Below, please find the link to our most recent study on the effects of Bravo entitled “Effects on the Immune System of a Three-Month Consumption of an Extremely Diverse Probiotic Yogurt: Decrease of Serum Alpha-N-Acetylgalactosaminidase Activity, Detoxification and Gut Microbiota Normalization.”
This study is published in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, the
American Journal of Immunology (See below in this document or download here)
In this study, we describe the effects of three months of consumption of Bravo on serum nagalase, detoxification, and restoration of the healthy microbiome.
It is worth noticing that in this study Bravo was used alone, that is without other nutritional or immunological interventions. Therefore, we can conclude that all the changes observed in the present study are due only to Bravo, with no other variables involved.
We believe that, among the important effects on detoxification from heavy metals and organic toxicants, the effects of Bravo on elimination of Glyphosate are of utmost importance and constitute a breakthrough since no other probiotic or supplement has these demonstrated effects.
I am certain that you are aware that Glyphosate is involved in onset and development of several diseases including
ï Cancer
ï Autism
Therefore, the elimination of Glyphosate associated with consumption of Bravo may represent a key element in the health-supporting properties of our product.
In addition, this article demonstrates that consumption of Bravo is associated with reconstitution of the healthy human microbiome and with endogenous production of butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that regulates multiple functions of human cells by optimizing gene expression, cell differentiation and tissue development, modulation of the immune system and reduction of oxidative stress.
All these positive changes are accompanied by a trend toward normalization of serum triglycerides and cholesterol.
We feel that this article demonstrating the effectiveness of Bravo against Glyphosate and other dangerous toxicants may represent a breakthrough and further supports and expands the health-promoting activities of Bravo that have been observed in the past 10 years and are summarized in the article.
I remain at your service for any further information I may provide and I take this opportunity to thank you for your support.
Yours truly,
Marco
In brief, after the creation of a new set of rules establishes the new world order, there is typically a peaceful and prosperous period. As people get used to this they increasingly bet on the prosperity continuing, and they increasingly borrow money to do that, which eventually leads to a bubble. As the prosperity increases the wealth gap grows. Eventually the debt bubble bursts, which leads to the printing of money and credit and increased internal conflict, which leads to some sort of wealth redistribution revolution that can be peaceful or violent. Typically at that time late in the cycle the leading empire that won the last economic and geopolitical war is less powerful relative to rival powers that prospered during the prosperous period, and with the bad economic conditions and the disagreements between powers there is typically some kind of war. Out of these debt, economic, domestic, and world-order breakdowns that take the forms of revolutions and wars come new winners and losers. Then the winners get together to create the new domestic and world orders. That is what has repeatedly happened through time. The lines in the chart signify the relative powers of the 11 most powerful empires over the last 500 years. In the chart below you can see where the US and China are currently in their cycles. As you can see the United States is now the most powerful empire by not much, it is in relative decline, Chinese power is rapidly rising, and no other powers come close. 
Because that chart is a bit confusing, for simplicity the next chart shows the same lines as in that chart except for just the most powerful reserve currency empires (which are based on an average of eight different measures of power that we explained in Chapter 1 and will explore more carefully in this chapter).
The next chart offers an even more simplified view. As shown, the United States and China are the only two major powers, you can see where each of their Big Cycles is, and you can see that they are approaching comparability, which is when the risks of wars of one type or another are greater than when the leading powers are earlier in the cycle. To be clear, I didn’t start out trying to make an argument and then go looking for stats to support it; doing that doesn’t work in my profession as only accuracy pays. I simply gathered stats that reflected these different measures of strength and put them in these indices, which led to these results. I suspect that if you did that exercise yourself picking whatever stats you’d like you’d see a similar picture, and I suspect that what I’m showing you here rings true to you if you’re paying attention to such things. For those reasons I suspect that all I am doing is helping you put where we are in perspective. To reiterate, I am not saying anything about the future. I will do that in the concluding chapter of this book. All I want to do is bring you up to date and, in the process, make clear how these cycles have worked in the past, which will also alert you to the markers to watch out for and help you see where in the cycles the major countries are and what is likely to come next.
The chart below from Chapter 1 shows this play out via the eight measures of strength—education, innovation and technology, competitiveness, military, trade, output, financial center, and reserve status—that we capture in the aggregate charts. It shows the average of each of these measures of strength, with most of the weight on the most recent three reserve countries (the US, the UK, and the Dutch).
As explained in Chapter 1, in brief these strengths and weaknesses are mutually reinforcing—i.e., strengths and weaknesses in education, competitiveness, economic output, share of world trade, etc., contribute to the others being strong or weak, for logical reasons—and their order is broadly indicative of the processes that lead to the rising and declining of empires. For example, quality of education has been the long-leading strength of rises and declines in these measures of power, and the long-lagging strength has been the reserve currency. That is because strong education leads to strengths in most areas, including the creation of the world’s most common currency. That common currency, just like the world’s common language, tends to stay around because the habit of usage lasts longer than the strengths that made it so commonly used. We will now look at the specifics more closely, starting with how these Big Cycles have played out over the last 500 years and then looking at the declines of the Dutch and British empires so you can see how these things go.1) The Last 500 Years in About 4,000 Words The Rise & Decline of the Dutch Empire and the Dutch Guilder In the 1500-1600 period the Spanish empire was the pre-eminent economic empire in the “Western” world while the Chinese empire under the Ming Dynasty was the most powerful empire in the “Eastern” world, even more powerful than the Spanish empire (see the green dashed line and the red solid line in chart 2). The Spanish got rich by taking their ships and military power around the world, seizing control of vast areas (13% of the landmass of the earth!) and extracting valuable things from them, most importantly gold and silver which were the money of the time. As shown by the orange line in the chart of the relative standing of the great empires, the Dutch gained power as Spanish power was waning. At the time Spain controlled the small area we now call Holland. When the Dutch became powerful enough in 1581, they overthrew the Spanish and went on to eclipse both the Spanish and the Chinese as the world’s richest empire from around 1625 to their collapse in 1780. The Dutch empire reached its peak around 1650 in what was called the Dutch Golden Age. This period was one of great globalization as ships that could travel around the world to gain the riches that were out there flourished, and the Dutch, with their great shipbuilding and their economic system, were ahead of others in using ships, economic rewards, and military power to build their empire. Holland (as we now call it) remained the richest power for about 100 years. How did that happen?The Dutch were superbly educated people who were very inventive—in fact they came up with 25% of all major inventions in the world at their peak in the 17th century. The two most important inventions they came up with were 1) ships that were uniquely good that could take them all around the world, which, with the military skills that they acquired from all the fighting they did in Europe, allowed them to collect great riches around the world, and 2) the capitalism that fueled these endeavors. Not only did the Dutch follow a capitalist approach to resource allocation, they invented capitalism. By capitalism I mean public debt and equity markets. Of course production existed before, but that is not capitalism, and of course trade existed before, but that is not capitalism, and of course private ownership existed before, but that is not capitalism. By capitalism I mean the ability of large numbers of people to collectively lend money and buy ownership in money-making endeavors. The Dutch created that when they invented the first listed public company (the Dutch East India Company) and the first stock exchange in 1602 and when they built the first well-developed lending system in which debt could more easily be created. They also created the world’s first reserve currency. The Dutch guilder was the first “world reserve currency” other than gold and silver because it was the first empire to extend around much of the world and to have its currency so broadly accepted. Fueled by these qualities and strengths, the Dutch empire continued to rise on a relative basis until around 1700 when the British started to grow strongly. The numerous investment market innovations of the Dutch and their successes in producing profits attracted investors, which led to Amsterdam becoming the world’s leading financial center; the Dutch government channeled money into debt and some equity investments in various businesses, the most important of which was the Dutch East India Company.At this time of prosperity, other countries grew in power