Transcription
So, what I've been saying for a while now is finally coming true. And what we're seeing around the world is what's called the end of globalization.
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. The world has changed much and I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, here's a very simple way of looking at it. After World War II, the world came to an agreement about how to structure the new world order. China became the factory of the world. Japan became the lender by keeping rates at zero, keeping the system liquid. Europe became the buyer and consumer of the world. They traded productivity and military for stability and social welfare. And the United States became the country that enforced the whole thing with the petro dollar as the world's reserve currency backed by the military-industrial complex.
Now that system is what Simon Dixon coined as the proof of weapons network which means if countries want to trade or if they want money to build their economies they have to agree to the rules. The rules were use dollars to buy energy and do not mess with US interests. The petro dollar made sure that the world needed dollars to buy its energy. The military enforced it all and financial institutions along with the central banks managed the flow of all this money. So if you play by the rules, you got access to investment markets and protection. And if you broke the rules, you got punished with things like sanctions or just outright war.
Now, if you're an American, depending on which side of the K-shaped economy you were on, rich or poor, then you indirectly benefited from that system because US companies made a lot of money. And if you were an investor, you also made a lot of money and you got to retire happy. The downside though was that to keep this system going, it doesn't just take a war, it takes a forever war, which is bad for the world. Now, if you're poor as an American, it's especially bad because the system gave out all the jobs. Supply chains left, factories left, and what it did was it concentrated wealth. It hollowed out the middle class, and it created a very fragile dependency on other nations for their stuff. Cuz America stopped making stuff. The only thing America made was money and technology. And for a long time, that's how the world worked. Technically, it still does. at least on paper, but it's coming to the end because fast forward to today and some of these nations decided to team up and said, "Okay, we'll make our own system then." And they've become so powerful at this point that the proof of weapons network cannot enforce the rules anymore without going to World War II, which no one wants. And at the most recent meeting at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, which just happened, the people who sort of control these levers of power, said that this game is over.
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It's a failed policy. It is what the W has stood for which is export offshore farshore find the cheapest labor in the world and the world is a better place for it. The fact is it has left America behind. It has left the American workers behind.
So now Japan is being forced to repatriate its capital back, sell their US treasuries just like all the other nations in this new world. This weakens the dollar because the dollar needs perpetual demand and that demand is disappearing. Europe learned if you depend on other countries for your energy and you outsource your safety and your military, well then you've got no power to enforce the rules. So what we're left with is what was talked about at this World Economic Forum. The question was, how do we divide power in this new world order? That's what I want to help explain. I want to show you who the players are, what each of them wants, and what it might look like in the future. So, with that said, let's get into it. Hi, my name is Andre Jick. Hope you're doing well. Come for the finance and stay for the new world order.
So, the old game that's been played since World War II for about 80 years or so is coming to an end. And it kind of perfectly lines up with something called the fourth turning, which is a model that shows that every 20 years we've got a new cycle which starts with the high followed by the awakening, then the unraveling, and now the crisis or the reset. That's where the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes in. This is where the world's most powerful people get together to talk about what the new game is going to look like. This is the largest gathering of global leadership of the post covid period of time.
So, first I'm going to try to explain who the players are and what they want. This gets very complex. There's all kinds of different power structures with different incentives, pulling in all different directions, all trying to take a piece of whatever replaces this old system. So, let me give you a high-level condensed overview of what's happening.
