“If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban” (Norman Finkelstein)

Of course, the above quotation should be corrected: for the US and its Western stooges, those actions were far from futile. The two decades dedicated to destroying countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and slaughtering their people, were not only lucrative for major financial institutions and the military-industrial complex; more importantly, they provided a crucial geopolitical-ideological lever to delay the impending collapse of a system that suffered a first major spasm with the 2007-08 financial crisis. Ultimately, the decisive impetus behind those military offensives, and now the proxy conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Syria, is rooted in fear and denial – the unwillingness, in other words, to confront the consequences of a declining hegemony; the ageing of a debt-driven brand of simulated, hyper-financialised capitalism. Although the collective West has not exhausted the potential for its depravity, it has nonetheless fallen so low that one does not dare to fathom what it is capable to do next.

So what has 2025 in store for us? For sure, the future is rapidly disappearing from sight, making it difficult for us to even imagine a way out of a predicament that relies on heavy manipulation across the board – from economic data to false flag operations. Every “event” today is framed within the exploitative rationale of “crisis capitalism”, which remains stubbornly reliant upon the creation of credit to inflate financial bubbles. As a consequence, the horizon of our world is folding in upon itself. The feedback loop of debt, finance, residual imperialist frenzy, economic downturn, and ideological perception management is set to continue for years to come, clouding our critical judgment and sapping our imaginary capacities. Unable to face its terminal sickness, the West won’t stop unleashing its rage upon all those convenient enemies it uses as geopolitical leverage. There is no longer even any genuine effort to disguise this criminal strategy under the guise of moral imperatives such as “exporting democracy” or “defending human rights.” The violence is now revealed for what it always was: the unrestrained brutality of an aggressive civilization that refuses to acknowledge its decay and finitude. This is emphatically confirmed by the extermination of Palestinian children, which continued unabated even during the festive period, with the support and complicity of our political class.

The question, therefore, is not if there will be a new global emergency, but how soon it is going to occur. In geopolitical terms, Iran – a country already struggling with high inflation, energy shortages and rising unemployment – is the obvious candidate for the next crisis. The dismantling of the Islamic Republic of Iran, just like the ongoing mutilation of Syria, would appear to be as urgent an objective as the dismemberment of Iraq once was. Again, the pressure of war is an inherently psychotic defence mechanism against systemic introspection. It shields the West from facing the implosion of an uber-financialised and uber-indebted mode of socioeconomic reproduction that has grown sterile, dysfunctional, and socially destructive. Fanning the flames of chaos at the edge of Empire requires, among other things, the maintenance of the Zionist entity. In this respect, Donald Trump, together with Israel, is poised to play a decisive role in intensifying pressure on Tehran. A large-scale attack on Iran, a member of the BRICS alliance, would be aimed at delaying the process of de-dollarisation (thus protecting the perceived sustainability of the US’s skyrocketing national debt) while also precipitating an international economic crisis that would justify further monetary expansion and lower interest rates in support of the financial sector.

The cosy relationship that financial elites entertain with warfare is exemplified by the trajectory of Jens Stoltenberg (AKA the “Norwegian Tony Blair”), who has served as Norway’s prime minister, led the Gavi Alliance – funded by Bill Gates to facilitate global vaccine distribution – held the position of NATO Secretary General, and has now been appointed as co-Chair of the Bilderberg Group, the world’s most secretive organization, comprising influential figures from the realms of US and EU politics, industry, finance, media, academia, and the military (Bilderberg’s gatherings are so clandestine that no minutes are recorded, no press conferences held, and no reports published). As immortalised in Stoltenberg’s illustrious bureaucratic career, the Western power structure is characterized by a shady system of revolving doors: the continuous interchange of the same ineffective and often discredited technocrats across various institutional roles. Puppet-like figures like Stoltenberg, Mario Draghi or Kaja Kallas (who has transitioned from the role of Estonia’s prime minister to serving as Vice-President under Ursula von der Leyen at the European Commission) are manoeuvred like chess pawns on the power grid in light of their “expertise”. Stoltenberg is considered an expert on transatlantic strategy (specifically in connection with the Ukraine-Russia conflict), which may suggest that the elites behind the Bilderberg Group intend to prioritize military engagement, potentially through covert operations in connection with NATO. This assumption would seem to be supported by the fact that Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies – the AI giant aligned with US intelligence – serves on the Bilderberg board (with Palantir’s co-founder and key shareholder Peter Thiel). Karp, who not unlike his billionaire associate Thiel fancies himself as a visionary philosopher, has claimed that Palantir played a significant role in orchestrating ‘most of the targeting in Ukraine’.

