II. Geopolitics

Globalization has unleashed both positive and negative forces upon our world. The corporate media has been successful at communicating the positives and covering up the negatives, including the corruption used to engineer a financial coup d’état and to centralize control while destroying wealth.

In 2016, Brexit and the election in the US of a private businessman – and an outsider to the political establishment – represented a productivity backlash. Essentially, the people who live in the heartland and who are responsible for managing larger segments of the concrete economy – agriculture, real estate, energy and the military – demanded a course correction from an economy run from the urban coastlines: Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The biggest losers were the corporate media and the “fake news” operatives that feed them via the intelligence communities.

The US elections represented a shift in power from a faction in the US establishment committed to maintaining a global empire to a faction intent on ensuring a robust, more self-sufficient economy in North America. If anything, this will accelerate the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world.

The question before us is whether the incoming US administration can re-engineer federal budgets to a positive return on investment. If it does not succeed, we are entering a long, harsh financial squeeze. Worse, if tinkering with the US Constitution occurs and/or “piratization” takes over, there will be real trouble ahead.

A retreat from globalization may also pull resources out of the emerging markets back to the developed nations. How this rebalancing will take place poses some very significant questions for investors.

Throughout 2016 and into 2017, the most important unanswered question continues to be, “Who is really in charge?” The hand of the “Deep State” is becoming more evident, especially since the corporate media loses influence. The primary media player during the 2016 election was Wikileaks. Following their saga throughout the year meant tracking the rising Clinton body count: assassination as a tool of statecraft could not be ignored in 2016.

Immigration was a primary issue in the British and American elections during 2016, and it is expected to be the same in the French, Dutch and German elections in 2017. Expect questions regarding immigration to remain front-and-center for some time to come.

I. Free Speech & Corporate Media Meltdown

II. The Trump Transition & The Productivity Backlash

III. The Shift to the Multipolar World

A. The Big Picture:

B. What’s Next for the EU?

C. Growth on the Silk Road

D. The US China Re-balancing and the South China Sea

E. The Beaten Path to Antarctica

IV. The Deep States Grows More Evident

The US Presidential Election:

V. Migration and Immigration

G-7 Backlash:

Long-Term Trends: Migration Potential From Africa and Middle East: