Countries Where Migrants Make Up <1% of the Population

Key Takeaways

• In 43 countries and territories, international migrants account for less than 1% of the population.
• Nearly three-fifths of the world’s population lives in these low-immigration countries, including China, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
• Across 81 countries and territories, migrants make up less than 3% of the population, showing how concentrated global migration remains.

Migration debates often focus on countries that receive large numbers of newcomers. Across much of the world, however, immigrants remain exceptionally rare.

Using 2024 data from the UN Population Division’s International Migrant Stock, this map highlights countries and territories where foreign-born residents make up less than 1% of the population.

Where Migrant Populations Are Rare

Here is the full dataset showing international migrants as a share of each country or territory’s population:Search:

Country/Territory	Migrant population share (%, 2024)
Cuba	0.02
Philippines	0.08
China	0.12
Madagascar	0.12
Myanmar	0.15
Indonesia	0.16
Haiti	0.17
Sri Lanka	0.18
North Korea	0.19
Afghanistan	0.23
Morocco	0.29
Papua New Guinea	0.29
Solomon Islands	0.30
Vietnam	0.32
India	0.33
Eritrea	0.35
Honduras	0.37
Somalia	0.41
Cambodia	0.48
Guatemala	0.50

Tunisia	0.51
Algeria	0.55
Sierra Leone	0.58
Timor-Leste	0.59
Nigeria	0.60
Nicaragua	0.63
Lesotho	0.64
Mongolia	0.65
Laos	0.66
Brazil	0.66
Tanzania	0.67
El Salvador	0.68
Guinea-Bissau	0.68
Guinea	0.80
Iraq	0.81
Sao Tome and Principe	0.83
Jamaica	0.85
Malawi	0.86
Ethiopia	0.88
Western Sahara	0.95

Yemen	0.97
Egypt	0.98
DR Congo	0.99
Vanuatu	1.01
Mozambique	1.02
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1.08
Zambia	1.17
Liberia	1.29
Mexico	1.32
Comoros	1.44
Bolivia	1.48
Senegal	1.52
Ghana	1.55
Fiji	1.55
Nepal	1.59
Albania	1.66
Niger	1.66
Pakistan	1.66
Bangladesh	1.67
Kenya	1.76

Samoa	1.76
Central African Republic	1.77
Angola	1.79
Azerbaijan	2.11
Georgia	2.14
Cameroon	2.21
Mali	2.23
Mauritius	2.29
Kiribati	2.45
Tuvalu	2.55
Micronesia	2.56
Zimbabwe	2.58
Turkmenistan	2.59
Paraguay	2.61
Tajikistan	2.61
Eswatini	2.68
Kyrgyzstan	2.71
Japan	2.76
Burundi	2.76
Benin	2.89

Togo	2.96
Burkina Faso	3.14
Cape Verde	3.15
Uzbekistan	3.18
Tonga	3.44
Romania	3.45
South Korea	3.50
Rwanda	3.60
Syria	3.63
Mauritania	3.79
Namibia	3.83
South Africa	4.11
Uganda	4.11
Ecuador	4.12
Iran	4.19
Argentina	4.28
Bulgaria	4.43
Thailand	4.44
Venezuela	4.45
Saint Lucia	4.49

Poland	4.51
Botswana	4.62
Uruguay	4.73
Sudan	4.75
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	4.79
Taiwan	4.90
Palestine	4.96
Russia	5.25
Peru	5.37
Colombia	5.79
Slovakia	5.88
Congo	6.09
Lithuania	6.13
Moldova	6.20
Chad	6.25
Grenada	6.26
Dominican Republic	6.46
Guyana	6.52
Puerto Rico	6.89
Bhutan	7.04

Hungary	7.13
Trinidad and Tobago	7.53
South Sudan	7.65
Chile	7.78
Türkiye	8.10
Suriname	8.18
North Macedonia	8.28
Gambia	8.56
Marshall Islands	8.81
Côte d’Ivoire	9.02
Finland	9.16
Armenia	9.24
Saint Helena	9.39
Czechia	9.55
Kazakhstan	10.15
Seychelles	10.17
Greenland	10.41
Serbia	10.58
Panama	10.58
French Polynesia	10.68

Malaysia	10.71
Djibouti	10.78
Portugal	10.81
Italy	11.04
Belarus	11.64
Latvia	11.78
Libya	12.16
Costa Rica	12.25
Barbados	12.46
Dominica	12.75
Equatorial Guinea	13.15
Ukraine	13.38
Croatia	13.62
France	13.80
Greece	14.17
Denmark	14.18
Maldives	14.23
Montenegro	14.45
Faroe Islands	14.62
Slovenia	14.87

Cyprus	14.88
Estonia	14.92
United States	15.16
Réunion	15.43
Netherlands	16.22
Belize	16.47
Bahamas	16.77
Saint Kitts and Nevis	16.99
United Kingdom	17.13
San Marino	17.38
Gabon	17.71
Saint Pierre and Miquelon	17.91
Wallis and Futuna	18.02
Norway	18.15
Spain	18.51
Germany	19.81
Martinique	19.87
Belgium	20.01
Nauru	21.33
Sweden	21.42

Canada	22.16
Israel	22.28
Ireland	23.14
Guadeloupe	23.89
Lebanon	24.50
Iceland	25.12
Austria	25.51
Brunei	25.92
New Caledonia	26.22
New Zealand	28.16
Gibraltar	28.71
Palau	29.45
Australia	30.36
Switzerland	31.09
Bermuda	31.21
Montserrat	31.94
Niue	32.33
Antigua and Barbuda	32.50
Cook Islands	35.96
Malta	36.97

Saudi Arabia	40.29
Anguilla	40.54
Hong Kong	41.31
French Guiana	42.44
Cayman Islands	42.89
Curaçao	43.14
Oman	43.23
Mayotte	43.96
Jordan	45.70
Singapore	48.72
Northern Mariana Islands	49.69
Guam	50.16
American Samoa	50.64
Tokelau	51.16
Luxembourg	51.16
Isle of Man	51.92
Bahrain	52.28
Andorra	59.08
Macau	59.26
Turks and Caicos Islands	61.15

British Virgin Islands	62.12
U.S. Virgin Islands	66.87
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)	67.23
Kuwait	67.35
Aruba	68.01
Liechtenstein	69.40
Sint Maarten (Dutch part)	69.55
Monaco	70.17
United Arab Emirates	73.97
Qatar	76.66
Vatican City	100.00

Cuba has the lowest migrant share in the dataset at just 0.02%, followed by the Philippines at 0.08%. China and Madagascar each stand at 0.12%.

What Does a Migrant Share Below 1% Look Like?

In practical terms, a migrant share below 1% means that a randomly selected group of 100 residents would typically include fewer than one person born in another country.

Several of these countries have some of the world’s largest populations, including China, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Their size helps explain why nearly three-fifths of humanity lives in places where international migrants have a minimal demographic presence.

Japan is frequently viewed as the archetype of a low-immigration society. Yet migrants account for roughly 3% of its population, well above the cutoff for this map. Every country highlighted here has an even smaller foreign-born share.

High-Immigration Countries Are the Exception

The map captures only the lowest end of the spectrum. Another 38 countries and territories have migrant shares between 1% and 3%, bringing the total with shares below 3% to 81.

That picture contrasts sharply with countries such as Canada, Australia, and Switzerland, where migrants account for a substantial share of residents and where foreign-born populations have grown significantly.

International migrants also tend to remain relatively close to home. According to Our World in Data, roughly 47% move less than 500 kilometers (about 300 miles), while most stay on the same continent.

Together, these patterns show that international migration is concentrated in a comparatively small number of destinations, including the countries that host the largest migrant populations today.

The post Countries Where Migrants Make Up Less Than 1% of the Population appeared first on Activist Post.

The World Health Organization (WHO) expects cancer cases to soar all over the globe. The WHO made this announcement in a report released on Wednesday, in which the agency said cancer remains the world’s second-leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease, claiming more than 26,000 lives daily.

But by 2050, cancer will affect 90% of the population either through diagnosis of themselves or a close relative. WHO estimates that there are currently nearly 10 million deaths and 20.6 million new cases of cancer annually. The agency is warning that without urgent action, the latest figure will rise to 35 million by 2050.

One in five people is expected to develop cancer during their lifetime, with lung cancer remaining the deadliest form, according to a report by RT.

Moderna Confirms Link Between COVID mRNA Vaccines and Cancer

Dozens of countries are currently developing cancer vaccines using different approaches. Russia has been actively working on personalized mRNA cancer vaccines tailored to individual tumors. Two experimental therapies – Neooncovac for melanoma and Oncopept for colorectal cancer – were cleared for clinical use in March. More than 40 patients have since enrolled, with the first recipients already showing a strong immune response. The vaccines are expected to be provided free under Russia’s national health insurance system once their clinical effectiveness is confirmed. –RT

All mRNA Injections, Including Cancer Vaccines, May Accelerate the Development of Cancer

Cancer is a leading cause of medical bankruptcy worldwide, and despite rapid advances in treatment, the WHO says survival increasingly depends on where patients live and their financial circumstances. Five-year survival for breast and childhood cancers exceeds 85% in high-income countries but falls below 45% in low-income nations, it estimates.

People should focus on preventing cancer by living as healthy a lifestyle as they can. Eating well and focusing on a proper human diet could be the key to preventing cancer, rather than vaccines.

Vitamin D Helps Lower the Risk of Colorectal Cancer by Up to 58%, New Study Finds

Cancer could end up as a major health crisis, if it isn’t already.

The post WHO Expects Cancer Cases To SOAR GLOBALLY appeared first on Activist Post.

We knew that this wasn’t over. The ill-fated “Memorandum of Understanding” may have delayed the inevitable, but now the ceasefire is dead and fighting is raging throughout the Middle East all over again. Sadly, we shall soon see just how far both sides are willing to escalate matters. In my opinion, we are going to witness some absolutely shocking escalations in the months ahead. None of the parties involved in this war have any intention of backing down, and I am convinced that some very shocking “surprises” are ahead.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. forces pounded dozens of important Iranian military targets…

US strikes on Iran over the last 48 hours have targeted Iran’s military assets near the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway responsible for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Various Iranian air defense systems, drones, regime speed boats, and missile storage sites have been destroyed, according to US Central Command. US officials claim that the strikes are designed to stop Iran from attacking commercial shipping vessels crossing the strait.

U.S. Central Command is telling us that a total of 170 targets were hit.

These airstrikes were far more extensive than what we witnessed near the end of last month, and the Iranian response has been much larger as well.

In fact, in recent hours the Iranians have launched missiles and drones at bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan…

Just as the US nighttime strikes were significantly bigger than prior rounds in June, so has Iran’s ‘retaliation’ been bigger – chiefly on Gulf states and American bases there.

In the overnight and Thursday daytime hours, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones have targeted Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and even faraway Jordan. The country is reporting that it has intercepted several missiles, which targeted Muwaffaq Salti Air Base – jointly operated by US and Jordanian forces. Oil prices have persisted above prewar levels on Thursday.

If Iran was ready to stop shooting, it appears that the U.S. was willing to stop shooting as well…

Unfortunately, the Iranians didn’t stop shooting.

Instead, they seem quite eager to fight.

In fact, on Thursday the Iranians have just kept on striking more targets…

Iran has launched fresh strikes on US targets today, following a second night of strikes between the two countries last night.

The fragile ceasefire between the two countries was ruptured earlier this week when the US accused Iran of targeting commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Apparently the “ports of some Arab countries” are being targeted in this latest round of attacks…

I really wish that the Iranians would show some restraint.

But that isn’t likely to happen at this stage.

Meanwhile, there have been rumors of more U.S. airstrikes in Iran…

The U.S. is denying that it conducted those strikes.

So if it wasn’t the U.S., who was it?

There are reports that Kuwait and Bahrain actually decided to conduct “a joint strike operation”…

This would be a major development if it is true.

If other Gulf nations have decided that now is the time to directly fight Iran, that could greatly expand the scope of the conflict.

It is being reported that the renewed fighting has interrupted the final stage of the funeral procession for Ayatollah Khamenei…

The chaos from the latest US-Iran strikes has delayed the final stage of the funeral procession for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the New York Times.

