Meltdown, pushback and will

The misguided belief of a teetering state, where everyone is hungry, and riots can break out any minute, has not been properly challenged much less dislodged

With utter predictability, a Chinese COVID “case-demic”, as predictable as rain in a monsoonal summer, has been among us. This after Omicron showed its mild lethality along with its immunity to silly virtue signalling measures like masks and the irrelevance of “vaccines.”

 Lest the hoopla derange us, let’s get anchored anew.

The roots were financial

2019-2020 was a period of the untelevised, unprecedented, financial collapse that was looming over the quaintly called “global financial system.” 

The responses which now seem akin to “voodoo” in terms of any real efficacy, made perfect sense as financial desperation. The lockdowns, mandatory muzzles, social distancing produced zero positive impact on public health (comparing those jurisdictions that did versus those that didn’t, across continents and countries). But then they were essentially theatre.

The “then functioning” global economy was going to be dismantled under the guise of a pandemic, small businesses with their credit needs were to be taken down, and people’s minds and wills and the sponsoring social fabric had to be rent asunder, so a dark dystopia, preserving the class divide could be engineered.

There was an objectively verifiable emergency debt crisis in the Fall of 2019. And the formerly liquid markets of Repo Markets, Money Markets and Foreign Exchange Markets burst like balloons.

Governments dove in, to salvage the “Repocalypse” as it has been called. The collapse began in 2008/2009, and everything in between simply propped up the decay, delaying the inevitable.

Plummeting industrial production was triggered when banks started to refuse US sovereign debt instruments as collateral for overnight loans, forcing the Federal Reserve “to the rescue” with printed money to cover the massive shortage. Consumers worldwide of course blithely went on their merry way.

To clarify, the “Repo market” is where banks borrow money so there are enough liquid assets to meet fiduciary needs. $ 10 to $ 20 billion per day were being pumped in to keep interest rates low to allow for borrowing. Still, it wasn’t enough.

By early March, many more billions were going in to prop up this existential crisis. Wall Street was awash in debt, all holding dollars, and then in a reversal, treasury bonds and US bills were being rejected as collateral for Repos.

The “Too Big to Fail” Banks and Hedge Funds had been bailed out already, and now the contagion spread to stocks, commodities, bonds, Mortgage-Backed Securities, Mutual Funds, and the institutionalised Ponzi darlings like the “Structured Derivative Products” traded on proprietary platforms. We were and had been running the world insanely, and it was coming home to roost.

Cover was needed for the runaway money printing, leading to “lockdowns” and their pandemically camouflaged kin. And so we took a manageable medical challenge (remember 99% recovery rate, median age of death higher than normal mortality around 80, almost all “COVID deaths” accompanied by multiple comorbidities) and metastasized it into the panic reserved for a genuine plague in the Middle Ages.

So, the toxic, worthless debt continues to be acquired, hyperinflation is among us, and what happens next depends on whether individual economic agents wake up en masse, and actually inject some real economic activity into the market rather than the further stockpiling of fictitious debt.

Of course, the mass media had to be complicit, and you can see the fever to “deplatform” any contrarians, especially well-credentialed ones, as the “Twitter Files” have confirmed, with FBI involvement no less. Cognitive processes and critical thinking were suddenly enemies of the state.

The security state got installed, digital IDs and tracking became “necessities”, tantrums at protestors led to calling them “murderers” and “anti-science”. This was all part of the tableau. And along with this, we made the public health industry almost intrinsic to global markets and financial conglomerates. 

If what financial forecasters who are sober enough to analyse are telling us comes to pass, the debts and deficits are unpayable. Pensions and benefits cannot be paid. The system has reached an impasse, and social unrest may well be the new normal, as a challenging path to recovery, solvency and sanity is mapped.

China test tracking

Protestors in China are apparently to be supported and celebrated, but protestors in Europe, Canada, Australia or the US, are subverters and are to be demonised and tamed. 

Even the CCP with its advanced aversion to reality has railed and failed to assert its will over a viral strain. Mass testing is now gone, so are the quarantine hostels. Borders are now open for incoming and outgoing travel. 