Now there are technically four groups of power. The first group is what we can call the financial globalists. Some people call it the transnational capital. Why is it called that? It's called that because transnational capital means these people do not pledge allegiance to a flag. They don't represent a nation's interests. They are money and money can be anywhere. Hence, transnational because it transcends nations. So, who are these people? Who am I talking about? Well, at the very top, these are the asset managers. And at the top of that food chain are three specific ones. They're the apex predators of this structure. And that is Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street, which together manage tens of trillions of dollars. Now they thrive in a world where money or capital can move anywhere, any place, any time. Now that money is not their money obviously, it's their client's money. But with that money, they are given a superpower. That superpower is that all corporations around the world become subordinate to them. How? Well, because corporations optimize for access to capital or money. And through that, asset managers get to vote on behalf of their shareholders. And here's an example of what I mean, cuz I know it sounds confusing. If you're buying mutual funds or ETFs at a place like Blackrock, your money is being allocated to different types of funds, but you don't get to vote on what the individual companies within those funds get to do. Now, you can vote with some funds, but the reality is this chart right here is that most people won't even bother at all. And this chart right here is from Blackrock's website, which actually shows that in 2025, out of the 7.4 trillion in total index equity, only 3.65 trillion was even eligible for voting. But of that, only 812 billion actually voted. That's only 11% of total index equity, which means 89% of their clients votes was exercised by Blackrock, not by their clients. So even though asset managers don't own the money they manage, they are using their clients money to vote which way a company goes and who those companies hire for their members of the board.
Now downstream from that is everything else like access to capital, access to markets and all the other things. That's why Larry Fink is at the top of this food chain. He is the top G here. And what you have to understand about this power structure is that it does not need to pass laws or control the military because by controlling capital flows, they're able to guide most of the decisions because if you're the CEO of a company and the money flows to you, well then your company grows. But if it leaves and you get kicked out of the index, well then your company gets smaller and you get fired. So if you want to succeed, then you're going to probably do as you're told, and that is the ultimate superpower.
Now, I should also mention though that there's not just one apex predator here. There's another one, and that's the banks and the Federal Reserve. So asset managers and banks, I believe, are separate players with their own unique interests. And I think you can tell that from this conversation between Larry Fink and Christine Lagarde where she drops a hint that central banks might not always be around.
"So I'm not going to tell you that there is a red line. I'm not going to tell you that central banks will always be around either."
"Speak to what you did. You just said something very interesting."
"I'm not going to speak more to it."
"No. To this to no to the idea that central banks might not always be around. What did you mean by that? Look, I went through uh my lot of crisis as many of you have as well. And I remember the days when it was mentioned that you know central bankers are the only game in town. This is not the right approach to a balanced and durable equilibrium."
Okay. So asset managers are separate from the banks which are competing together. Now on the bank side, the apex predator here is Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and he says he's a globalist.
"You know, hey, ready? You can. Here's your headline. I'm a globalist."
Now, a globalist means if it were up to him, he would continue the world order as it is today. He wants NATO to be strong. He wants to protect the interests of the West. And he wouldn't change much.
"I want a stronger NATO, a stronger Europe. Some of the things Trump has done are causing that, some are not. I'm not a tariff guy, though I'd use it in the cases I had. I think they should change their approach to immigration. I've said it. What the hell else do you want me to say?"
So the central banks are resisting all of this, which kind of makes sense because they're the power structure that benefited the most from it. So asset managers and banks, two different players that want two different things, but both are part of the same power structure, which Simon Dixon coined as FIC or the financial industrial complex.
The second group of power players are what you might call the sovereigns, right? And these are the leaders of tier one nations. Tier one meaning those with access to nuclear weapons. Now, a sovereign is someone that believes globalization is a threat to their power and control. A sovereign is not necessarily trying to win the globalization game. They're just trying not to lose control. And their power comes from things like laws, borders, tariffs, and sometimes they're even willing to sacrifice their market for their sovereignty, their independence. and they're willing to put up with some economic pain not to lose control over industry, energy, and security.
Now, who are they specifically, right? Well, that might be someone like Vladimir Putin, right? A guy who doesn't want to privatize his nation's resources. He doesn't care if Russia's stock market isn't doing all that great. He wants it so that only the Russian government can drill for his oil and not Exxon Mobile or Chevron. He doesn't really care if Russian stocks underperform US markets. And sovereigns also don't care if the rest of the world doesn't really want to play with them, right? Same can be said of China's Xi Jinping. He prefers state control and long-term growth over access to Western capital. Same can also be said of North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Same same but different. Sovereign power resists globalization cuz they know they cannot win this game. And that's also why the financial industrial complex hates them so much because they're unpredictable and they are inefficient from a capital point of view. But they're popular and their voters keep choosing them because they promise control and obedience. They have clean streets, right? They have order which is very efficient. So their people really love them. So in a nutshell they understand that to allow transnational capital in their countries would mean giving up all the leverage that they have.