Hundreds of thousands of mourners in recent days have taken to the streets of Tehran to mourn the death of the country’s notorious dictator.

Khamenei was set to be buried in his hometown, the holy city of Mashhad, on Thursday, but the burial was delayed as strikes rang out nearby.

This multi-day funeral procession has whipped the Iranians into a frenzy, and it would be difficult to overstate how angry they are at this moment.

I don’t think that there is any turning back now.

President Trump has been trying to do everything that he can think of to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, but so far nothing has worked…

President Trump has used every tactic in the book to wind down his war with Iran. Threats (he threatened the end of their civilization). Cajoling (he offered them hundreds of billions of dollars). Loosely worded interim deals (there have been at least two, the April ceasefire and then the June memorandum of understanding).

But none of it has worked. Iran has continued attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz. This week, Trump took away Iran’s ability to sell oil. He’s bombing dozens of sites in the country. Iran is launching attacks at Bahrain and Kuwait, where there are U.S. bases. The stock market is falling. And oil prices are spiking.

Is it a full-blown war again? Hard to tell. But it’s sliding toward ugly.

So where do we go from here?

Trump was supposed to get an important intelligence briefing at 1 PM eastern time…

It appears that the U.S. is willing to fight to break Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

As a result, now the Iranians have some key decisions to make…

So, the immediate choice to go up or down the escalation ladder lies with Iran. If Tehran deescalates, they cede control of Hormuz. If they escalate, their options are to hit Hormuz more – triggering more US counter strikes; or GCC energy – triggering a larger war; to use (battered) proxies like Hezbollah – triggering wider war; or perhaps to rush for a nuclear weapon – which would mean far worse war. The New York Times reports Iran’s president and foreign minister were physically attacked this week by supporters of a hard-line faction that vehemently opposes any deal with the US: it remains to be seen if the streets, IRGC, clerics, or politicians will decide what happens next – but both the politicians and the IRGC benefit from talks going on and oil flowing.

The US would also have to decide if it can afford to cede Hormuz or will fight to keep it open when the SPR is seen near a tank bottom– was this discussed at the NATO summit, perhaps?

I don’t think that there is any way that the Iranians will back down.

So there will be a lot more fighting, and Israel is apparently ready to join in if needed…

Israel is willing to join future US attacks on Iran should Washington seek help after President Trump declared the cease-fire with Tehran “over,” sources in Jerusalem told The Post.

“We’ve proved that we stand with the US,” one source said. “I’m not sure it will be the interest of them — of the US that Israel will join on this — but, you know, we realize that we need to stretch our muscles.”

“We’re willing to do it again, if needed,” the person added.

I have no doubt that this is true.

In fact, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz just confirmed that the IDF is ready to hit Iran “with even greater force” this time around…

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday said his country was prepared to resume its military campaign against Iran if needed, vowing to do so “with even greater force.”

The latest remarks came as new fighting erupted between the United States and Iran, raising fears of a return to full-scale war after an April ceasefire and a U.S.-Iran agreement in June to end hostilities.

“The army is ready and on alert for a resumption of fighting, in order to regain air superiority and strike again … in Iran, to eliminate threats, including a third time if necessary,” Katz said at a military ceremony.

“If we have to go back, we will go back, with even greater force,” he added.

Israel is not going to be on the sidelines for long.

What all of this means is that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed for the foreseeable future.

The Iranians have not officially shut it completely down yet, but even now barely any commercial vessels are getting through…

Barely any oil tankers have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Iran renewed their fighting in earnest earlier this week.

This morning, July 9, only two tankers had made it through, according to Reuters. One of them loaded in Iran and is subject to US sanctions. The other carries a flag for the Marshall Islands. On July 8, at least four oil and gas tankers turned around instead of risking being attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Reuters.

The next chapter of the global energy crisis has begun, and it is going to be even more intense than the last chapter.

And the fighting in the Middle East will ultimately escalate to a level that will shock the entire planet.

We have been waiting for Iran War 3, and now it is here.

Even as I wrap up this article, missiles and drones are flying all over the Middle East.

We are falling through the air with no parachute, and this story is going to have an absolutely crazy ending.

The post The Third Iran War Is Going To Be Crazy: The Fighting Just Won’t Stop As U.S. Officials Prepare For A Prolonged Period Of Conflict appeared first on Activist Post.

“Universal Basic Capital” is a much-needed solution to the continued advancement of artificial intelligence technology’s consistent advancement. Universal basic income (UBI) was a popular topic years ago, especially as AI gained a foothold in the economy, beginning to replace human workers; however, the newer UBC concept is now gaining traction.

According to a report by The Atlantic, the idea has been endorsed by figures as ideologically diverse as Bernie Sanders, Gavin Newsom, Steve Bannon, Sam Altman, and even Donald Trump. In both cases, UBI and UBC are policies that would give every single human a baseline salary, whether they contribute to society or not.

If the wealth generated by artificial intelligence will accrue only to the owners of AI companies, then the way to avoid catastrophic levels of inequality is to give everyone an ownership stake in those companies. The Atlantic goes on to say that if this is done the right way, it’ll hedge against a future dystopia created by AI.

However, it’ll create a new dystopia, full of humans enlaved by the UBI they will rely on to remain alive.

Experts Warn of Widespread Job Losses and Global Power Struggles Amid AI Advancements

The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing

With UBI will likely come central bank digital currencies in order to distribute it, while those in charge can track and trace where every fraction of every dollar is going.

UBI is a candy-coated trap that breeds dependency in a population. Free money is an addictive drug, and America just had a big taste during the pandemic.

This leads us into the second WEF Great Reset program, which is the concept of the “shared economy.” The globalists think that you should own nothing, have no privacy, and be happy about it. The initial danger here involves rationing. A government cannot institute UBI measures during a stagflationary crisis without also instituting price controls, because otherwise the fiat stimulus used to provide the UBI checks would only create MORE inflation in prices. If UBI is meant to offset inflation but it creates more inflation, then UBI becomes useless. This is another little fact that people like Pelosi will try to gloss over when they claim that money printing helps “fight inflation.” –Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.us

While UBI differs from UBC, they will both accomplish a more meaningless life for humans.

Either way, the human population seems destined for a dystopian future.

The post Universal Basic Income Debate Surfaces As AI Technology Advances, Taking Jobs appeared first on Activist Post.

What if the cure for chronic illness and aging wasn’t a pill, but a frequency… and what if it’s been hidden from you for over a century?

We are told that aging is inevitable. We are told that chronic pain is just “part of getting older.” We are told that the only way to survive a failing organ or a degenerating nervous system is to submit to a cocktail of synthetic chemicals designed by a corporation that profits more from your sickness than your health.

Nikola Tesla didn’t just give us AC power and the foundations of radio. He tapped into the ether. He discovered how to utilize plasma (the fourth state of matter) to revitalize the human body at a cellular level. He knew that if you could hit the body with the right frequency, you didn’t need a surgeon’s knife or a pharmacist’s prescription. You could trigger the body to heal itself.

Why hasn’t your doctor told you about this? Because the Rockefeller interests and the CIA couldn’t have a world where people were self-healing. 

The suppression has been brutal. Because, when you can heal yourself, you are no longer a customer. And, in the eyes of the centralized power structure, a person who isn’t a customer is a person they cannot control.

That’s what Gareth Icke and I are discussing today, with Gareth giving his own Teslamonial after just using the TZLA machine once! 

When Donald Trump’s uncle and the CIA stole Nikola Tesla’s papers, stripped him of his resources, pushed him into crushing poverty, and let him die alone and forgotten in a hotel room, they didn’t just kill a man; they tried to kill an idea.

Why? Because plasma technology is a systemic threat. It’s the “Bitcoin of biology.”

Just as Bitcoin allows you to bypass the central bank and move value without a middleman, Tesla’s plasma technology allows you to bypass the pharmaceutical industrial complex and move healing directly into your cells.

I don’t say this as a theorist. I say it as someone who has used the machine.

I’m 55 years old. By the standards of the official script, I should be sliding down the age curve. Instead, my tissue age is that of a 30-year-old. My cellular energy feels like I’m 10 again. I used to need glasses just to see my computer screen; I spent a few days focusing the bulbs on my eyes, did some exercises, and the glasses are gone.

It’s not just me. I’ve seen my dog go from blind to seeing again in a matter of days. I’ve seen a maid who couldn’t walk due to twenty years of chronic back pain find relief in twenty minutes.

This is the reality they want to keep “forbidden.”

But here is the problem: you can’t just go to Amazon and “Add to Cart” a device that threatens a multi-trillion dollar medical empire. If the TZLA Club operated as a standard corporation, they would be sued into oblivion or shut down by the FDA before the first shipment even left the warehouse.

To survive, you have to build a parallel architecture.

This is where the Private Member Association (PMA) comes in.

A PMA is a legal fortress. It’s not a corporation; it’s a private contract between individuals. By moving the operation into a PMA, the TZLA Club exits the jurisdiction of public regulatory bodies. They aren’t “practicing medicine” on the public; they are sharing technology among private members.

It is the same logic we use for financial freedom fighters. You don’t fight the system by asking it to change its rules; you fight the system by leaving the system entirely.

When you move into a private association, you are no longer a patient or a consumer… you are a member. You are standing in truth and claiming your right to biological autonomy.

Now, let’s talk about the pipeline. Because when you’re dealing with forbidden tech, the acquisition process looks different. It’s underground by design.

You don’t just buy a TZLA machine. You apply.

The process starts with an application to see if you’re a fit for the community. Then, you’re brought into a Telegram “open house.” This isn’t just for show… it’s a security layer. It ensures that the people gaining access to this technology are aligned with the mission of sovereignty, not acting as agents for the regime.

And the payments? 

The pipeline runs on cryptocurrency and discreet wire transfers. Crypto is the only way to move the capital necessary for this kind of disruption without triggering a red flag at the central bank’s headquarters. It is the fuel that powers the underground economy of healing.

Then comes the delivery.

If you ship a “Medical Healing Device” across international borders, customs will seize it, and the regulators will be knocking on your door. So, the strategy shifts.

The device is distributed as a “free science kit.”

It’s a brilliant bit of camouflage. By framing it as educational equipment (tools for the study of plasma and physics) the technology navigates tariffs and regulatory oversight with ease. It arrives on your doorstep not as a “forbidden cure,” but as a kit for the curious.

This is how you play the game. You use their own loopholes to bypass their checkpoints.

This is more than just a gadget. This is part of a larger strategy to build a parallel society.

We are living through a bifurcation. On one side, you have the “managed” humans… the ones who will accept the smart IDs, the biometric monitoring, and the seed-oil-infused sludge the government calls food. They will be healthy only in the way a well-maintained prisoner is healthy.

On the other side, there are those of us building our own systems.

We hold our own money. We attend our own freedom, investment and cryptocurrency conferences. We find our own healers. We use our own tech.

The Great Divide is here. You can either be a node in their network, or you can be the architect of your own life.

When you combine the power of Bitcoin with the power of plasma technology, you stop being a victim of the system and start becoming a sovereign entity. You protect your wealth from the crash, and you protect your body from the decay.

I’ve spent 15 years with Ed Bugos building the Dollar Vigilante to give you the financial tools to survive the collapse. But survival isn’t enough. I want you to thrive. I want you to have the energy of a ten-year-old and the clarity of someone who has woken up from the trance.

Don’t let them tell you that your health is a matter of luck or genetics. Your health is a matter of access.

The tools are here. The pipeline is open. The only question is whether you have the courage to step off the paved road and into the underground.

Because once you realize that the “forbidden” is actually just the “effective,” there is no going back.

Watch on:
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The post Sovereignty Over Pharma: Gareth Icke & The TZLA Plasma Energy Club appeared first on Activist Post.

A major showdown on the House floor seemed imminent. An amendment, advanced by the Rules Committee, was poised to force a rare and telling record vote on stripping Israel of $3.3 billion in annual US military aid.

Brought forward by Republican Representative Thomas Massie and drawing support from key progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greg Casar, the measure was set to put every lawmaker’s stance on unconditional foreign assistance under a public microscope.