Again, ubiquitous mask wearing has proven itself a dud in the People’s Republic as well. And just like their mRNA cousins, the classical inactivated virus preparation based “vaccines” have failed to prevent mass transmission and circulation of SARS-CoV-2.

Every other country in East Asia finally realised the limits of absurdity against a mild yet unstoppably infectious Omicron (nature’s actual vaccine). And there is no biologic logic to assuming that a Chinese surge will lead to new variants. 

First, if it did, they will or won’t spread based on our immunity and their own evolutionary traits – little that we do will impede them. Moreover, there are far bigger killers we routinely ignore, and would be better served addressing, among them 9 million+ starving annually! 

In China, you had the very transmissible Omicron variant ripping through an “infection-naïve” population. And since the existing “vaccines” have done nothing to constrain the current Omicron strain, there is no reason to expect any advantage from which mutation will occur.

The Chinese have much to answer for. Through a measure of collusion with Fauci and co, this errant COVID strain likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan. They have confused and impeded investigation, not that Congressional cronies in the US have been very effective. Their “lockdown” model helped stimulate shattering collateral damage worldwide. The twitter bots pumped out ersatz clips of people “collapsing” on the streets, beyond absurd in review. Chinese citizens have had their lives and freedoms trampled on.

That does not however, in evolutionary terms, make China a source of new variants because it had a “case-demic” surge. And when variants come, the sheer demonstrated public health illiteracy of the WHO, likely feigned to advance political agendas, is not surely where we will look for rescue.

The pushback

Much has disdainfully been made of “the laptop elites” and the “pajama classes”, the undergirding of the so called “knowledge economy.” 

Busily imbibing woke mantras and shrieking in outrage, “Wear your mask!” to protect against an airborne pathogen whose molecules are too small for “face nappies” to deter. 

Delivery services flourished over this period as we awaited their “deliverance” with bated breath. And the disdain for that old economy, where people made things, experimented, sweated and strained, exchanged ideas, mounted.

Against that, we had the capricious theology of “lockdown”, a medieval concept that was on no public health guideline through 2019 and was actively disdained in professional literature. 

However, in the thrill of being sequestered away from life, narcissists thrived, sending out their Instagram victories over lasagna while being paid in funny money by someone somewhere for whatever they ostensibly did.

Well, in 2022, there was a rude awakening as those who made survival possible, farmers, deliverymen, truckers intruded onto the fantasy lives of quivering elites. The Canadians set us off with The Freedom Convoy, which clashed with the frothing absolutism of Trudeau – demanding a jab for anyone crossing the border.

Truckers wanted to be able to earn a living without subjecting their bodies to medical experimentation. Friends and family members joined them in solidarity. Of course, this invited an avalanche of outrage from media elites who thought gruff, tough, no-nonsense men in caps standing up for their rights was not “right.” They got slammed as “fascists” (the media elites had surrendered already to that deity). 

Trudeau could not contain his hyperbole, and I quote: “anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, homophobia and transphobia.” All this from driving a truck and wanting autonomy over your body! The convoy was not “trans” “Islamic” anything.

GoFundMe withheld millions of dollars in donations to the truckers. Trudeau dusted off the tyrannical “Emergencies Act” to freeze accounts. Daring to question “vaccination mandates” was an act of inhuman treason somehow. 

Amidst the vacuous certitudes, the iron fist of authoritarianism was never far from view. Alas, the truckers left their mark, and even the funds got unfrozen, as showing what the future could hold with centralised control was never part of the PR drop-down menu.

Sri Lanka has been rattled by a barrage of economic confusion. But the July revolt led to a constitutional transfer of power. Curiously, that still has “developed countries” panic stricken at this pacific place, where by and large, what happened, took place peacefully. And at least partially, it was driven by the eco-myopia Gota and co. had bought into.

Of all the causes, from overspending to poor debt management, to pegging the currency unsustainably to the dollar for too long, to 24/7 draconian curfews for months where there were barely any real cases (symptoms rather than positive tests) nor excess mortality, all of which together destabilised things here, the god of Net-Zero was particularly pernicious.

