from RonPaulLibertyReport

by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning

The big news this weekend is that the House passed a long-anticipated $95 billion foreign aid package.

About $61 billion will go to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia. About $26 billion will go to Israel (with some humanitarian aid for Gaza) and around $8 billion will go to supporting allies in the Indo-Pacific region, most notably Taiwan.

The package will go to the Senate this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, where it’ll certainly be approved. Joe Biden will then sign it into law.

Biden desperately wanted this package to shore up his prospects in this year’s election. He can’t afford for Ukraine to collapse and suffer another foreign policy disaster like Afghanistan — not in an election year.

Continue Reading at DailyReckoning.com…

from Kitco NEWS

by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade

The Washington Post Editorial Board appears to have sipped the same kool aid as Bloomberg News.

As we’ve frequently reported in the past, Bloomberg News has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to brainwash the public into believing that the head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is a respected statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here.) In reality, JPMorgan Chase has admitted to an unprecedented five criminal felony counts with Dimon at the helm and paid fines in the tens of billions of dollars for an additional crime wave that rivals an organized crime family.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, is the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg even co-authored an opinion piece with Dimon.

Continue Reading at WallStreetOnParade.com…

from Dr. Steve Turley

by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds

Those seeking to buy a house as shelter for their household can’t compete with the wealthy seeking assets to snap up and hoard for appreciation.

Longtime readers know I’ve been addressing housing issues from the start of the blog in 2005. Let’s start with the general context of housing in the US, courtesy of the US Census Bureau, which tracks occupancy and the number of housing units nationally: Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, 4th Quarter 2023

All housing units 145,967,000

Occupied 131,206,000
Owner 86,220,000 59%
Renter 44,985,000 31%

Vacant 14,761,000 10%

Non-seasonal (i.e. not second homes owned by the wealthy for their recreational use) 11,177,000

Continue Reading at OfTwoMinds.com…

from Viva Frei

by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics

Debanking has become a major issue in recent years as institutions feel the current government gives them leeway to discriminate against customers based on their political beliefs. This is happening throughout the Western world. Most recently, fifteen attorneys general sent a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan about his bank’s “troubling financial pattern” of debanking Christians. “Bank of America has a track record of de-banking religious organizations,” the letter states, “

We are especially troubled by Bank of America’s track record of discriminating against religious ministries.” Bank of America has been banishing Christians and Christian organizations from accessing their accounts for years without penalty.

Continue Reading at ArmstrongEconomics.com…

from Mark Dice

These are the tactics that are driving the Western “markets” to eventual ruin. Is anybody in control? It seems not…

by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity

Today I begin with a question from a subscriber asking for an explanation of how Wall Street profits from driving the price of silver down.

By answering that question, we can easily discover that the incentives within the system are for Wall Street to cram down the prices for every commodity they can. This way the producers are left with almost nothing and all the value is gained by the traders and corporations.

Hey, it’s all fun and profits until somebody loses access to critical resources because of all these raccoon-ish antics.

That day, my friends, is rapidly approaching.

Continue Reading at PeakProsperity.com…

from Liberty and Finance

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

This Has Been Years in the Making.

Express Inc, once a high-flying fashion retailer for the younger crowd with 542 stores in the US, and with three brands – Express, UpWest, and Bonobos – finally filed for pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

Since its heyday in 2016, the company has already closed 114 stores. The store count had peaked in the fiscal year ended January 2017 at 656 stores. Now it will close another 95 Express stores and all its 12 UpWest stores, bringing the store count to about 435 stores.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

from Gregory Mannarino

from Zero Hedge

BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink’s efforts to push ‘wokesim’ or environmental, social, and governance policies across corporate America have been in reverse in recent years amid the backlash from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and 19 state attorneys general in conservative states, including Arizona and Texas, who have been fed up with ESG-related policies hurting the economy.

Supposedly, the backlash by anti-woke activists has forced BlackRock to triple Fink’s home security spending. Financial Times says the CEO has become “a target for anti-woke activists and conspiracy theorists.”

According to FT’s numbers, the $10.5 trillion money manager spent $563,513 to “upgrade the home security systems” at Fink’s residences during 2023, on top of $216,837 for bodyguards.