Interestingly, on Christmas day the Guardian published a piece that framed the appointment of Stoltenberg as co-Chair of Bilderberg within a “conspiracy theory” perspective (Bilderberg ‘has long been the subject of conspiracy theories around the extent of its power to shape global event’) while simultaneously confirming this perspective in distinctly conspiratorial terms. Following an in-depth analysis of the historical connections between Bilderberg and the military-industrial complex – originally focused on countering “communist imperialism” and currently aimed at opposing “the axis of autocrats,” namely China, Russia, and North Korea – the article concludes: ‘So all of the high finance high rollers who get invited to Stoltenberg’s Bilderberg can expect to get the hard sell on military and defence investment. Now’s the time for Jens to get networking and glad-handing in the transatlantic wings, keeping the war on the road, the alliance strong and the mil-tech billions flowing.’

But beyond the shady lobbying that takes place at Bilderberg meetings, geopolitical conflicts should be contextualised as the flipside of hyper-inflated financial markets driven by stock frauds like Tesla, one of the biggest speculative bubbles in world history (which would also explain why Elon Musk is landing a plum job in the new Trump administration). The very fact that Wall Street’s record highs – no fewer than 57 times in 2024 – are powered by the Artificial Intelligence bubble exemplifies the distorted nature of the current system: hugely overvalued tech companies rack up insane profits while promoting automation and the optics of “jobless growth” (growth without mass productive wage labour). And when nations incur expenditures that exceed their financial means, starting a war becomes the most expedient method of generating new currency, which possesses no intrinsic value but serves to prolong the agony and obscure the unavoidable outcome.

We must emphasise that the extraordinary power wielded today by financial capital originates not merely in subjective greed and corruption – though these factors do contribute – but especially in the implosion of work societies, a phenomenon that is especially apparent throughout the “advanced” Western world. Marx defined financial capital as “fictitious” because it consists in the conversion of a future income into a present title to property, such as stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Far beyond what Marx could have imagined, the simulated nature of financial capital, which carries its own depressing temporality, has now infected and colonized all aspects of existence – not just the physical means of production and social relations (industry, labour, politics, culture, information, and the entire reproduction of the state) but also, increasingly, “naked life” through the tokenization of identities, bodies, and nature.

In truth, we already live in a digital Wild West where a cryptocurrency like Fartcoin achieves an “explosive” market capitalization of 1.5 billion dollars within a couple of months of its launch. Fartcoin is literally a tokenized fart – a meme coin with the underlying value of a fart – allegedly originating from Elon Musk’s fondness for the sound effects of flatulence. This alone should tell you that the era of casino capitalism has just gone into a higher gear, as it currently rides a huge wave of crypto ecstasy driven by President (s)elect Donald Trump. On the surface, Fartcoin is illustrative of the nihilistic economic adventurism of young generations who have long been priced out of the American Dream, but also priced in the Fairy-tale of Decentralised Finance. Thus they gamble on a fart proxy hoping its kiss will turn them into instant millionaires. What doesn’t make the “news”, however, is that the current push toward making cryptocurrencies mainstream, coupled with further banking deregulation, serves to bridge the entire system into the global Panopticon of full tokenization.