The banning of chemical fertilisers to become more “organic” seemed economically compelling. And immunity to rationality was unusually profound in certain leadership circles, despite dissent being almost unanimous relative to this psychosis. 

90% of farmers here use fertiliser, rice production fell by over 43%. Inflation hit a 47-month high. The tea industry, with billions in export value, collapsed. Food insecurity in a country with ample food for the first time, toppled people towards outright starvation.

This was certainly part of the kindling that led to burning the status quo down. But other farming in other parts of the world had its own eruptions. The Dutch farmers blocked roads against their government’s demand that they massively reduce nitrogen emissions…an EU authored eco-measure that some predictions suggest could lead to the closure of over 3,000 farms. 

So, a “fairytale” of “green” supplanted actual food on the table. Canadian and Irish farmers also pushed back against anti-nitrogen madness, while cab drivers and truckers flooded streets in Italy, Poland, Albania, and elsewhere to announce their fury with rising oil prices.

Not enough outrage at the hucksterism awash in the world we may fear, though. Where “monkeypox” nonsense and damning financial ties between the Democratic Party and Bankman-Fried and Ukrainian deposits have evoked too few questions, and the illicit social media censorship, and the lockdown loving destruction of lives and educations and businesses, has too many in denial rather than spirited resistance. 

But the stirrings of outrage we have to hope will continue, and outside the structures of the old left. Said “left” has left its senses to play pronouns with scant little to say of value regarding global value or for those that do real work. 

If we got a whiff of outrage in 2022, concrete pushback re production, transportation, living standards challenging the “post-truth” zones demarcated by the global clown show, we are richer for it. 

No, you can’t keep printing money. No, generic drugs with billions of safe dosages should not suddenly be smeared so “experimental” treatments that are rushed through incomplete safety trials can be stuck into everyone, making a mockery of anything the Nuremberg Trials aimed for. 

No, you cannot have a multi-year long “emergency,” nothing keeps “emerging” that long. And “elected” governments don’t own your autonomy or rights or humanity. Let 2023 be dedicated to that understanding and declaration.

The will to change

Sri Lanka’s way forward seems premised not on impossible remedies or outright panaceas but summoning the will to do that which is eminently doable – no matter how challenging it can be to overthrow entrenched inertia.

The Daily FT published a piece on 20 December “Export role miracle in Vietnam: Lessons for Sri Lanka” which was striking in its simplicity. It sketched the per capita income in Vietnam in pre-crisis times to now, when it is outperforming the economies of many significant East Asian countries. Essentially Vietnam transitioned from bog standard manufacturing to a highly diversified industry-based economy, and has sustained it, even during much of the pandemic.

The movement to electronic based products in 2015, “value added manufacturing” in short, allowed it to shift from exporting fuels, ores, and metals. It is approaching the position of economies like Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It has already superseded larger economies like Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh still primarily concentrate on exporting primary commodities and textiles, leading to limited options and potential stagnation. A shame, as Sri Lanka has world class manufacturing capability, but it is not focused and the visionary will to transition to electronics to machinery, mobile phones, monitors and computers, seems still missing. 

As a result, post 2010, Vietnam recorded recurring surpluses. Again, this is not undoable, it requires discipline and will.

And it’s not just Vietnam. Korea Disaster Relief Foundation (KDRF) President Cho Sung Lea in addressing how South Korea became one of the most developed countries in the world in 40 years, advised Sri Lanka to have development projects emanate from “villages.”

He explained, “The new village projects are the types of projects that a country should implement from the ground to become a developed country.” Villages initiated development projects in Korea, roads were built so people could use them efficiently, and “ownership” in such development stayed resolutely local. The government provided funding and thereby “empowered” local communities.

Education also has to change, helping to change the thinking patterns of the people. And this also means teachers have to change, to evolve, and have different attitudes and aptitudes. Instead of our fascination with shiny buildings, we need hardcore “teaching” and real educational interaction going on.