However, the high-stakes vote never actually happened. On June 30, the entire legislative package collapsed under the weight of Washington’s internal political warfare. In a dramatic procedural twist, a coalition of Democrats and disgruntled conservative Republicans voted down the mandatory ‘rule’ required to even begin debating the underlying State Department spending bill.

But even if the vote on Massie’s amendment had occurred, the result would have been entirely predictable. It would have been defeated, as support for Israel on both sides of the congressional aisle remains structurally entrenched – even as the American public shifts against Israeli policy in historic numbers.

According to a watershed Gallup poll published on February 27, a plurality of Americans now sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, leading by a margin of 41 percent to 36 percent. This marked the first time since Gallup began tracking the metric over two decades ago that Israel did not hold the upper hand in public sympathy.

Yet the shift is part of a broader, undeniable trend. A nationwide survey published in late June 2026 by Quinnipiac University revealed that an unprecedented 48 percent of American voters now think the United States is “too supportive” of Israel – the highest percentage recorded since the pollster first began tracking the question in 2017.

This is precisely why Massie’s amendment carries such profound weight. It is significant not because US politicians have suddenly developed a collective moral conscience, but because recent election cycles represented the first time in modern American history where Palestine factored as a major, decisive variable in how citizens cast their ballots.

For years, conventional political analysts dismissed pro-Palestinian mobilization, claiming Americans only vote based on immediate socioeconomic interests and rigid party loyalties. That assessment has since proven faulty.

The political cost of Washington’s complicity became undeniable following the fallout of the 2024 presidential race, a reality later confirmed by those within the inner sanctums of power. In the post-election debates, senior administration insiders admitted that the handling of the Gaza genocide alienated core voter blocks.

The political cost of Washington’s complicity became undeniable after the 2024 presidential race. According to Axios, top Democratic strategists conducting the party’s post-election audit explicitly admitted to advocacy groups that internal party data proved the administration’s Gaza policy was a “net-negative” on the ballot.

This finding – disclosed during internal briefings by DNC autopsy author Paul Rivera – confirmed that the party’s unconditional backing of Israel directly fractured its base, and ultimately contributed to its loss of the elections.

The upcoming November elections are expected to be fiercely contested, and Gaza will, once more, be on the ballot. Following a series of progressive, anti-war victories in local primaries, The Guardian reported that US foreign policy toward the conflict has effectively “turned into something of a litmus test for the left.”

This historic transformation in the popular American perception of Palestine and Israel does not indicate that a political rupture is soon to follow, as US politicians are notorious for their moral flexibility and their ability to spin language in whatever way is necessary to remain in power.

Indeed, the evolution of the language used by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding the word ‘genocide’ in Gaza tells the entire story of how the Democratic establishment is never compelled by genuine moral urgency, but rather by sheer political expediency.

In the early months of the genocide, Ocasio-Cortez hesitated to adopt the term, acutely aware of the deep sensitivities surrounding such language in US media and mainstream society.

“The fact that this word is even in our discourse… demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gaza is facing,” she stated, attempting to navigate an acceptable rhetorical middle ground in January 2024 during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Yet, under the relentless weight of pressure from an increasingly mobilized progressive constituency, she systematically upgraded her language in March of the same year, declaring on the House floor: “If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents.”

This linguistic shift continued to intensify until it reached the Munich Security Conference last February, where Ocasio-Cortez finally deployed the term without any qualification. Unconditional US aid, she flatly argued, “enabled a genocide in Gaza.”

Ocasio-Cortez is just one of many Democratic progressives who carefully filtered their vocabulary to avoid the political fallout of using the term genocide too early, or too late. Her position was eventually corrected not because of a sudden moral awakening or the discovery of new information regarding the “unfolding genocide,” but because the margins of error allowed by a newly conscious American public have completely closed.

Therefore, the strategic focus must remain on reaching out to the public, who hold the true power to influence – and even coerce – politicians into making the right choices.

Ultimately, the current movement serves as a crucial barometer, proving that sustained, grassroots, anti-war pressure is successfully destabilizing Israel’s traditionally unquestioned shield in Washington.

The post Israel Debated: Why Palestine Is Rewriting the Rules of Domestic US Politics appeared first on Activist Post.

How Goldman Sachs is Behind the Takeover of National Infrastructure and Banking in its Bid for Global Domination

This is Part II of the series The True Origins of China’s ‘Social Credit System.’

The True Origins of China’s “Social Credit System” Part I

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

Free-markets, Deregulation and “The Largest Bank Heist in History”

The global economic crash of 2008 cost tens of millions of people their savings, their jobs and their homes. The government regulators who should’ve been protecting the citizens had done nothing.

The result of Lehman Brothers and AIG collapsing was a global recession. Costing the world tens of trillions of dollars and rendered 30 million people unemployed globally.[1]

It also doubled the national debt of the United States.

As we can see in the above graph, the rapid increase in U.S. debt begins in the 1980s at the onset of deregulation and is accelerated dramatically after the 2008 crash.

In the 1980s the financial industry exploded. The investment banks went public giving them huge amounts of stockholder money. In the traditional investment banking model, the one that had been operating for over a century before, the partners put the money up and thus, would obviously watch their money very carefully.

One of the moral hazards that began to creep up with these investment banks going public was that the decisions that the CEO and partners of these firms were making were now involving massive amounts of money that were not their own and that was not being watched very carefully at all. In other words, major investment firms like Lehman Brothers (f. 1850), Merrill Lynch (f. 1914), Goldman Sachs (f. 1869), Bear Stearns (f. 1923) and Morgan Stanley (f. 1935) were making decisions on risk that would no longer affect the salaries (and bonuses) of their CEO, partners and managers.

The 1980s were full of cut-throat dealings in mergers and acquisitions. Increasingly there was nothing that could protect small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)[2] if a much larger one wished to purchase (or “acquire”) them, and often with not even the desire to see the company expand and further succeed. Many of the acquisitions made during this period involved the actual scrapping of these companies into pieces sold off to the highest bidders, the workers laid-off after decades of working for a company that had at one time dedicated itself to a high-standard of quality in what they were manufacturing or providing as a service, such as airlines.

Ironically, in the increasingly “free-market” world of the 1980s and on, which people were told was a good thing because it would increase competition and thus promote the best and most excellent, the opposite was true. In truth, “free-market” meant the rule of the most powerful and influential. Larger companies and institutions purchased their competitors and scrapped them into pieces. Excellence if you were small now often sealed the end of the road, at best your company would be bought for a generous sum and continued under their massive rubric, at worse it would be purchased for pennies and eviscerated. The only thing certain was that you were not free to see your company through past a certain point of success under solely your own helm.

This new world of finance was made possible by the joint initiative of the Reagan Administration and Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet in the UK.

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) chose as his Treasury of Secretary the CEO of the investment bank Merrill Lynch, Donald Regan (1981-1985). Regan had served as the CEO of Merrill Lynch for nearly ten years, from 1971 to 1980, before accepting the position of U.S. Treasury Secretary. It was Donald Regan[3] who promoted a new financial system that would be coined “Reagonomics.” Its critics and opponents called it “trickle-down economics” or “voodoo economics,” Reagan and his advocates preferred to call it “free-market economics.”

Whatever you want to call it – it started a 30-year period of radical financial deregulation.

In 1982 the Reagan Administration (or perhaps more aptly called the Regan Administration) deregulated savings-and-loan companies allowing them to make risky investments with depositors’ money. By the end of the decade hundreds of savings-and-loan companies had failed. This crisis cost taxpayers $124 billion and cost many people their life savings.[4]

As NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw famously stated: “It may be the biggest bank heist in our history.” referring to the savings and loan (S&L) fraud. And I think that is a pretty accurate statement, however, it pales in comparison to what would occur in 2008 as we will soon see.

“It may be the biggest bank heist in our history.” referring to the savings and loan fraud. Tom Brokaw NBC News. Clip from Inside Job (2010) Documentary.

However, unlike 2008, thousands of savings and loans executives actually went to jail for looting their companies. One of the most extreme cases was Charles Keating who ran the American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

The 2010 documentary Inside Job, discusses how in 1985 when federal regulators began investigating him, Keating hired Alan Greenspan. This was two years before Greenspan would become Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1987. Before this he had worked as an economic adviser for the Ford Administration and Nixon Administration, as well as the President of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1982 to 1988. In a letter to regulators, Greenspan praised Keating’s sound business plans and expertise and said he saw no risk in allowing Keating to invest customer’s money. Keating reportedly paid Greenspan $40,000.[5]

Keating went to prison shortly afterwards, convicted in both federal and state courts of many counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. When Lincoln S&L Association failed in 1989 it cost the federal government over $3 billion and about 23,000 customers were left with worthless bonds.[6]

Alan Greenspan for his sound advice on Keating to regulators, one of the worse cases of fraud during the S&L debacle, was promoted to Chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Reagan. He was reappointed this position under President Clinton and George W. Bush, serving as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987-2006, a total of over 18 years. Greenspan was the second longest serving chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve, missing first place by just a few months.[7]

Deregulation opened the doors to financial instability rather than stability, and the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the failure of about a third of U.S. savings and loan institutions, costing taxpayers $124 billion.

This American crusade for free-markets was happening in lock-step with the British crusade for the very same thing.

The UK under British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) came to be known as the era of “Thatcherism” where she and her Administration championed radical free-market reform, deregulation and neoliberal policies resulting in widespread privatization.

Both Reagan and Thatcher promoted minimal government intervention in the economy and strict control over public spending aiming to reduce the role of the state in the economy and they began to sell state-owned industries including telecommunications, utilities, transportation, energy etc. to private companies.

In fact, Thatcher’s government had specifically brought in Goldman Sachs to oversee the selling-off of these state-owned companies as an official adviser to the British Government in the 1980s.

In their own fluff piece documentary of themselves, Goldman Sachs at 150,[8] they describe how “the beginning of deregulation was the beginning of globalisation.” And how the deregulation policies of both Thatcher and Reagan allowed Goldman Sachs out of the cage effectively.

With these new wings of flight, Goldman Sachs began to work closely with the British Government and the City of London in the privatizations of great nationalised entities as an official advisor.[9] According to Goldman Sachs’ own biography, they handled every single one of these cases in the UK except for one.[10]

They then went on, in their own words into Germany to do the very same thing, then Scandinavia, then France, then Italy and pretty much everywhere else and as they put it “revolutionized finance in all of Europe.”[11]

Thus, according to Goldman Sachs themselves, they oversaw the privatization of finance in pretty much all of Europe, beginning first in the UK.

According to Goldman Sachs this liberated these previously state-owned entities to fully participate in the financial markets.

During the Clinton Administration deregulation continued under Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin (1995-1999), former chairman of Goldman Sachs and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers (1999-2001), later becoming the President of Harvard from 2001-2006. Robert Rubin is recognised as the long-time mentor of Larry Summers.[12]

According to the documentary Inside Job (2010):

By the late 1990s the financial sector had consolidated into a few gigantic firms, each of them so large that their failure could threaten the whole system.

In 1998 Citicorp and Travelers merged to form Citigroup the largest financial services company in the world. The merger violated the Glass-Steagall Act,[13] a law passed after the Great Depression preventing banks with consumer deposits from engaging in risky investment-banking activities.

It was illegal to acquire Travelers. Greenspan said nothing. The Federal Reserve gave them an exemption for a year and then they got the law passed.

In 1999 at the urging of Summers and Rubin, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act known to some as the Citigroup Relief Act. It overturned Glass-Steagall and cleared the way for future mergers.

Robert Rubin would later make $126 million as Vice Chairman of Citigroup.

The next crisis came at the end of the 1990s. The investment banks fueled a massive bubble in internet stocks which was followed by a crash in 2001 that caused $5 trillion in investment losses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC], the federal agency that had been created during the Depression to regulate investment banking, had done nothing.

These investment banks had promoted internet companies they knew would fail, which sounds awfully similar to the present financial crisis brewing. Stock analysts were paid by how much business they brought in. In December 2002, ten investment banks settled the case for a total of $1.4 billion and promised to change their ways. Despite the hefty fines, they did not have to admit to any wrongdoing.

These ten investment banks which had caused $5 trillion in investment losses, paid a $1.4 billion fine in total spread out amongst themselves.