Fictitious speculative capital carries an insidious temporality that is gradually attaining historical legitimacy. As anticipated, it is based on the conversion (note the religious allusion) of future value – not only unrealized but also largely unachievable and increasingly simulated – into present paper claims to wealth. The entire capitalist constellation is now grounded in this ruse. Thus, the viability of the social narrative hinges on a true (unconscious!) act of faith: not the modern faith in the linear progression of time (past-present-future), but rather in the “presentification of the future”, whereby the latter is constantly repurposed into fictitious capital. Essentially, the potential for valorisation, for investment in value-creation to come, matters only insofar as it can be instantly translated into wealth, which is then employed for further investment and to maintain the status quo. Within this compressed temporality, the distinct moments of action – in Aristotle’s terms, archèin (beginning) and prattein (bringing to conclusion) – merge into a muddle that breeds anxiety and incapacitates the subject. In short, financial capital constantly borrows from the future, effectively depleting it, “sucking it dry”. By doing so, it forces the subject to disinvest in the original articulation of time, whereby action itself (praxis) is stripped of the fundamental illusion of meaningful social articulation that informs all long-term human endeavours and planning.

The implication here is that, while the capitalist system blindly pursues its self-reproduction, the perception of risk moving forward is increasingly diminished. Are we aware of the current economic landscape, and the scenarios that lie ahead? The United States, home of Wall Street (which accounts for around 60% of global stock market “value” and over 200% of national GDP), is grappling with a staggering $36 trillion in federal debt, way larger than its economy and growing at exponential speed. Following the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to lower interest rates, the yield on the benchmark US 10-year Treasury note has spiked to 4.6% – the opposite of what it’s supposed to do according to economics 101. As we near a critical juncture for a potentially cataclysmic debt-trap, it seems convenient to feed the public alternative realities, from “become your own crypto king or queen” to the predictable resurgence of “Islamic terrorism” (as evidenced by the New Year’s Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas). The truth is that the system needs another “emergency QE” – and it needs it fast. The next “unexpected” crisis will compel the Fed & friends to resort to further monetary expansion by force majeure. And while there’s always room for systemic entropy and unpredictability, it seems fair to assume that those at the top, sitting closer to the money printer, will avoid most nasty consequences; rather, it will be the likes of me and you, dear reader, who will pay the ultimate price.

The trajectory of the stock market continues to be fundamentally shaped by the availability of easy money. This leads to currency devaluation, meaning higher prices and a diminished standard of living. The entire framework of suppressed interest rates is designed to channel cash into risk assets like stocks and derivatives. In 2025, central banks are expected to continue applying pressure on their respective currencies, which in theory should sustain inflated stock market valuations. The declining purchasing power of currencies acts as a destructive force within the economy, simultaneously exacerbating the phenomenon of wealth transfer to the top 1 percent. Nevertheless, this situation remains haunted by the spectre of a calamitous sell-off in the debt/bond markets; an event that is likely to occur at a time and on conditions dictated by the central banks themselves, who are the primary issuers and buyers of debt.

The work society, which offered access to socio-economic value through the intensive employment of productive labour, is now evaporating into an atomised “jungle society” where traditional class distinctions no longer hold; where leftist critique of political economy has dissolved into insidious culturalism; where social conflict has been absorbed and repackaged by corporate-owned media to shape mass perception; where power is no longer merely identifiable with a “capitalist class that owns the means of production”, but rather with an elite that controls the flows of financial capital, war-related emergencies, Covid-style psy-ops, and, more or less directly, the lives of increasingly superfluous populations. We have reached a new frontier of capitalist misanthropy where labour has been rendered null and void as social mediator, all the while being subjected to unprecedented levels of exploitation and manipulation. The choice that lies ahead is therefore rather straightforward: either we awake and find ways of opposing this ruinous path, or we will be overwhelmed by it.