Now the third group are the technologists sometimes called the technocrats and they don't really care about nationalism versus globalism. They mostly care about things like efficiency, scale and networks. They believe that technology will someday replace or automate a lot of what governments and institutions are doing right now. But I also think it's important to understand that technologists are not necessarily at the top of the power structure. They don't control the capital flows. They can work with almost any player in the system as long as they are given funding, access to data, and the permission. Right? In that sense, they're also transnational because their software goes beyond their borders. And as globalization breaks down, they kind of get more powerful, right? How? Well, because financial power pushes for programmable money, digital IDs, social credit scores, automation, robots, etc. Right? So, the capital moves in their direction and they get more powerful. They have a lot of leverage but they're not quite the most powerful as the financial players are in this structure.
Now then there's the fourth group though which is the military-industrial complex and this is sort of like the enforcement layer. Their power comes from force and the intelligence agencies. They thrive mostly on instability and their role is just to enforce whatever system is in place right now. They're not really subordinate to the government like you might think. They're more subordinate to the financial industrial complex because it's the financial powers that dominate the government, not the other way around.
Okay. So, now that you hopefully understand who the players are, the next question is what do they actually want? So, let me start with the most powerful group of them all, which is the financial industrial complex. Now, one of those players, the asset managers, what they want is a world where money or capital stays liquid, fast, and controllable even if nations and countries fragment, right? Because delobalization is a problem for them because borders slow money down. Different countries have different rules, different currencies, different settlement systems. And all of that is what's called friction. It adds cost and complexity and all the stuff they don't want to deal with. So their solution then is tokenization and fractionalization, which is something Larry Fink has talked about for years.
"I think the movement towards uh tokenization, decimalization is is necessary. I think we need to move very rapidly u uh to doing that. We would be reducing fees. We would do more democratization."
Now tokenization just means taking assets like stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, whatever and putting them on a blockchain so they can trade instantly globally 24/7. And fractionalization means breaking those assets into smaller pieces so that more people can own them and they can move them faster. So now you can live anywhere in the world and regardless of which country you come from, anyone can buy stocks from anywhere in the world, right? But what that also does in practice is that it hugely benefits whoever controls the rails now. Asset managers already control the assets, but tokenization allows them to control the infrastructure as well. And in the future, AI is going to play a huge role in managing this whole system. And because it's on the blockchain rail, they're going to have all the tools in the world to see everything that's happening in real time. And they'll be able to take advantage of that information for better or for worse.
But remember, there's also the bankers. And what do the banks want? Well, preferably to kind of keep it all the same. But really their biggest goal right now is to avoid the privatization of money. Here's one of the central bankers at Davos saying exactly this.
"As I am a central banker, let me insist a bit on at least I I gave a speech two weeks ago with a triangle of threats and a triangle of answer. But let me sum up. The first threat is privatization of money."
So in other words, they want to not be what's called disintermediated, meaning they don't want to be cut out of the capital flows. They don't want to be made irrelevant. How do they do that? Here's the answer is CBDC. central bank digital currencies, CBDCs. This is how the old system is trying to stay relevant because if cash is disappearing, if private payment rails are taking over, if tokenized assets are routing around them and asset managers are building this new infrastructure without the banks, well, that shrinks the power of the banks. So CBDCs are a way for the central banks to have their own programmable money and banks have to be very careful here because if corporate CBDCs are allowed to exist and if they pay an interest or a yield that threatens banks deposits, banks don't want their deposit money leaving because their customers are buying corporate-issued digital currencies like Tesla coin that's going to pay them a 5% yearly interest on their savings instead of their savings account that's going to pay them 0.2% interest, right? That's an existential threat to the banking power. So, just remember that the banks want CBDCs and control over what corporations can and can't do with them. But they also have some competition and their biggest competitor is the crypto lobby.