And the list of fraud and criminal activity by banks just kept growing. This included the funneling of drug money.

Citibank, whose parent is Citigroup (the bank that Greenspan wavered Glass-Steagall to allow an illegal merger between Citicorp and Travelers to form Citigroup), was found guilty by a Mexican Inquiry of funneling $100 million of drug money out of Mexico.

HSBC and Standard Chartered would also be found guilty of funneling drug money, and in the case of HSBC, the funding of terrorism and weapons trafficking, including a great deal of drug money involving Mexico.

The Dope Trade and the Crown: A Very-British Wealth of Nations

The CIA were also implicated in the training of drug cartels in Mexico and a former Green Beret was involved in setting up a bank to deal with this drug money coming out of Mexico and other places in Latin America.

The CIA’s complicity in the Mexican Drug Cartels (including military training at Fort Bragg)

In fact, intelligence agencies, military and finance often intermingled in the United States, including the case of Goldman Sachs CEO Henry “Hank” Paulson, as we shall soon see.

Citibank, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch were also found guilty of helping Enron conceal fraud and were fined in total $385 million. But while these firms faced unprecedented fines they never have to admit to any wrongdoing. A practice that continues today.

Beginning in the 1990s deregulation and advances in technology led to an explosion of complex financial products called derivatives. Economists and bankers claimed they made the markets safer but instead they made them more unstable. Using derivatives, bankers could gamble on virtually anything. The rise and fall of oil prices, the bankruptcy of a company, even the weather.

By the late 1990s, derivatives were a 50 trillion-dollar unregulated market.[14]

According to Inside Job (2010):

In 1998 Brooksley Born tried to regulate them. After running the derivatives practice at Arnold and Porter, Born was chosen by Clinton to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) which oversaw the derivatives market. In May 1998 the CFTC issued a proposal to regulate derivatives.

Clinton’s Treasury Department had an immediate response.

The banks were now heavily reliant on these sort of activities for their earnings.

Shortly after her call with Larry Summers [where he attempted to put some heavy-handed pressure on her to drop this proposal to regulate derivatives], Greenspan, Rubin and SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, issued a joint statement condemning Born and recommending legalisation to keep derivatives unregulated.”

Alan Greenspan would state to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services on July 24, 1998: “Regulation of derivative transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.”

She was overruled first by the Clinton Administration and then by Congress. To prevent any future attempts to regulate derivatives, in 2000, Senator Phil Gramm took a major role in getting a bill passed that pretty much exempted derivatives from regulation.

On June 21, 2000, Senator Phil Gramm serving as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee stated: “They [derivatives] are unifying markets, they are reducing regulatory burden. I believe that we need to do it.”

After leaving the Senate, Phil Gramm became the Vice-Chairman of UBS. His wife Wendy served on the board of Enron from 1993 until the company filed for bankruptcy in late 2001. For those who are not aware, the Enron scandal was a massive corporate fraud that culminated in the 2001 bankruptcy of Enron Corporation. Executives utilized dubious accounting methods and secret off-balance-sheet partnerships to hide billions in debt and fabricate unrealized profits, ultimately destroying the company, bankrupting thousands of employees, and leading to federal criminal convictions.

During this period Larry Summer as U.S. Treasury Secretary stated “It is our great hope that it will be possible to move this year on legislation that, in a suitable way goes to create legal certainty for OTC[15] derivatives.”

Larry Summers later made $20 million as a consultant to a hedge fund that relied heavily on derivatives.[16] Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve would state to Congress during this period, “I wish to associate myself with all of the remarks of Secretary Summers.”

In December of 2000 Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act HR 5660. It banned the regulation of derivatives. As a result, the use of derivatives and financial innovation exploded dramatically after 2000.

At this point the industry was dominated by five investment banks: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns. Two financial conglomerates: Citigroup and JP Morgan. Three securities insurance companies: AIG, MBIA, AMBAC. And three rating agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch.

Linking them all together was the Securitization Food Chain. A new system which connected trillions of dollars in mortgages and other loans with investors all over the world.

The 2010 documentary Inside Job did a good summary of how this system works and thus will be quoted extensively here:

Securitization means the people who make the loan [i.e. the lender] are no longer at risk if they [i.e. the borrower] fail to repay. In the old system, when a homeowner paid their mortgage every month their money went to their local lender. And since mortgages took decades to repay, lenders were careful.

In the new system, lenders sold mortgages to investment banks. The investment banks combined thousands of mortgages and loans including car loans, student loans, and credit card debt to create complex derivatives called collateralized debt obligations or CDOs.

The investment banks then sold the CDOs to investors. Now when home owners paid their mortgages the money went to investors all over the world.

The investment banks paid rating agencies to evaluate the CDOs and many of them were given a triple A rating, which is the highest possible investment grade. This made CDOs popular with retirement funds which could only purchase highly rated securities.

Lenders didn’t care anymore if a borrower could repay so they started making riskier loans. The investment banks didn’t care either, the more CDOs they sold the higher their profits. And the rating agencies which were paid by the investment banks had no liability if their ratings of CDOs proved wrong.

Subprime loans are riskier loans. Thousands of subprime loans were combined to create CDOs many of them still received triple-A ratings.

The investment banks actually preferred subprime loans, because they carried higher interest rates. This led to a massive increase in predatory lending.

Borrowers were needlessly placed in expensive subprime loans and many loans were given to people who could not repay them.

The most profitable products were predatory loans. The banker makes the most money if they put you in a subprime loan.

Suddenly hundreds of billions of dollars a year were flowing through the securitization chain. Since anyone could get a mortgage, home purchases and housing prices skyrocketed. The result was the biggest financial bubble in history.

The subprime lending alone increased from $30 billion a year in funding to over $600 billion a year in 10 years. All of the major investment banks were in on this.

Countrywide Financial the largest subprime lender issued $97 billion worth in loans.

It made over $11 billion in profits as a result.

On Wall Street annual cash bonuses spiked. Traders and CEOs became enormously wealthy during the bubble.

Lehman Brothers was a top underwriter of subprime lending. Their CEO, Richard Fuld, took home $485 million.

By 2006 about 40% of all profits of S&P 500 firms was coming from financial institutions. It was a global Ponzi scheme. It was not real income; money was created and then defaulted on.

Through the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act the Federal Reserve Board had broad authority to regulate the mortgage industry. But Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan refused to use it. [Alan Greenspan was anti-regulation. He “didn’t believe in it.”]

The Securities and Exchange Commission conducted no major investigations of the investment banks during the bubble.

During the bubble investment banks were borrowing heavily to buy more loans and create more CDOs. The ratio between borrowed money and the banks’ own money was called leverage. The more the banks borrowed the higher their leverage.

In 2004 Henry Paulson the CEO of Goldman Sachs helped lobby the SEC to relax the limits on leverage allowing the banks to sharply increase their borrowing. The SEC somehow decided to let investment banks gamble a lot more.

On April 28, 2004, the SEC met to consider lifting the leverage limits on the investment banks.

Investment banks began leveraging up to the level of 33:1 which means a tiny 3% decrease in the value of their asset base would leave them insolvent.

There was another ticking time bomb in the financial system. AIG, the world’s largest insurance company was selling huge quantities of derivatives called credit default swaps. For investors who owned CDOs, credit default swaps worked like an insurance policy. An investor who purchased a credit default swap paid AIG a quarterly premium. If the CDO went bad, AIG promised to pay the investor for their losses.

But unlike regular insurance, speculators could also buy credit default swaps from AIG in order to bet against CDOs they didn’t own.

Since credit default swaps were unregulated, AIG didn’t have to put aside any money to cover potential losses. Instead, AIG paid its employees huge cash bonuses as soon as contracts were signed. But if the CDOs later went bad AIG would be on the hook.

AIG’s Financial Products division in London issued $500 billion worth of credit default swaps during the bubble many of them for CDOs backed by subprime mortgages. The 400 employees at AIGFP made $3.5 billion between 2000 and 2007.

Goldman Sachs sold at least $3.1 billion of these toxic CDOs in the first half of 2006. The CEO of Goldman Sachs at this time was Henry Paulson, the highest paid CEO on Wall Street.

Paulson had to sell his $485 million of Goldman stock when he went to work for the government. But because of a law passed by the first President Bush, he didn’t have to pay any taxes on it. It saved him $50 million.

Public Employees Retirement System of Mississippi sued Goldman Sachs, they had lost millions on bad CDOs that had been given a high rating by Goldman Sachs.

By late 2006 Goldman had taken things a step further. It didn’t just sell toxic CDOs it started betting against them at the same time it was telling customers that they were high-quality investments.

By purchasing credit default swaps from AIG, Goldman could bet against CDOs it didn’t own and get paid when the CDOs failed.

Goldman Sachs bought at least $22 billion of credit default swaps from AIG.

It was so much that Goldman realized that AIG itself might go bankrupt. So they spent $150 million insuring themselves against AIG’s potential collapse.

Then in 2007 Goldman went even further. They started selling CDOs specifically designed so that the more money their customers lost the more money Goldman Sachs made.

In April 2010 they were forced to testify before Congress. [When Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein had to testify in front of Congress he effectively said this was not illegal and thus they could not be held accountable for fraud.]

Hedge fund manager John Paulson [Paulson & Co.] made $12 billion betting against the mortgage market. When Paulson ran out of mortgage securities to bet against, he worked with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank to create more CDOs.

Morgan Stanley was also selling mortgage securities it was betting against, and is now being sued by the Government Employees’ Retirement Fund of the Virgin Islands for fraud.

The hedge funds Tricadia and Magnetar made billions betting against CDOs they had designed with Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and Lehman Brothers. The CDOs were sold to customers as safe investments.

The three rating agencies, Moody’s, S&P and Fitch made billions of dollars giving high ratings to risky securities. Moody’s the largest rating agency quadrupled its profits between 2000 and 2007.

Moody’s and S&P get compensated based on putting out ratings reports. And the more structured securities they gave a triple-A rating to, the higher their earnings were going to be for the quarter. Imagine going to the New York Times and saying “If you write a positive story I’ll pay you $500,000 but if you don’t, I’ll give you nothing.”

The rating agencies could have stopped the party [and just like the regulators, they didn’t but in fact were complicit].

Securitization food chain imploded and the market for CDOs collapsed leaving the investment banks holding hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, CDOs and real estate they couldn’t sell.

At a G7 meeting in Tokyo, February 9, 2008, Paulson stated “We are going to keep growing okay? And, obviously, I’ll say it: If you are growing you are not in recession right? I mean, we all know that.”

The recession actually started four months before Paulson made this statement.

In March 2008, the investment bank Bear Stearns ran out of cash and was acquired for $2 a share by JP Morgan Chase. The deal was backed by $30 billion in emergency guarantees from the Federal Reserve.

[By July 2008 Henry Paulson continued to testify and publicly declare that everything was under control. During a time when the government could have stepped in and minimised the financial fallout.]

On September 7, 2008 Henry Paulson announced the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two giant mortgage lenders on the brink of collapse, he stated that day “Nothing about our actions today reflects a changed view of the housing correction or the strength of other U.S. financial institutions.”

Two days later Lehman Brothers announced record losses of $3.2 billion and its stock collapsed.

Merrill Lynch was also on the brink of a disaster and they were acquired by Bank of America within days. The British bank Barclays was the only bank interested in acquiring Lehman’s but the [British] government wanted some guarantees. Paulson refused. Neither Lehman nor the [U.S.] federal government had done any planning for bankruptcy.

The oldest money market fund in the nation wrote off roughly ¾ of a billion dollars in bad debt issued by the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

That same week AIG owed $13 billion to holders of credit default swaps and it didn’t have the money.

On September 17^th AIG is taken over by the government and one day later Paulson and Bernanke ask Congress for $700 billion to bail out the banks. They warned the alternative would be a catastrophic collapse.

When AIG was bailed out the owners of its credit default swaps, the most prominent of which was Goldman Sachs, were paid $61 billion the next day.

Paulson, Bernanke and Tim Geithner forced AIG to pay 100 cents on the dollar rather than negotiate lower prices. Eventually, the AIG bailout cost taxpayers over $150 billion. A hundred and sixty billion dollars went through AIG, fourteen billion went to Goldmans Sachs.

