percent, i.e. without any collateral. So more and more people took out loans and invested the seemingly free money that came with almost no interest in real estate.

Banks were now lending money for real estate to borrowers who they knew would never be able to repay their debts. But it was good business for the banks and they were sure that they would be saved again with taxpayer money in the not so unlikely event of a loss. They almost forced their clients into home loans. A snowball started rolling and soon became an avalanche. The boom in the real estate market became – like the "New Economy" a few years earlier – a pull. Everyone wanted to be there. Low-income people who would never have dreamed of owning a home in the 1990s were now encouraged to buy houses, big houses. They sensed the opportunity of a lifetime and took the bull by the horns. Rising demand spurred the housing market and fueled the prices. Houses were no longer just a place to live in but an object of speculation.

People thought “If I buy a house for a million today, I can sell it again in five years for one and a half or two million ... so why not buy five or ten houses when the bank demands no contribution?" If you want to get a good impression of the mood of those days, of the greed and the stupidity that permeated these markets, I highly recommend the 2015 movie The Big Short with Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale. It perfectly reflects the mood of those days.

The cheap loans encouraged exuberance; they fueled the general mood to buy and spend and consume and show off. Every small employee already saw himself as a future multimillionaire. People purchased everything and threw money around as if there was no tomorrow: cars, electronics, furniture, even vacations, all bought with more borrowed money. In 2002, the crash of 2000 was already forgotten; it was erased out of everybody's memories, deleted out of people's minds by one major event after the next.

In Europe, Y2k and 9/11 were followed by a less horrific but equally game-changing event that some perceived with great enthusiasm, while the vast majority faced it with great skepticism. On January 1, 2002, not even four months after the supposed terrorist attacks in NYC had changed all our lives, the national currencies in 13 European countries were replaced by one new common currency, the Euro. The average North American cannot comprehend the psychological component of that event, since you have never gone through a currency reform that always comes with a lot of loss and suffering. Therefore, all the older Europeans, those who still remembered the post-WW2-era and the last dramatic changes in currencies, had collywobbles as we approached the new year 2002.

The introduction of the new European common currency led to much uncertainty and brought a wave of inflation. Many business people used the conversion to raise their prices, especially in those countries that had complex conversion rates. In Italy, for example, 1, 936.27 Lire were converted into one Euro. Instead of running around with calculators all day long in order to track if the price for a loaf of bread or a coffee had really been translated correctly to the fixed rate, people just gave in, knowing that they would get ripped off. And they were. Everything got more expensive which is called “inflation”. But instead of naming the child by name, the word "inflation" was replaced by the word "economic growth", which sounded much more confident and should hide the misconstruction of the Euro – but more on that later.

This so called “economic growth” was not only witnessed in Europe, but due to cheap loans in the whole Western world. This reflected in rapidly rising property prices. Within ten years, real estate prices in the United States increased ten to twenty times. As always, the Americans started, but the Europeans followed. In the beginning England, Ireland and Spain caught the “real estate fever”, but it soon gradually spread to the entire Western world and finally also to China. When Central and Southern Europe were hit by the fever wave in 2004, the house of cards had already started to collapse in the US. Bit by bit, more and more loans started to fail. More and more borrowers could no longer repay their debts. But since the business was going so well for the banks they did not want any “bad mood” to spread, so they covered the loan defaults up as long as they could.

In order to do so, they masked the problems by selling packages or bundles of bad loans, cheaply to other banks or institutions just to get them out of their own balance sheet. There was a brisk trade with such "toxic" loans. They were passed on like hot potatoes and sold at high premiums from one country to another because the risk was very high. If, for example, a family in Wyoming had taken a loan for a house from their local branch of, let’s say, Bank of America, they might now owe the money to Deutsche Bank or a bank in Iceland or Italy, perhaps even without knowing it. Until then, the family in Wyoming had known their contact person in their local branch by name. They could associate their financial affairs with a familiar face and a real person. Now, all of a sudden, without being asked for permission their loan had been passed on to some other company. They could no longer turn to anyone because Deutsche Bank had no branches in Wyoming at all. Many banks had long since lost track of their loans, nor did they know whether the borrowers were still paying, whether they were still living there, or whether the houses were still standing. How was Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt or NYC supposed to know what was going on with the family home in Wyoming? They hired locals to drive around and take pictures of the homes and the people living there.