Now, the crypto lobby is challenging the banks and what the crypto people want is fair competition because in a fair game, crypto wins. Crypto knows that and the banks know that. And here's the CEO of the biggest crypto company in the US saying exactly what I just said.
"I think Americans should be able to earn more money on their money. Uh banks should have to compete on a level playing field and if the American people feel like the banks are not paying high enough interest rates and stable coin rewards can offer them more then maybe the banks should have to pay higher interest rates to compete."
So that was Brian Armstrong and he wants to make sure that the rules are such that the crypto lobby can compete with the banking lobby. Crypto people want control over the CBDCs so they could pay you a higher interest rate for holding your cash with them which ultimately threatens what the bank deposits which is the bank's source of power. But guess who's got more money, more lawyers, and more influence. That would be the banks, which is why the crypto lobby is upset right now because the legislation is not fair to them cuz obviously it's not designed to be and that's how the game is played. So anyway, at the very top, we've got the asset managers, then the banks, then the crypto powers, which depending on how regulation goes in the future, aka who has the bigger wallet for the politicians, this might flip and the crypto lobby could someday overtake the banks. So that's the financial industrial complex or the FIC structure. That's power player number one.
Power player number two are the sovereigns. Now, what do the sovereigns want? And what they want is almost the opposite, right? They care about a seat at this table and control of their resources. Their ideal world is where they control their energy, their food, their industry, their security, even if that means slower growth and slower markets, right? Some countries just want to be left alone. Other countries want to consolidate power regionally and absorb their geographic proxies like Russia wants to do with Ukraine, like China with Taiwan, like the US did with Venezuela and Greenland and whatever else, right? And some of these countries have expansionary dreams, right? They want to have a seat at the table, which is why Russia says they're going to join Trump's board of peace and they'll pay a billion dollars if they could use the money that the US froze from Russia and if they could help broker the deal in Palestine because they want to be a part of it.
Okay. Well, then you have the technologists and they don't really care who's in charge politically. What they want are the government contracts, the data, and maybe a bailout if that's what keeps them spending. And in return, they'll develop all the things like digital IDs, the robots, the social credit scores, and and they'll trade the data and the tech with whichever faction happens to be in power. And then there's the military-industrial complex. They weren't super represented at the World Economic Forum, but their interests are usually instability, which justifies spending, which enriches the defense contractors, which is ultimately a proxy for the financial industrial complex.
Now, the good news, though, is this. If all goes well, the world should not be going to World War II. Instead, we should hopefully see less invasion and less occupation because the forever war model is unwinding.
So, in a nutshell, asset managers want programmable money. The crypto people want to have competition. The banks want to not be irrelevant. Sovereigns want control over their own countries without being destabilized while having a seat at the table. Technologists want access to money. And the military is there to just enforce the rules.
Now, a lot of what I said is overly simplified in this video, but it is based on provable information. But really, the most important takeaway from this video is that I'm not describing altruism versus evil or good versus bad. This is just power versus power. And there's a lot that I don't want to say, not cuz I'm not allowed to, but because I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But if I could just give you my personal opinion about all of it, I think that all of this has already been negotiated. And what we're watching is just political theater. What we're seeing in Venezuela and Greenland and Russia, it's just theater to justify it all. It's geopolitical posturing for the countries. They're like, "Okay, in this new game, how do I want to be perceived? Am I weak? Am I strong? Who am I?" Right? What is my identity here? That is the theater. And this is the algorithms making us engage in all of it. But the reality is that the range of possible outcomes for all these possible futures has already been pre-negotiated. Maybe not the exact script, but the general big idea, I think, has already been established. But hey, in the meantime, enjoy the celebration andor the humiliation of certain people. I can't prove it, but that's just my theory.
Now, I do want to give credit because some of this framework was borrowed from Simon Dixon, who's not only talked about this for years, but has made a lot of videos about these topics. And if you're interested in this sort of stuff, I'd recommend to check out his YouTube channel because it is a rabbit hole that you will not be coming out of. The link is down below. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts about all of this. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Smash the like button, subscribe if you haven't already. I'd love to see you back here next week. I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.