At the same time Paulson and Geithner forced AIG to surrender its right to sue Goldman and the other banks for fraud.

[Foreclosures in the United States reached 6 million by early 2010 with an estimated total of 9 million after a few more years of reverberating fallout.][18]

The top five executives at Lehman Brothers made over a billion dollars between 2000 and 2007. And when the firm went bankrupt they got to keep all the money.

Angelo Mozilo CEO of Countrywide made $470 million between 2003 and 2008. $140 million came from dumping his Countrywide stock in the 12 months before the company collapsed.

Stan O’Neal the CEO of Merrill Lynch received $90 million in 2006 and 2007 alone. After driving his firm into the ground, Merrill Lynch’s board of directors allowed him to resign and he collected $161 million in severance.

O’Neal’s successor, John Thain, was paid $87 million in 2007. And in December 2008, two months after Merrill was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, Thain and Merrill’s board handed out billions in bonuses.

In March of 2008 AIG’s Financial Products division lost $11 billion. Instead of being fired, Joseph Cassano the head of AIGFP was kept on as a consultant for a million dollars a month.

In the U.S. the banks are now bigger and more powerful and more concentrated than ever before. JP Morgan took over Bear Stearns and then WaMu (Washington Mutual). Bank of America took over Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Wells Fargo took over Wachovia.

[Not only were the regulators and rating agencies found to be complicit in the money heist, but Academia as well.]

The Analysis Group, Charles River Associates, Compass Lexecom and the Law and Economics Consulting Group manage a multi-billion industry that provides academic experts for hire. Two bankers who used these services were Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, Bearn Stearns hedge fund managers prosecuted for securities fraud. After hiring the Analysis Group they were acquitted. Glen Hubbard was paid $100,000 to testify in their defense [the Dean of Columbia Business School].

[Some of the fallout from the triumphs and tribulations of “free-market”, deregulation and derivatives:]

It was this younger generation coming out of the 2008 crash that for the first time in American history were less educated and less prosperous than their parents.

Tim Geithner became the U.S. Treasury Secretary under Obama one of the key players in the decision to pay Goldman Sachs 100 cents on the dollar for its bets against mortgages.

The new Fed president was William C. Dudley the former chief economist for Goldman Sachs.

Chief of Staff of the Treasury Department became Mark Patterson a former lobbyist for Goldman. One of the Senior Treasury Advisors was Lewis Sachs who oversaw Tricadia a company heavily involved in betting against the mortgage securities it was selling.

To head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Obama picked Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive who had helped ban the regulation of derivatives.

To run the SEC, Obama picked Mary Schapiro the former CEO of FINRA the investment banking industry’s self-regulation body.

Obama’s chief economic adviser was Larry Summers [the protégé of Goldman Sachs’ Robert Rubin].

In 2009 Obama reappointed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman.

[Obama’s presidential campaign ran on the promise to increase regulation and investigate those responsible for the 2008 crash. However, once he was elected, his most senior advisors in his Administration were in fact the very people who had built the Ponzi structure. Obama had hired the architects of the 2008 crash, allowing them to cover up their trail while holding government positions.]

By mid 2010 not a single senior financial executive had been criminally prosecuted or even arrested. No special prosecutor had been appointed. Not a single firm had been prosecuted criminally for securities fraud or accounting fraud.

The Obama Administration has made no attempt to recover any of the compensation given to financial executives during the bubble.

That is how it has worked since the “Too Big To Fail” era began.

It might as well be called “Too Big to Prosecute.” These banks, and even their CEOs, are deemed too big, and thus the fines they pay are just a fraction of the fraud they are found guilty of committing less we risk the bank going under. This has been on a cycle of wash-rinse-repeat since the 1980s when radical deregulation began and we effectively gave Wall Street an infinite number of Monopoly “get out of jail” cards.

We are told that they are ‘too big to fail,’ but what no one ever seems to ask is “are they too big to regulate?” The truth is that the entire financial system structure, including the regulators, rating agencies and members of academia holding tenure in the economics department at prestigious universities, are all complicit in this endless looting of honest taxpayers and honest business incomes. It is sheer insanity to think that this cycle will stop on its own, when everyone that has some influence on the oversight of this system are getting a slice of the pie.

It can only stop when regulation is put in place that enforces sound banking practices (such as the Glass-Steagall Act), when derivatives are regulated and not allowed to be created as WMDs, when the grey line becomes a clear line, when breaking the law is not a hypothetical or an “opinion”, when those guilty of especially large sums of fraud go to jail for a long time and not just a few months or a couple of years or not at all.

The poverty level of the average American is reaching fever-pitch. And yet there seems to be hardly a peep about finally reigning in Wall Street, not even the behemoth level of fraud committed during the 2008 crash appears to be a good enough incentive. And it is highly concerning when the present Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is calling for even further deregulation. According to him, the 2006-2008 period had robust regulation, despite the fact that derivatives were not regulated at all.

On April 29, 2025, during a White House press briefing on the Trump administration’s first 100 days, Scott Bessent said “The big tax on consumers that goes unnoticed is deregulation or [I mean] regulation. And we are deregulating and bringing that down. So, you know, from a household income point of view, we would expect real purchasing increases.”[19]

It is unlikely that Bessent is not aware of what was truly behind the scenes of the 2008 crash. After all, he is the man who worked as the first lieutenant to George Soros and triumphs over playing an instrumental role in earning Soros the title “the man who broke the Bank of England.” Americans who laud this appear not to understand what this in fact signifies. It was not an attack on the City of London at the end of the day, but on the livelihood of the average British person. It was the average British person who lost money from Soros and Bessent’s predatory acts, not the City of London.

On top of destroying the real economy, pensions, unions and savings of British civilians, it is also a fact that the Soros-Bessent ‘breaking of the Bank of England’ gave the City of London a special crisis to manage as they ‘postponed’ entering the Euro trap that they had set for foolish European nations under the Maastrich Treaty framework.

George Soros will feature prominently in Part III of this series and will give you a better idea of the sort of man Bessent was closely working for.

It appears we are living in an age where foolishness abounds, and we are now celebrating the very looters of our hard-earn living as our liberators, while these very same people are in fact propping up the bank mafia, that consists of Wall Street and the City of London in front of all of our eyes. Denial is a powerful thing…

And it just so happens that this is the man that is in the role of Treasury Secretary while we are in the midst of another financial crash, this one threatening to be on a much larger scale. Coincidence? Perhaps, if you think Hank Paulson’s position as Treasury Secretary from 2006-2009 was also a coincidence…

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs itself would only go public in 1999, way after most of the other investment firms. As they discuss in their documentary, the subject was a controversial one amongst the partners. Going public typically meant losing a certain amount of control over the direction and values of the firm. The new board would constitute not members of those who held the most senior ranks within the actual firm, but those who owned the largest stake in the institution.

Most of the major investment firms had gone public long before Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch went public in 1971, Bear Stearns in 1985, Morgan Stanely in 1986, and Lehman Brothers in 1994.

Goldman Sachs, more so than any other investment firm, had carefully crafted for itself an internal culture of “family,” “values” and “ideology.” Goldman Sachs for its employees was not meant to be just a stage in a career, it was an indoctrination process that would forever change how you viewed the world and your role in it.

They very much wanted to protect this self-crafted culture and “tradition” as they say in their documentary. Going public threatened to sacrifice this centerpiece. Robert Rubin and Henry “Hank” Paulson formed the core leadership of Goldman Sachs in the 90s. According to their own biography, it was Robert Rubin who finally convinced the board to go public.[20] A way had been found to allow Goldman Sachs to go public and yet remain largely unchanged.

When Goldman Sachs went public it had the second largest IPO in history at that point, nearly 90% of the stock went to the firms’ current and retired employees. Barely 12% of its stock went to non-Goldman investors.[21]

They had found a way to massively increase the amount of money Goldman Sachs had access to for its new mission of globalisation, without having to sacrifice the core “culture” and “ideology” of their institution. By “keeping it in the family” so to speak, their going public was in reality more a reconstruction of the underlying partnership.

It is interesting that Robert Rubin is credited with this move of Goldman Sachs, considering they only went public in 1999. Robert Rubin worked for Goldman Sachs for nearly three decades (26 years). However, Robert Rubin was supposed to have officially left Goldman Sachs as its co-chairman to become the Director of the National Economic Council under President Clinton from 1993-1995 and the U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1995-1999. Clearly, Rubin had remained in close contact with Goldman Sachs, including Hank Paulson.

With this new massive influx of money from going public, with the second largest IPO in history at the time, a great deal of possibilities had now opened themselves up for Goldman Sachs and it would be Hank Paulson who would oversee this next phase of globalisation.

A Global Controlled Disintegration à la Goldman Sachs

“Perhaps in the circumstances, the objective of ‘controlled disintegration’—modest as it may seem to be—is indeed a legitimate goal…”[22]

– Paul Volcker in a November 1978 speech at the University of Warwick titled “The Political Economy of the Dollar.” Volcker served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987.

Over 10 million workers in China lost their jobs as Americans cut back on spending as a result of the 2008 crash that wiped out many American families’ life savings. The 2008 crash would have reverberations throughout the world, costing tens of trillions of dollars and rendering 30 million people unemployed.[23]

It was during these trying times that former Goldman Sachs CEO (1999-2006) Hank Paulson served as U.S. Treasury Secretary (2006-2009).

His background is an interesting one. Paulson was a Staff Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1972.[24] He then worked for the Nixon Administration serving as the assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973.

John Daniel Ehrlichman served as White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon. He was an important influence on Nixon’s domestic policy.[25] Ehrlichman became Nixon’s first White House Counsel before becoming Chief Domestic Advisor. It was then that he became a member of Nixon’s inner circle.[26] He and close friend H. R. Haldeman, whom he had met at UCLA, were ‘referred to jointly as “The Berlin Wall” by White House staffers because of their German-sounding family names and penchant for isolating Nixon from other advisors and anyone seeking an audience with him.’[27] Both were deeply implicated in the Watergate scandal. In fact, Ehrlichman created “The Plumbers”, the group at the center of the Watergate scandal.

Hank Paulson was assistant to Ehrlichman from 1972-1973 overlapping the period of the Watergate scandal which broke out in June 1972.

One year after, he joins Goldman Sachs in 1974 and becomes partner in 1982. He served on the board of directors from 1994 to 2006 and became co-chairman and co-chief executive officer in 1998, and sole chairman and CEO in January 1999 until 2006.

During his time at Goldman Sachs, Paulson had made a lot of inroads amongst certain Chinese political elites. It is reported that during this time he had visited China more than 70 times.[28] This was during a time when China was being heavily courted by the United States to adopt free-market reforms.

Paulson was especially interested in U.S.-Chinese relations as Treasury Secretary and was known to have persuaded President George W. Bush to allow him to spearhead and lead the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, a forum and mechanism under which the two countries addressed global areas of immediate and long-term strategic and economic interest.

In the spring of 2007, Paulson warned an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that China needed to free up capital markets to avoid losing potential economic growth, saying: “An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.”

That is, in the midst of America’s own economic crash that would reach a peak-pitch one year later, Paulson was organizing hard to bring China further into free-markets, deregulation and derivatives.

Despite the endless denials from Paulson that anything was wrong but rather that the economy was doing “okay” between 2006 to 2008 and well into 2009 even, the truth was that Paulson was not only aware that there was indeed a tsunami headed for America’s financial market, but that he had in fact worked to build that tsunami up.

Recall Goldman Sachs’ central role in credit default swaps, speculation on bad CDOs they were in fact giving high ratings to and encouraging their clients to invest in, and insuring themselves against the collapse of AIG that they knew was coming and were complicit in. This was all happening under Henry Paulson, who was the CEO of Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2006. The highest paid man on Wall Street.

Basically, Bush had hired one of the central engineers of the 2008 crash as U.S. Treasury Secretary! And this man was in turn traveling to other parts of the world, with an especial focus on China to spread the disease. Recall that the disease had already been spread throughout Europe during the 1980s as per Goldman Sachs’ own biography.

In addition, Paulson as CEO of Goldman had successfully lobbied the SEC to relax leverage limits on investment banks. This deregulation allowed Goldman Sachs and other firms to sharply increase their borrowing and take massive, unmanageable risks using complex derivatives including credit default swaps.