The whole thing became more and more absurd, but as long as there are people willing to play along, the avalanche continues to roll. And while the first insiders in the US financial industry realized that a bubble had formed that was about to burst, people in Europe still wanted to ride the dead horse. Once someone has a fever, they no longer hear the alarm bells. Even the treasurers of municipalities, cities or counties now bought crap products and took risky loans from banks and credit brokers. They invested in dubious funds of all kinds, foreign currency loans, leasing transactions, short transactions, and derivatives. No borrower understood what they were doing, but they were promised fabulous returns and since the rating agencies okayed everything, what could go wrong? There was collective mental aberration, but if you wanted to be like the cool kids, you had to tag along.

However, the prices for goods cannot rise indefinitely, because a constant price increase is only possible if more and more money flows into the market. Otherwise, there would not be enough money to pay the higher prices and they would go down again. The prices for goods can go up if the markets get flooded with money, but if the value stays the same you create imbalance. The more there is of something, the less it is worth, and that also applies to money. Increasing amounts of money, which arise from increased lending, result in inflation. Ultimately, inflation offsets the supposed increase in value. The cost of living is increasing, but wages and salaries are usually not increasing to the same extent. People spend more than they make. That cannot go on forever, and sooner or later people start to realize. The euphoria gives way to fear. The struggle for survival begins.

Whenever there is a steep upturn in the economy and more and more money flows into the cycle while prices and wages do not rise to the same extent, there is inevitably a point at which consumers have to borrow more and more to be able to maintain their living standards. That is when they start spending less and the mood to buy evaporates. Now the economic engine starts to stutter. Uncertainty is spreading. Mass media and politicians appease. They encourage the people to continue consuming. People would like to, but it is no longer possible because there is not enough money.

And whenever they emphasize that there is no problem, you know it is time to take shelter. Suddenly the engine dies. Now more and more borrowers can no longer service their loans. This is where the bubble bursts. We reached this point in the real estate sector in autumn of 2007 only seven years after the “dotcom bubble”. With the new bubble bursting, millions of people in the United States lost their homes through foreclosure. The number rose by 53 percent in 2008 alone. Millions of Americans then lived on the streets again, as in the 1930s, or in huge tent cities somewhere in the desert. Thousands took their own lives. Many people lost their homes in Europe. Extensive new settlements along the Spanish coastal areas never got finished and resembled ghost towns.

Real estate prices were now falling rapidly, and banks around the world were confronted with huge losses in their books. No bank trusted the other; no one lent money now to the other. In the summer of 2008, the US government prevented the insolvency of the three big banks Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with many billions of dollars, while letting smaller banks go bankrupt.

The reason for the rescue of large banks and the ritual sacrifice of small ones was called "too big to fail". It was argued that a bankruptcy of large banks, so-called "systemically important" banks, could drag the entire global economy into the abyss. But then, in the fall of 2008, the fourth major US bank stumbled, Lehmann Brothers, a bank that was larger than all the other bailouts so far. There was negotiation and poker. Would the government save them? Would other banks step in to prevent a system collapse? In the end, nobody helped. On September 15, 2008, the bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and started an avalanche. Private customers lost over $200 billion in savings. Unsuspecting savers around the world, including many older people who, thanks to the "expert" advice from their bank, had put their savings into complex investment forms from Lehmann Brothers. Nobody had pointed out the risks of such investments to them and now they were left with nothing.

Other banks plunged into the abyss in the United States, England, Iceland, and Greece. Worldwide people who had lost everything in the crash demonstrated, not understanding how this could have happened. They were angry, bewildered and shocked. The banks became an enemy and the "Occupy Wall Street" activists went for the throat of the financial elite. The stock markets crashed, global trade plummeted and a dramatic recession spread worldwide. What followed was the biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s. The states cut interest rates significantly and once again pumped tons of new money into the markets to stabilize them, which again led to inflation. After the real estate bubble, an even larger debt bubble developed. Governments worldwide saved banks with taxpayers' money. That means, they bought the debt from the shareholders of the banks and thus transferred it to the citizens. The banks were allowed to set up so-called “bad banks”. These were huge, virtual rubbish dumps on which all bad loans could be dumped. The banks were rid of their losses and suddenly had clean balance sheets again. And the citizens paid the bill – it was like magic!

The death of many small, mostly local banks led to numerous bankruptcies of small companies, which in turn benefited the large corporations. So there were clear winners of the financial and banking crash, namely the owners of the BIG companies and the BIG banks!

This brings us back to the consequences of globalization and neoliberalism, because if a company is big enough and is internationally positioned, then it can no longer be allowed to go bankrupt because it would generate an unpredictable conflagration. Small businesses on the other hand will never cause politicians much of a headache. We must never forget this when we talk about the events of 2020.

CONTENTS

Foreword

PART 1 – THE BACK STORY

The 90s – Pride Goes Before a Fall

The Second Big Bubble – When You Fight Fire with Oil