too. As other countries became more competitive, the Dutch empire became more costly and less competitive, and it found maintaining its empire less profitable and more challenging. Most importantly the British got stronger economically and militarily in the classic ways laid out in Chapter 1. Before they had become clear competitors they had military partnerships during most of the 80+ years leading up to the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. That changed over time as they bumped into each other in the same markets. The Dutch and British had lots of conflicts over economic issues. For example, the English made a law that only English ships could be used to import goods into England, which hurt Dutch shipping companies that had a big business of shipping others’ goods to England, which led to the English seizing Dutch ships and expanding the British East India Company. Typically before all-out war is declared there is about a decade of these sorts of economic, technological, geopolitical, and capital wars when the conflicting powers approach comparability and test and try to intimidate each other’s powers. At the time the British came up with military inventions and built more naval strength, and they continued to gain relative economic strength. As shown in the chart of relative standing of empires shown above, around 1750 the British became a stronger power than the Dutch, particularly economically and militarily, both because the British (and French) became stronger and because the Dutch became weaker. As is classic the Dutch a) became more indebted, b) had a lot of internal fighting over wealth (between its states/provinces, between the rich and the poor, and between political factions)
After declaring independence in 1581, the Dutch fought off the Spanish and built a global trading empire that became responsible for over a third of global trade largely via the first mega-corporation, the Dutch East India Company. As shown in the chart above, with a strong educational background the Dutch innovated in a number of areas. They produced roughly 25% of global inventions in the early 17th century,
As shown, the seeds of Dutch decline were sown in the latter part of the 17th century as they started to lose their competitiveness and became overextended globally trying to support an empire that had become more costly than profitable. Increased debt-service payments squeezed them while their worsening competitiveness hurt their income from trade. Earnings from business abroad also fell. Wealthy Dutch savers moved their cash abroad both to get out of Dutch investments and into British investments, which were more attractive due to strong earnings growth and higher yields.
[26]As shown in the chart below the Dutch East India Company, which was essentially the Dutch economy and military wrapped into a company, started to make losses in 1780, which became enormous during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. 
As deposit holders at the Bank of Amsterdam realized the bank was “lending” freshly printed guilders to save the Dutch East India Company, there was a run on the Bank of Amsterdam.
The Bank of Amsterdam had no choice since the company was too important to allow to fail both because of its significance to the economy and its outstanding debt in the Dutch financial system, so the Bank of Amsterdam began “lending” large sums of newly printed guilders to the company. During the war, policy makers also used the bank to lend to the government.
[31]Interest rates rose and the Bank of Amsterdam had to devalue, undermining the credibility of the guilder as a storehold of value.
[41]The chart below shows the returns of holding the Dutch East India Company for investors starting in various years. As with most bubble companies, it originally did great, with great fundamentals, which attracted more investors even as its fundamentals started to weaken, but it increasingly got into debt, until the failed fundamentals and excessive debt burdens broke the company. 
As is typical, with the decline in power of the leading empire and the rise in power of the new empire, the returns of investment assets in the declining empire fell relative to the returns of investing in the rising empire. For example, as shown below, the returns on investments in the British East India Company far exceeded those in the Dutch East India Company, and the returns of investing in Dutch government bonds were terrible relative to the returns of investing in English government bonds. This was reflective of virtually all investments in these two countries. 
[42]The British Empire and the British PoundBefore we get to the collapse of the British empire and the British pound, let’s take a quick look at the whole arc of its rise and decline. While I previously showed you the aggregated power index for the British empire, the chart below shows the eight powers that make it up. It shows these from the ascent around 1700 to the decline in the early 1900s. In it, you can see the story behind the rise and decline. 