It was under Paulson’s leadership that Goldman Sachs aggressively created and sold billions of dollars worth of CDOs to investors. The firm then utilized credit default swaps to bet against the very same, often toxic, securities they were selling to their clients.

And it was under Paulson, as U.S. Treasury Secretary, that he was positioned as the central architect of the 2008 bank bailouts (such as TARP – Troubled Asset Relief Program). In other words, he decided the reorganization of the entire American financial system, who was going to come out on top, who was going to sink to the bottom, and who was going to acquire whom.

In fact, in the midst of the economic crash, Paulson as Treasury Secretary continued in his role of giving bad advice to investors, claiming everything was for the most part under control and that there was no cause for serious concern, certainly nothing that should influence what investors were already investing in.

With the passage of H.R. 1424, Paulson became the manager of the United States Emergency Economic Stabilization fund. He also became a member of the newly established Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversaw the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Ironically, the radical free-market proponent Hank Paulson, was very hands-on indeed in organizing financial reform and restructuring as U.S. Treasury Secretary, of course, only after it was too late to avoid the full brunt of an economic crash that is.

Leading up to the crash, however, Paulson took a remarkably hands-off approach.

In August 2007, Paulson stated that the U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.[29]

In May 2008, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Paulson said U.S. financial markets are emerging from the credit crunch that many economists believe has pushed the country to the brink of recession. “I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us,” Paulson told the newspaper in an interview.[30]

On July 20, 2008, after the failure of IndyMac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, “It’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”[31] Ironically, Paulson would state that the ”list of troubled banks will grow” but insisted nonetheless that the banks were safe.

On November 18, 2008, in a testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, Paulson told lawmakers:

“There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced. We adjusted our strategy to reflect the facts of a severe market crisis always keeping focused on Congress’s goal and our goal – to stabilize the financial system that is integral to the everyday lives of all Americans.”[32]

He stated on another occasion:

“Well, as you know, we’re working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system,” Paulson said soon after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.[33]

This is the man we are supposed to believe could not have possibly understood the depth and seriousness of the 2008 financial crisis nor be in a position to reduce the massive global fallout that ensued.

Right. Not a very subtle evil villain plot if you ask me….

It was Lloyd Blankfein that became CEO of Goldman Sachs during this crucial period of 2006-2010 overseeing the firms safe landing in the midst of carnage and mayhem in the financial markets. Blankfein would continue on as CEO until 2018, serving as the longest CEO of Goldman Sachs for a total of 12 years.

Although China would be hit hard by the reverberations of America’s 2008 crash, they had not followed Paulson’s “advice” to the degree that he wished them to do so. We will talk more about how China escaped free-market “shock therapy” in Part III of this series, which features George Soros prominently, Bessent’s previous boss.

[Author’s note: This series is going to be longer than originally expected with several additional instalments that will be added to the original structure. Everything will be discussed that I promised to cover in Part I of this series but may be further pushed back in this series.]

However, the crash was not the work of just one man. It was the work of many, among the most notable being Chairmans of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker (1979-1987), Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), and Ben Bernanke (2006-2014), Goldman Sachs man turned U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (1995-1999), his protégé Larry Summers who served as Deputy Treasury Secretary under Rubin (1995-1999) and later as U.S Treasury Secretary (1999-2001), Summers was succeeded by Paul H. O’Neill as U.S. Treasury Secretary (2001-2002) a former chairman of the RAND Corporation. O’Neill was succeeded by John W. Snow (2003-2006) who had worked for Reagan in the 1980s as part of a four-man advisory group on regulatory policy.

There was another player that featured prominently in the engineering of this controlled disintegration – Tim Geithner.

Tim Geithner you could say was literally born to play this role, raised from a young age to be a major player in this vision for a new world order.

Geithner was born in 1961, his father was director of the Ford Foundation’s Asia program in New York during the 1990s, after working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zambia and Zimbabwe.[34]

During the early 1980s, Geithner’s father oversaw the Ford Foundation’s microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by Ann Dunham Soetoro, Barack Obama’s mother, meeting at least once in Jakarta.[35]

Perhaps this explains why Obama decided to pick Geithner as his U.S. Treasury Secretary sharing a common vision that went back generations…

Geithner’s maternal grandfather served as vice-president of public relations for the Ford Motor Company from 1952 to 1964 and advised President Eisenhower as well as Nelson Rockefeller and George W. Romney on their respective presidential campaigns.[36]

His uncle served in the departments of Defense, Justice and State as well as the United Nations.[37]

Geithner spent most of his childhood living abroad, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, and Thailand, graduating from high school in Bangkok.[38] He studied Mandarin at the Peking University in 1981, and at Beijing Normal University in 1982.[39]

Like his father and grandfather, Geithner graduated from Dartmouth, earning a B.A. in Government and Asian studies. He then went on to graduate from John Hopkins University earning an M.A. in International Economics and East Asian studies.[40] He also studied Japanese.

Geithner went on to work for Kissinger Associates in Washington, D.C., from 1985 to 1988.[41] This is highly relevant to Geithner’s global role as an economic reformer. In 1982, under the direction of Kissinger, President Reagan would sign NSDD 77 under Cold War duress, which would launch Project Democracy, a sardonic name for a Trojan Horse.

NSDD 77 allowed Project Democracy the reins over “covert action on a broad scale” as well as overt public actions later to be associated with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The structure of the NED essentially functions as a private CIA political operations arm of an invisible, secret government beyond accountability and beyond the reach of the law.

For more on this story refer here:

The Enemy Within: A Story of the Purge of American Intelligence

As we will see in Part III and IV of this series, both the CIA and MI6 played prominent roles in their hard-line attempt to get China to adopt radical free-market reforms.

Geithner later served as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo, then as deputy assistant secretary for International Monetary and Financial Policy (1995–1996), Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs (1996–1997), and Assistant Secretary for International Affairs (1997–1998).[42] He served as Under Secretary of the Treasury of International Affairs from 1998-2001, during this period he worked under Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, who are widely considered as his mentors.[43]

While at the Treasury Department, he helped manage (or perhaps engineer) financial crises in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.[44] [45] In other words, Geithner was the point-man to manage international financial crises of the 1990s as a senior official in the Clinton Treasury Department.

This would have most notably included the Asian Crisis that tsunamied into Asia in the late 1990s, hitting Japan the hardest and leaving in its wake a wave of suicides. The Tiger Economies[46] of South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand were also hit hard. Ironically, or not so ironic if you understand how the game is played, these were among the most westernised economies in Asia. In other words, they were the economies that most readily adopted western radical free-market reforms.

The causes for this Asian crash went as far back as 1993. In that year, the Asian Tiger Economies – South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia – implemented a policy of aggressive deregulation of their capital accounts and the establishment of international banking facilities, which enabled the corporate and banking sectors to borrow liberally from abroad, the first time in the postwar era that borrowers could do so. In reality, there was no need for the Asian Tiger Economies to borrow money from abroad. All the money necessary for domestic investment could be created at home.[47]

As a result of the Asian Crisis, these economies had to further succumb to the orders of the Western financial diktat in how they were to reorganise their financial and banking sectors. The crisis was treated as proof by the western financial institutions that Asia still had much to learn. What was the medicine prescribed? Further deregulation of course!

Is Japan Willing to Cut Its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?

Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated: Towards a ‘United States of Europe’ and a League of Nations

These Asian Tiger economies never fathomed that the United States itself would enter into an even bigger financial crisis than what they experienced in the late 1990s. During the Clinton Administration it was easy to give off the impression that the western financial system was stable and strong and an excellent role model.

Note that it was after this period of financial crises hitting back-to-back around the world (by men trained in “managing” crises) that China was being courted heavily by Hank Paulson, among others as we will see in Part III, to adopt more radical free-market reforms, claiming that it would be a deterrent to financial upheaval.

As we will discuss in Part III of this series, it is because China did not adopt these reforms to the degree the U.S. wished that they were able to come out relatively well from the financial crises that would hit them from 2006-2009 from the U.S. economic crash and then between 2013-2018 as a result of the P2P loan crisis (first discussed in Part I of this series).

Just like derivatives, such as credit-default swaps, P2P loans were an Anglo-American creation (discussed in Part I) made up of complex algorithms to mask their true nature. Using the veneer that they were created to lessen economic hardship; they were in fact created to drive the knife ever deeper.

In 2001, Geithner left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department.[48] He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.[49]

Geithner then serves as the President of the Federal Reserve from 2003 to 2009. As President of the New York Fed, Geithner was a central figure in the U.S. government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis.

The Washington Post could not have come up with a better headline summing up Geithner’s legacy by 2008.

After 6 years as President of the Federal Reserve (2003-2009), President Obama selected Geithner for his Treasury Secretary, a position he held from 2009-2013.

During the 2008 fiasco, Geithner had worked closely with Paulson. They organised the rescue and fire sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan. In fact, the Fed agreed to provide financing for the deal and support up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns’s “less-liquid assets”, despite some internal protests.[50]

In doing so, the New York Fed allowed Bear Stearns itself to calculate the value of assets acquired by the government and exposed itself to losses should those assets have declined in value, though JPMorgan agreed to absorb the first $1 billion in losses.[51] [52]

The New York Fed stored these assets in the Maiden Lane limited liability company and awarded no-bid contracts to the Wall Street asset manager BlackRock for management of the assets, with the intent of ridding itself of the assets within 10 years.[53] [54]

For the relevance of BlackRock see:

BlackRock is buying up the World’s Infrastructure to serve Billionaire Oligarchs as part of the WEF Global Model “You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy”

Recall in Part I of this series that Goldman Sachs is the common denominator linking BlackRock (GIP), Project Stargate, Open AI, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent and SoftBank. The fact that Goldman Sachs was at the center of engineering the 2008 crash and overseeing financial and banking reform in its wake should be viewed in direct connection to these other projects.

The True Origins of China’s “Social Credit System” Part I

As part of Geithner’s prescription to stabilize the financial market, he proposed that the traditional investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley transform themselves into bank holding companies to ensure continuing access to funding. Both banks completed the restructuring by September 21, 2009. [55] [56]

Although President Obama expressed strong support for Geithner, outrage over hundreds of millions of dollars in bonus payments (or employee “retention” payments) by the American International Group, which had received more than $170 billion in federal bailout aid, undermined public support in early 2009. In March 2009, AIG paid $165 million in bonuses to its financial products division, the unit responsible for the company’s near collapse the year prior, following $55 million paid to the same division in December 2008 and $121 million in bonus payments to senior executives.[57] [58]

In early November 2008, a joint committee of the Federal Reserve, Ernst & Young, and AIG concluded that the bonus payments, which were in contracts predating the government takeover, could not be legally stopped.[59]

Wikipedia writes:

In his book Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky argues that Geithner never had the intention to utilize the Home Affordable Modification Program as intended by Congress. Instead of providing relief for homeowners to avoid foreclosures, it was Geithner’s plan that the bank should proceed with these foreclosures. Geithner said that he “estimates” that the banks “can handle ten million foreclosures, over time”, and that HAMP “will help foam the runway for them” by “keeping the full flush of foreclosures from hitting the financial system all at the same time.”[60]

As such, “banks participating in the program have rejected four million borrowers’ requests for help, or 72 percent of their applications, since the process began.”[61]

Citimortgage [owned by the notorious Citigroup that Greenspan wavered Glass Steagall to allow for its formation] and JPMorgan Chase were among the banks that refused the most HAMP claims. As such, the program only helped 887,001 people out of the over 4 Million people that were originally estimated to be able to benefit from the program.

In written comments to the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearings, Geithner stated that the new administration believed China was “manipulating” its currency and that the Obama administration would act “aggressively” using “all the diplomatic avenues” to change China’s currency practices. The Obama administration would pressure China diplomatically to change this practice more strongly than the George W. Bush Administration had done. The United States maintained that China’s actions hurt American businesses and contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.[62]

Yes, you read right. Geithner as U.S. Treasury Secretary under Obama – who along with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan as Director of Policy Planning and Deputy Chief of Staff would organise hard in their Pivot to Asia stance – actually had the nerve to blame China for America’s 2008 crash….unfortunately too many Americans appear more than willing to accept these sort of condescending deflections from the real source of the problem that lies deep, very deep within American institutions today.