And the final input the Korean Development chief offered was a plea for government officials to be true “servants” of the people and not strut around like kings. We are well aware of the bloated cost of government in Sri Lanka, the lack of accountability, the bureaucracy and inefficiency. Surely, this can be hacked through, snipped through, at least re-engineered to some extent. We cannot be paying the bulk of our costs to enshrine an often-non-performing bureaucracy. The South Koreans reiterate, “The people must be sovereign.” Well, certainly their needs and aspirations must be.

The “will” needed is often just to take the next step, but decisively, and then see where that carries us, and build the bridge, iteratively but definitively.

We have tried to support the revitalising of tourism here in Sri Lanka as the fastest route to foreign exchange health and as a key contributor to economic revival. Here too, simple things alighted upon, which can be executed, lie half done, or languish from inadequate follow up.

Sri Lanka, at its height of tourism had 2 million tourists per annum. Cambodia, with 16 million population, had over 6 million. Despite also succumbing to the COVID Kabuki theatre of 2021, Cambodia in the first half of 2022 had over 1 million tourists and were above 1.5 million by year’s end. Sri Lanka’s total in 2022 was just over 700,000, heartening and I celebrate the numbers and cheer them, but we have so much more potential here. Morocco, with about 28 million population, hit close to 6 million this year.

Compared to Cambodia, which has essentially three exceptional sites, Sri Lanka has such a smorgasbord of attractions and diverse cultural treasures, that the right “niche” travel would create multiple streams of interest. But again, we have to shed our apathy, raise our standards, and learn to mine these treasures.

We urged that a PR company or two be properly vetted, briefed and encouraged to shift the narrative about travel to Sri Lanka. We were assured this was handled. But to this day, UK friends say, their travel companions cancelled travel, saying it took “courage” to go to Sri Lanka. The misguided belief of a teetering state, where everyone is hungry, and riots can break out any minute, has not been properly challenged much less dislodged. 

The positive pieces tend to be outliers, and many are from the perspective of backpackers and eco travellers and these are welcome, but they will not get us where we need to be. 

New friends from Montenegro who were recently in Sri Lanka, living in Singapore for 20 years, said people tried to dissuade them from traveling here being told, “This is not the time.” Really? Why not? We clearly haven’t managed successful PR even in our own regional neighbourhood with high value travellers. 

We had someone trying to redo the arrival website that greets travellers upon arrival. No one can indicate who “owns” this, such that they could be engaged for collaboration. 

A recommendation was received by an eminent industrialist that since we only use roughly 5% of the railway tracks for cargo or people transport, we should have these public assets surveyed, valued, and potentially leased with an aim to development to the private sector. We have literally walked the proposal around influencers, relayed it through people they know and trust. Perhaps, and I pray so, it is incubating somewhere.

Simple things, the luxury train to Jaffna, first class cabins, but bathrooms cannot be used after the first hour, as they reek. Having these cleaned once an hour across six cabins might for an entire journey cost about Rs. 6,000 I am told. This would materially magnify the value of the journey and allow it to be positioned in a way that real ROI to the investment would be forthcoming. And what is the barrier? Why not? 

There is a pattern here. Things are there for us to do. They are doable. Everyone wants to wait for some “institution” to be galvanised. These institutions squabble, or are politicised, or go to committee, and “quick wins” are not availed of, the low hanging fruit continues to dangle.

So, 2023 has to be the year of “all quick wins availed of”, all plausible “next steps” taken”, nothing “obviously achievable” through will and taking a next step, ignored.  

This can’t be considered quixotic. This has to be as Cervantes hoped, how you save the world by behaving like a knight and taking a stand for decency.

And we must forgive our blunders and our past, the spilled milk can’t be unspilled. And forgiveness frees us to dream anew, to intend anew, to act anew. And this we crucially must do. 

Such forgiveness and what it liberates may not change the past, but it can change the future.

(The writer is the founder and CEO of EPL Global and founder of Sensei Lanka, a global consultant with over 30 years strategic leadership experience and now, since March 2020, a globally recognised COVID researcher and commentator.)