The British empire’s rise began before 1600, with steadily strengthening competitiveness, education, and innovation/technology—the classic leading factors for a power’s rise. As shown and previously described, in the late 1700s the British military power became pre-eminent and it beat its leading economic competitor and the leading reserve currency empire of its day in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. It also successfully fought other European rivals like France in a number of conflicts that culminated in the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. Then it became extremely rich by being the dominant economic power. At its peak in the 19th century, the UK’s 2.5% of the world’s population produced 20% of the world’s income, and the UK controlled over 40% of global exports. This economic strength grew in tandem with a strong military, which, along with the privately driven conquests of the British East India Company, drove the creation of a global empire upon which “the sun never set,” controlling over 20% of the world’s land mass and 25% of the global population prior to the outbreak of World War I. With a lag, as is classic, its capital—London—emerged as the global financial center and its currency—the pound—emerged as the leading global reserve currency. As is typical its reserve status remained well after other measures of power started declining in the late 19th century and as powerful rivals like the US and Germany rose. As shown in the chart above, almost all of the British empire’s relative powers began to slip as competitors emerged around 1900. At the same time wealth gaps were large and internal conflicts over wealth were emerging. As you know, despite winning both World War I and World War II the British were left with large debts, a huge empire that was more costly than profitable, numerous rivals that were more competitive, and a population that had big wealth gaps which led to big political gaps. As I previously summarized what happened in the 1914 to post-World War II period, I will skip ahead to the end of World War II in 1945 and the start of the new world order that we are now in. I will be focusing on how the pound lost its reserve currency status. Although the US had overtaken the UK militarily, economically, politically, and financially long before the end of World War II, it took more than 20 years after the war for the British pound to fully lose its status as an international reserve currency. Just like the world’s most widely spoken language becomes so deeply woven into the fabric of international dealings that it is difficult to replace, the same is true of the world’s most widely used reserve currency. In the case of the British pound, other countries’ central banks continued to hold a sizable share of their reserves in pounds through the 1950s, and about half of all international trade was denominated in sterling in 1960. Still, the pound began to lose its status right at the end of the war because smart folks could see the UK’s increased debt load, its low net reserves, and the great contrast with the United States’ financial condition (which emerged from the war as the world’s pre-eminent creditor and with a very strong balance sheet). The decline in the British pound was a chronic affair that happened through several significant devaluations over many years. After efforts at making the pound convertible failed in 1946-47, the pound devalued by 30% against the dollar in 1949. Though this worked in the short term, over the next two decades the declining competitiveness of the British led to repeated balance of payments strains that culminated with central banks actively selling sterling reserves to accumulate dollar reserves following the devaluation of 1967. Around this time the deutschmark began to re-emerge and took the pound’s place as the second-most widely held reserve currency. The charts below paint the picture. 
On the following pages we will cover in greater detail the specific stages of this decline, firstly with the convertibility crisis of 1947 and the 1949 devaluation, secondly with the gradual evolution of the pound’s status relative to the dollar through the 1950s and early 1960s, and thirdly with the balance of payments crisis of 1967 and subsequent devaluation. We will focus in on the currency crises. 1) The Pound’s Suspended Convertibility in 1946 and Its Devaluation in 1949The 1940s are frequently referred to as “crisis years”
The currency move, which devalued sterling debt, did not lead to a panic out of sterling debt as much as one might have expected especially in light of how bad the fundamentals for sterling debt remained. That is because a very large share of UK assets was held by the US government, which was willing to take the valuation hit in order to restore convertibility, and by Sterling Area economies, such as India and Australia, whose currencies were pegged to the pound for political reasons.
After the devaluation little faith remained in the pound as the second-best reserve currency after the dollar. For the first time since the end of World War II, international central banks began actively selling their sterling reserves (as opposed to simply accumulating fewer pounds in new reserve holdings) and instead began buying dollars, deutschmarks, and yen. As you can see in the chart below on the left, the average share of sterling in central bank reserve holdings collapsed within two years of the devaluation. At the same time the UK was still able to convince Sterling Area countries not to diversify away from the pound. In the Sterling Agreement of 1968, Sterling Area members agreed to maintain a floor on their pound reserve holdings, as long as 90% of the dollar value of these holdings was guaranteed by the British government. So although the share of pound reserves in these Sterling Agreement countries like Australia and New Zealand remained high, this was only because these reserves had their value guaranteed by the British in dollars. So all countries that continued to hold a high share of their reserves in pounds after 1968 were holding de facto dollars with the British bearing the risk of a further sterling devaluation.
[64]By this time the dollar was having its own set of balance of payments and currency problems, but that is for the next installment of this series when I turn to the United States and China. 