Instead of Obama focusing on addressing the underlying causes of the 2008 crash like he had campaigned on, that was the result of behemoth levels of fraud committed by the highest most powerful financial institutions in the United States…he decided to turn his attention to China and began increasing a military encirclement of the country.

Perhaps this was punishment for China not following the advice of Henry Paulson in setting up their own hangman’s noose, aka radical free-market reforms?

In July 2018, The Washington Post revealed that Mariner Finance, a company owned by the private equity firm, Warburg Pincus, of which Geithner was President (and now Chairman), engaged in predatory lending behavior. The Post’s interview with many former employees of Mariner Finance included a manager trainee at a branch in Nashville who characterized the company’s business model as “a way of monetizing poor people.” [63] [64]

On March 31, 2008, Henry Paulson released “The Department of the Treasury Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure“. In remarks announcing the release of the report, Paulson cited the need to overhaul the financial regulatory system, saying:

“But capital markets and the financial services industry have evolved significantly over the past decade. Globalization and financial innovation, such as securitization, have provided benefits to domestic and global economic growth; while highlighting new risks to financial markets. We should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible, one that can better adapt to change, one that will allow us to more effectively deal with inevitable market disruptions and one that will better protect investors and consumers.”[65]

It was clear that what Paulson had in mind in this “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure” did not refer to just the United States alone, but the entire world.

According to Paulson, the only lesson one could confidently take from the 2008 crash was that the world had not undergone sufficient deregulation. As Goldman Sachs remarked themselves, the era of deregulation opened the doors to the era of globalisation. Without the former one cannot have the latter.

On November 20, 2008, during remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Henry Paulson said

“We are working through a severe financial crisis caused by many factors, including government inaction and mistaken actions, outdated U.S. and global financial regulatory systems, and by the excessive risk-taking of financial institutions. This combination of factors led to a critical stage this fall when the entire U.S. financial system was at risk. This should never happen again. The United States must lead global financial reform efforts, and we must start by getting our own house in order.”[66]

In the midst of another financial crash brewing, this one threatening to be on a much larger global scale – we might do well to re-evaluate the significance when Lloyd Blankfein makes the statement in 2026 “I smell [another] crash coming”….

Due to the length of this article (they are always a lot longer than originally intended, the discussion of what China did to reign in Big Tech will be discussed in Part III, this is for certain. Part III will also include a discussion on how China escaped “shock therapy” in the 90s into the 2000s, where George Soros will feature prominently.

In Part IV of this series, I will discuss the involvement of the CIA and MI6 in their attempt to impose free-market reforms. This story will also involve Falun Gong.

In future instalments I will discuss the true origin of social credit, the significance of South Africa in all of this, as well as China’s move towards digital banking.

Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

Footnotes:

[1] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[2] SMEs: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, are crucial to the economy, and used to represent 99% of all businesses in the United States and EU, providing significant employment opportunities.

[3] Regan studied at Harvard University before he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel.

[4] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[5] Inside Job (2010) Documentary.

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating

[7] The longest serving chairman of the Federal Reserve was William McChesney Martin Jr. (1951-1970) who served for 19 years. Greenspan was just a few months shy from being the longest serving chairman.

[8] Goldman Sachs at 150 Documentary. Part 6

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Summers

[13] Glass Steagall footnote

[14] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[15] OTC (over-the-counter) derivatives are privately negotiated financial contracts between two parties, allowing customized risk management and investment strategies outside of formal exchanges.

[16] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[17] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[18] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[19] White House Trump 100 Days | Rev

[20] Goldman Sachs at 150 Documentary. Part 6

[21] Ibid

[22] Paul Volcker famously discussed “controlled disintegration” in a November 1978 speech at the University of Warwick. He did not coin the phrase; rather, he quoted and analyzed a statement by the late economist Fred Hirsch. The quote and context surrounding this idea can be found in Volcker’s speech, titled “The Political Economy of the Dollar”. In his speech, Volcker highlighted Hirsch’s view that a “’controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980’s’”. Volcker explained that this concept reflects the conflict between international economic integration and the desire of modern democracies to maintain national autonomy. He added that while interdependence is clear, the practical instinct is to exert independence, making “’controlled disintegration’—modest as it may seem to be—is indeed a legitimate goal,” even though the phrase left him “uneasy”

[23] Inside Job (2010) Documentary

[24] “Henry M. Paulson Jr.” Archived June 26, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, The Nature Conservancy 2006

[25] Interestingly, Paulson’s prominent advocacy for environmentalism appears to be directly influence by John Ehlichman who was also a strong proponent. Rinde, Meir (2017). “Richard Nixon and the Rise of American Environmentalism”. Distillations. 3 (1): 16–29.

[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman

[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman

[28] “U.S. faces global funding crisis, warns Merrill Lynch”. The Daily Telegraph. London. July 16, 2008. Archived from the original on July 17, 2008.

[29] Lawder, David (August 1, 2007). “Paulson sees subprime woes contained”. Reuters.

[30] https://www.cnbc.com/2008/05/06/paulson-says-markets-emerging-from-crunch-wsj.html

[31] “List Of Troubled Banks Will Grow, Paulson Says”. CBS News. July 20, 2008. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008

[32] “Testimony by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr”. Treasury.gov. November 18, 2008.

[33] Daniel Gross (September 17, 2008). “The Fundamentals of Our Economy Are Strong”. Slate.

[34] ] “Ford Foundation Links Parents of Obama and Treasury Secretary Nominee”. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. December 3, 2008. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008.

[35] “Ford Foundation Links Parents of Obama and Treasury Secretary Nominee”. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. December 3, 2008. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008.

[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner

[37] Milton, Susan (November 25, 2008). “Treasury nominee has ties to Orleans”. Cape Cod Times. Archived from the original on March 6, 2012.

[38] Farley, Kate (October 3, 2008). “Family describes Geithner ‘83’s youth”. The Dartmouth. Hanover, NH. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.

[39] Speech by Secretary Geithner Archived 2014-10-25 at the Wayback Machine 24 October 2014

[40] Farley, Kate (October 3, 2008). “Family describes Geithner ‘83’s youth”. The Dartmouth. Hanover, NH. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008.

[41] Fuerbringer, Jonathan (October 16, 2003). “I.M.F. Official Is Named President of New York Fed”. The New York Times. Business.

[42] “Timothy F. Geithner” Who’s Who. Marquis Who’s Who. November 22, 2008.

[43] Becker, Jo; Morgenstern, Gretchen (April 26, 2009). “Geithner, as Member and Overseer, Forged Ties to Finance Club”. The New York Times.

[44] Irwin, Neil (November 22, 2008). “A Treasury Contender Schooled in Crisis”. The Washington Post. p. A6. “Before becoming the Federal Reserve’s chief emissary to Wall Street in 2003, he [Geithner] helped manage the international crises of the 1990s as a senior official in the Clinton Treasury Department.”

[45] “Obama picks Geithner as treasury secretary”. The Financial Express. Mumbai. November 23, 2008. Retrieved November 23, 2008. Geithner is a protege of Lawrence Summers and has been involved in the bailouts of Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand in the 1990s as the treasury undersecretary

[46] Tiger Economy refers to an economy that is quickly developing and growing in Asia.

[47] https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/why-shinzo-abe-was-assassinated-towards

[48] “Timothy F. Geithner”. Experts. Council on Foreign Relations. February 2013.

[49] “Timothy F. Geithner” Who’s Who. Marquis Who’s Who. November 22, 2008.

[50] Sorkin, Andrew Ross (March 17, 2008). “JP Morgan Pays $2 a Share for Bear Stearns”. The New York Times.

[51] Labaton, Stephen (April 4, 2008). “Testimony Offers Details of Bear Stearns Deal”. The New York Times.

[52] Sidel, Robin; Berman, Dennis K.; Kelly, Kate (March 17, 2008). “J.P. Morgan Buys Bear in Fire Sale, As Fed Widens Credit to Avert Crisis”. The Wall Street Journal.

[53] Labaton, Stephen (April 4, 2008). “Testimony Offers Details of Bear Stearns Deal”. The New York Times.

[54] “July 7: Meeting About Maiden Lane, Followed by Dinner With Ralph Schlosstein”.

[55] Stewart, James B. (September 21, 2009). “Eight Days”. The New Yorker.

[56] “Morgan Stanley Granted Federal Bank Holding Company Status By U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors”

[57] Fletcher, Michael A.; Faiola, Anthony (March 23, 2009). “Advisers To Obama Wary of Bonus Tax”. The Washington Post.

[58] Andrews, Edmund L.; Baker, Peter (March 14, 2009). “A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout”. The New York Times.

[59] Phillips, Michael M.; Reddy, Sudeep (March 23, 2009). “Geithner Aides Worked With AIG for Months on Bonuses”. The Wall Street Journal.

[60] Barofsky, Neil M. (2012). Bailout : an inside account of how Washington abandoned Main Street while rescuing Wall Street. New York: Free Press.

[61] “Banks reject 72% of applicants under HAMP program”. The Real Deal Miami. August 9, 2015.

[62] Moore, Malcolm (January 23, 2009). “Timothy Geithner currency ‘manipulation’ accusation angers China”. The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022.

[63] “’A way of monetizing poor people’: How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans”. The Washington Post. July 1, 2018. ‘A way of monetizing poor people’: How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans

[64] “Private equity firms are the new predatory lenders: Report”. http://www.cbsnews.com. July 9, 2018.

[65] “Remarks by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. on Blueprint for Regulatory Reform”. www.treasury.gov.

[66] “Remarks by Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library”. Treasury.gov. November 20, 2008.

The post The Role of Goldman Sachs in Engineering Global Financial Crises appeared first on Activist Post.

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

During the 2020 pandemic hysteria there was a mad rush by globalist institutions like the WEF, IMF, BIS and numerous national central banks to speed-run the concept of “CBDCs” (Central Bank Digital Currencies) into the mainstream consciousness. The idea of digital currencies rooted to a blockchain ledger was presented as a solution to the pandemic. A number of globalists asserted that digital exchange would be necessary because “paper money carries the covid virus.”

This was, of course, complete nonsense. There was zero evidence that shifting to digital would prevent the spread of the virus in any way. But, as I’ve said for years now, covid was their big play. It was intended to become a nexus point for a global coup; the “New World Order” takeover. The elites figured the population was so terrified that they would agree to anything without a logical reason.

They were wrong, at least in the long run. The virus was a dud (which seemed to catch them by surprise) and the death rate was minimal (0.23% median IFR). The public eventually woke up to the deception and the agenda was forced to dissolve, largely due to nearly half of all US states blocking the mandates. If Americans could live just fine without restrictions, then the rest of the world was going to follow.

I mention the pandemic once again because the attempted coup gave the general public a once in a lifetime insight into the plans and motives of the globalists. This event changed everything. Millions of people who once thought that “conspiracy theorists” were crazy just had their eyes opened to a dark reality. There really is an international cabal. They really do make evil plans in smoky rooms. They really do want a “New World Order.”

And, a big part of this new order is a global digital currency scheme.

As researchers, all of our suspicions were confirmed. Seeing the intended plans of the elites across Europe and developing nations like China and India, it’s clear that CBDCs are the ultimate economic control mechanism. Why? Because without physical money, the populace can no longer engage in trade without governments and central banks acting as the middle man.

Look at it this way: During the pandemic mandates the Biden Administration and many other governments sought to institute the first stages of what would ultimately become a vaccine passport system.

First, employers would be required by law to check workers for updated vaccination, or face endless fines. Once this became the norm, then mandatory covid tracking apps would be introduced as the only way to enter government buildings and mass transit. Eventually, everyone would be forced to use their phones (and a QR code) to get access to public places or purchase anything anywhere.

The final domino would be CBDCs and a cashless society, but Biden and friends did not have this technology in place.

Without CBDCs the control system falls apart. With physical cash, there’s no way for the government to control transactions. They can de-bank individuals who refuse to comply (as the Canadian government did), but with physical exchange there is always a path to rebellion.