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

from Jordan B Peterson

by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek

As the Chinese accumulate more and more gold, they’re dumping U.S. Treasuries.

That raises an important question: who is going to keep funding the federal government’s borrowing spree?

China offloaded another $22.7 billion in U.S. Treasuries in February, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. That dropped its total holdings to $775 billion.

China still ranks as the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, but the U.K. could soon overtake China and slide into the second position if the current trend continues.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

from Lauren Chen

by Pam Key
Breitbart.com

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America Reports” that former President Donald Trump’s New York trial for allegedly falsifying business records is an “embarrassment.”

Turley said, “What is clear is in this case, Trump is right this is an embarrassment. The fact that we are actually talking about this case being presented in a New York court room leaves me in utter disbelief.”

He continued, “The arguments today did in fact capture all the problems here. You had this misdemeanor under state law that had run out. This is going back related to the 2016 election. They zapped it back into life by alleging that there was a campaign finance violations under the federal laws that doesn’t exist. The Department of Justice doesn’t view it this way.”

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

from Dr. Steve Turley

Plus: A listener asks the editors to steel man the case for the Jones Act, an antiquated law that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters.

by Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-ward, Nick Gillespie, and Eric Boehm
Reason.com

In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Eric Boehm lament a horrible weekend for freedom, as Congress passed a collection of bad bills concerning military spending for Ukraine and Israel, a TikTok ban, and a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

00:53—House of Representatives passes substantial bipartisan military spending aid package that includes Ukraine and Israel

22:50—New Title IX rules

34:00—Weekly Listener Question

Click Here to Listen to the Audio

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

from CrowderBits

by John Green
American Thinker

The national mood in the mid-twentieth century was very different from now.

• The United States was respected around the world — even if not necessarily liked.
• Technology was advancing faster than at any time in human history.
• Our cities were mostly orderly, safe, and clean.
• We believed there were few hardships which couldn’t be overcome with hard work. Opportunities seemed endless, as was our optimism.
• We were completely naïve about the danger posed by our own government.

Not everything was sunny. We had problems that needed attention. That is the nature of human existence after all. But when Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” we just thought he was promoting self-reliance and highlighting government inefficiency. As I said, we were naïve.

Continue Reading at AmericanThinker.com…

from Arcadia Economics

by Ben Bartee
The Daily Bell

Originally published via Armageddon Prose:

“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” – Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” my Midwestern Irish-Catholic grandmammy used to opine as she indiscriminately lined up and sadistically hosed her captive grand-progenies down in the backyard, me included, after discovering a lone louse on a single head.

“That’s how we did it in the old country,” she would add.

Given how much historically unprecedented power is vested in the nuclear-armed government, derived in theory from the people, one would expect it to be beholden to a higher moral, ethical, and legal standard than the general population.

Continue Reading at TheDailyBell.com…

from RonPaulLibertyReport

from King World News

Despite volatility like we are seeing today, a powerful silver bull market may already be unleashed.

A Powerful Silver Bull Market May Be Ahead

April 22 (King World News) – Jesse Colombo at BullionStar: Since early-March, precious metals have launched one of their sharpest rallies in decades. Gold surged by 16% and silver by 26%, which are significant moves for safe-haven assets — especially considering that it played out over such a short time period. During this rally, gold has received the lion’s share of the attention because it has been hitting all-time highs, while silver has yet to exceed its 2021 high of $30.13 — let alone its all-time high of $49.81 that was reached all the way back in 2011. Though silver has been languishing for the past several years, there are numerous reasons why it may be on the verge of one of its most powerful bull markets in history.

Continue Reading at KingWorldNews.com…

from Wall Street Silver

Unhinged

by Steve Watson
Modernity News

A Democrat who is running for Congressional office has received fierce backlash for wishing death on supporters of Donald Trump.

Nate McMurray, who is running to represent New York’s 26th congressional district, posted the demented comments on X shortly after the weekend vote on funding for Ukraine.

As we highlighted Sunday, after the House of passed legislation that includes a $61 Billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Democrats broke into chants of ‘Ukraine’ and waved Ukrainian flags on the House floor.

Continue Reading at Modernity.News…

from Wall Street Silver