by Quoth the Raven, QTR’s Fringe Finance:
The spy balloon is an easily digestible situation that should make it clear for most of the U.S. that China is not our friend – but what’s been going on economically should be even more concerning.
By now you probably know the Chinese spy balloon that, for some reason, was allowed to traverse the entire United States despite us knowing about it days ago, has been shot down.
Put simply, it was too little, too late for several reasons – and there’s been shuffling, specifically economically, by China over the last 10 years that shows the country’s aggression toward the U.S. could only be getting started.
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First, China (and Russia) both now have a gauge of our reluctance to secure our own airspace. If the deployment of the balloon was to see how we’d react, they got their answer: slowly and uncertainly.
Second, if the balloon’s purpose actually was surveillance, and nothing more nefarious, it was likely able to get whatever data it set out for, after floating above numerous military installations.
Third, we have to be acutely aware of the potential for the balloon to be a test run for another balloon, many of which have speculated could be the means for an EMP:
High-altitude balloons, such as the one China has floated over mountain state military bases this week, are considered a key “delivery platform” for secret nuclear strikes on America’s electric grid, according to intelligence officials.
Spy balloons, used by Japan to drop bombs during World War II, are now far more sophisticated, can fly at up to 200,000 feet, evade detection, and can carry a small nuclear bomb that, if exploded in the atmosphere, would shut down the grid and wipe out electronics in a many-state-wide area.
You have to assume that China would know that this balloon – and the two other ones being reported (one over Latin America and now a third potentially outside the U.S.) – would be discovered. Additionally, there were reports yesterday that the balloons were maneuverable, ostensibly meaning the balloon had been directed on its path.
If this is the case, I have to believe it is either a test of how aggressively they could humiliate President Biden publicly (similar to how the Saudis did months ago), or it’s a distraction for something else going on.
The balloon was over Alaska nearly a week ago. Instead of dealing with it then, we allowed it to go untouched, giving China the upper hand, regardless of whether they set out for surveillance or to test us.
“They got a lot of intelligence they couldn’t get from their satellites. There’s a lot that China learned from this,” Gordon Chang said on Fox News today.
I’ll leave the speculation about the balloon and military response to cable news and your own critical thinking. But what I do want to point out is what has been going on behind the scenes economically from China.
While we focus on the obvious, it’s important to also understand that from a monetary and financial perspective, it looks like China is preparing for war.
Notably, China is continuing to stockpile gold while selling U.S. Treasuries, an obvious step that a country readying either for war or to challenge the U.S. dollar on a global stage (or both) would be taking.
As Zero Hedge noted last month, China has now bought 100 tons of gold in days.
I was also one of the few outlets last summer to report on the fact that Russia and China openly announced a “new global reserve currency” (announced in July 2022, predicted by me in February 2022). And of course, Russia and China can’t do it on their own: they are working with nations like Saudi Arabia to help put their plans into practice.
Crucial to dethroning the U.S. dollar would be the removal of its use for buying and selling oil – a system that has been in place since the 1970s when the U.S. promised security for the Saudi Kingdom in exchange for the petrodollar system that underpins the dollar’s strength as global reserve currency.
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