Even without cash, the public could use gold and silver or barter. People could create their own black markets and survive. However, with CBDCs widely entrenched, participation in the wider economy would be impossible.

The globalists asserted that de-banking and economic banishment was not a program of “forced vaccination” (although that was the ultimate endgame). Rather, they argued cynically that people still had a “choice” – They could take the vax and live a somewhat normal life within the system, or, they could refuse the vax and be cut off from the economy, and thus cut off from most of society and likely die from abject poverty.

This is the political left’s “consequence culture” argument.

I really hope people never forget the insanity of this era and how close we came to an Orwellian hellscape. Never forget; the globalists and the political left tried to extort you into becoming a medical slave for the rest of your life. And their plan was to use economic access as the leverage to force you into submission.

So what happened? Where did all the rhetoric about CBDCs go? It was everywhere for four years and then, it was dust in the wind. Why have central banks gone radio silent?

Sadly the plan has not been canceled, it has only been moved to the background and it continues to develop behind the curtain. The Bank for International Settlement (BIS) seems to be at the helm, for now, and is pushing forward with various projects to test CBDCs in cross border trade and tracking. Currently, they are working on “Project Agora”.

Project Agora is testing the process for “tokenization” of central bank reserves – Meaning, they want to make it possible for central banks to trade assets with each other using a blockchain ledger without complications. This would be a primary step in the eventual tokenization of all central bank transactions, including transactions with corporate banks and governments.

It should be noted that the Trump Administration and the US Senate has been issuing executive orders and legislation to block the Federal Reserve from engaging in CBDCs until at least 2030. However, the Fed seems to be ignoring these demands. According to the BIS, the Fed is STILL participating in Project Agora and the Fed has not announced any withdrawal from that program.

Interestingly, the BIS avoids using the acronym “CBDC” in most of their latest project announcements. But, this is exactly what they are working on. They do mention all national legal frameworks still apply within their ledger transactions. To translate, that means that central banks and allied governments will retain tracking and control of all assets that are traded through the system (No anonymous transactions and all transactions can be frozen).

This should be worrying for everyone and the implications are staggering. The BIS and its central banking partners are quietly building the framework for national digital currency systems to interact with other national digital currency systems.

In the end, the BIS and its allies will become the middlemen for all the world’s transactions. Furthermore, once national CBDCs become the norm, the elites are only one step away from introducing a GLOBAL CBDC: A one-world digital currency.

I continue to believe that the introduction of this system will require the collapse of the US dollar. But, this event may not happen the way many of us originally imagined. I and many other economists initially believed that the alternative digital currency system to unseat the dollar would be introduced through the BRICS economic bloc, which has been working closely with the IMF.

We also argued that a crash would have to occur through internal sabotage, clearing the path for a dollar collapse.

Something seems to have changed. The influence of the BRICS has been greatly diminished in the past five years. The plan may not be to crash the dollar from within the US through domestic mishap or sabotage, at least not right away. Rather, the plan might be to introduce CBDCs in every western country that is politically cooperative with the globalists and cut out the dollar over time as the world reserve.

Recent announcements from the European Union and the European Central Bank suggest that they are preparing to bring in CBDCs regardless of what the US does.

In other words, it looks as though far-left governments in Europe, Australia and Canada plan to build a global currency network that cuts out the dollar in order to crash the dollar. They can then say it was entirely the fault of backwards conservative Americans who “live in the past and refuse to go digital…”

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to work with the BIS and the globalists to make the dollar ready for tokenization with the expectation that Americans will eventually be forced to go along with the agenda, or risk being left in the dust.

Will this strategy work? It’s hard to say. The pandemic plan failed and only ended up radicalizing millions of people against the globalists by default. On top of that, the mass immigration agenda in Europe is not going over well and it’s driving the citizens to replace liberal governments with hard-right parties like Restore and AFD. But, when money becomes the weapon, things can turn ugly fast. CBDCs could create unprecedented social and political leverage for the globalists.

Luckily, the public is already well aware of the existence of CBDCs and many of the threats they pose. The globalists can try to hide their projects in a fog of obscurity and they can try to change the terms by using words like “tokenization”, but the populace is still going to recognize the dangers because their radar is now up.

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

The U.S. government can print more dollars. It can borrow more money. But it cannot create more gold. There is only so much of it on this earth – and that’s exactly why central banks around the world are buying it at record levels. A physical Gold IRA lets you hold this finite, time-tested asset inside a tax-advantaged retirement account. Request your free info kit from Birch Gold Group and learn how simple it is to get started.

You can contact Brandon Smith at:

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TwitterX: @AltMarket1

The post Why Have Central Bankers Gone Radio Silent On The Digital Currency Agenda? appeared first on Activist Post.

The release of the Rupert Lowe Rape Gang Inquiry Report showed that the entire United Kingdom has been groomed into accepting a foreign invader’s insatiable appetite for sexual destruction and oppression. Starting at the top, a long list of Prime Ministers have enabled the rape of 250,000 British girls over the past two decades.

Ironically, creating a podcast about what the Pakistani rape gangs were doing in the U.K. is more likely to warrant jail time than the crimes themselves. As London falls, one must consider that more dominoes are being set up now across the West, with a similar outcome predicted in the future.

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The post #662: Groomed Into Submission appeared first on Activist Post.

In a significant setback for one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects in the United States, Blackstone-backed QTS Realty Trust has decided to abandon its portion of the Prince William Digital Gateway (also known as the PW Digital Gateway) in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County. The move comes just days after Bloomberg reported the decision on July 2, 2026, marking the effective end of plans for what was envisioned as the world’s largest data center campus.

The sprawling project, spanning roughly 2,100 acres in total (with QTS targeting more than 800 acres), was planned for up to 37 data center buildings across approximately 22 million square feet. It sat on the edge of the historic Manassas National Battlefield and near protected lands, promising massive economic activity but facing intense local resistance.

The Legal and Regulatory Saga

The project’s troubles escalated after a Virginia circuit court ruled in 2025 that zoning approvals were invalid due to improper public notice (failing to meet the required six-day separation between notices). This was upheld by the Virginia Court of Appeals in March 2026. The county’s Board of Supervisors then unanimously withdrew from defending the project in April 2026, halting its appeal efforts after spending over $1.7 million in taxpayer funds.

Compass Datacenters (backed by Brookfield), the other major developer, had already exited in May 2026, citing compounding regulatory hurdles and legal actions. QTS, left without a cost-sharing partner for utility upgrades, ultimately concluded that continuing the fight was not worthwhile. Attorneys planned to notify the court of the withdrawal as early as this week.

Blackstone acquired QTS in 2021 and has positioned itself as a dominant player in data centers. However, this specific greenfield mega-project has now collapsed amid grassroots opposition, zoning technicalities, and shifting local politics—including Virginia’s new energy consumption tax on data centers.

Is This a Lone Blackstone Issue or a Systemic Problem?

This withdrawal is not isolated to Blackstone or QTS. It reflects broader, mounting headwinds facing the AI-driven data center boom across the U.S.: Community opposition is surging.

A March 2026 Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans (71%) oppose constructing AI data centers in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed. Concerns center on energy and water use, pollution, noise, traffic, and quality-of-life impacts. Opposition exceeds that for local nuclear plants in some polls.

Example of public protests against data center developments.

Cancellations and delays are accelerating. Data center project cancellations quadrupled to 25 in 2025 (from 6 in 2024). Reports indicate $18 billion in projects blocked and $46 billion delayed due to local opposition in recent years, with some trackers citing even higher figures ($64B+ affected). Power grid bottlenecks (7–10 year wait times for connections in key markets), electrical component shortages, and regulatory pushback are major culprits.

Power infrastructure lags demand. The AI buildout requires enormous electricity—equivalent to powering entire cities. Grid constraints and rising energy costs/taxes are forcing developers to reassess projects.

Blackstone itself is not retreating from data centers overall. The firm manages one of the world’s largest portfolios (reportedly $150B+ in data centers and facilities under construction, plus a large prospective pipeline). It has pursued expansions elsewhere (e.g., partnerships in Pennsylvania, Japan, and a joint venture with Google) and recently sold stakes in three other Virginia data centers to Digital Realty Trust for $3.5 billion.

Blackstone executives, including CEO Stephen Schwarzman, have described the business as “conservative” picks-and-shovels infrastructure with long-term leases to investment-grade hyperscalers, not speculative bubble activity.

Are We Facing an AI Bubble?

The Prince William collapse highlights real risks of over-hype and execution challenges in the AI infrastructure supercycle, but it does not signal an imminent full bubble burst:

Bull case: Long-term demand for computing remains strong as AI models advance and adoption grows. Hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.) continue massive capex. Data centers leased to creditworthy tenants on 10–20 year terms offer more resilience than pure AI software plays.

Bear case/risks: Enormous capex by Big Tech may outpace near-term monetization and utilization. Some analysts warn of potential overbuild, especially in speculative greenfield projects without secured power or pre-leases. Delays erode returns on debt-funded investments. Public and political backlash could slow permitting nationwide. Valuation froth in AI-related equities adds vulnerability.

The situation resembles early maturation pains rather than collapse: selective pullbacks from troubled sites, while disciplined players shift toward stabilized assets, power infrastructure, and regions with better grid access. Cancellations are rising, but core demand drivers persist.

Impacts on Consumers

• Higher electricity bills: Data centers strain local grids, prompting utilities to invest in new generation/transmission or pass costs to ratepayers. Virginia’s data center tax is one example of shifting burdens.
• Environmental and quality-of-life effects: In areas where projects proceed, concerns include water consumption (for cooling), potential air/noise pollution, and increased traffic. Blocked projects preserve rural landscapes and historic sites but forgo potential tax revenue and jobs.
• Slower AI benefits rollout: Delays in infrastructure could temper the pace of new AI services, cloud improvements, or efficiency gains that ultimately reach consumers.

Impacts on Investors

Data center developers and REITs/PE firms (e.g., Blackstone, Digital Realty, others): Higher risk premiums for new builds. Winners will be those with secured power, pre-leased capacity, or a focus on existing/stabilized assets. This specific loss is minor for Blackstone given portfolio scale, but it underscores execution risks.
Hyperscalers: Rising capex with potential delays or higher costs. If utilization or ROI disappoints, capex discipline could tighten.
Broader opportunities: Utilities, power generators (gas, nuclear/SMRs), transmission companies, and equipment suppliers stand to benefit from the need to upgrade infrastructure. Selective PE/REIT exposure to “picks and shovels” remains attractive for long-term holders.
Market sentiment: Reinforces narratives around AI bubble risks, potentially pressuring tech/AI stocks in the short term while highlighting resilient infrastructure plays.

Bottom Line

The collapse of the Prince William Digital Gateway is a high-profile casualty of legal technicalities, fierce local opposition, and infrastructure bottlenecks—not a Blackstone-specific failure. It exemplifies systemic pressures on the AI data center boom: rapid demand colliding with slow grid buildout, rising community resistance, and economic realities of delays.

While not the death knell for AI infrastructure, it signals that the easy phase of unchecked expansion is ending. Investors and developers must navigate higher hurdles with greater discipline. Consumers may face higher energy costs in the near term, but could benefit from more sustainable, community-accepted development long-term.

The energy transition and digital transformation remain intertwined—power availability will increasingly dictate which AI dreams become reality.

Appendix: Sources and Links

• ZeroHedge original article: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/worlds-largest-data-center-campus-verge-collapse-after-blackstone-unexpectedly-pulls-out
• Bloomberg/Yahoo Finance on QTS abandonment (July 2, 2026): https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/blackstone-qts-said-abandon-virginia-185842048.html and related reports
• Reuters on Blackstone’s $3.5B Virginia data center stake sale to Digital Realty: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/digital-realty-buy-blackstones-data-center-stake-deal-valuing-assets-78-billion-2026-06-29/
• Construction Dive on rising cancellations: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/data-center-project-cancellations-power-public-pushback/818157/
• Data Center Watch report on blocked/delayed projects: https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report
• Gallup poll on opposition to local AI data centers (May 2026 release): https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx
• Additional context from Blackstone statements, SemiAnalysis critiques on delay statistics, and local reporting on the Digital Gateway legal battle (e.g., Prince William County sites, Bisnow, E&E News).

All information current as of July 3, 2026.

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