from RonPaulLibertyReport
Putin Doesn’t Bluff
by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
Two weeks ago, the Congress passed (and President Biden signed) four key pieces of legislation related to national security.
Three of the bills provided assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. They received the most attention. The one that got the least attention was a mixed bag of provisions, such as a forced divestiture of TikTok.
Included in that bill was something called the REPO Act that authorizes the president to steal any Russian assets, including U.S. Treasury securities, that come under U.S. jurisdiction.
The impact of the REPO Act is limited by the fact that only about $10 billion of Russian sovereign assets are actually under U.S. jurisdiction. Yet the act contemplates that this theft will be a down payment on a much larger theft to be conducted by NATO allies in Europe.
The Great Ukraine Robbery is Not Over Yet
by Dr. Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute
The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class.
Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, “Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!
JPMorgan Chase and Its Regulators Are Hiding Dark Trading Secrets at the Largest and Riskiest U.S. Bank
Last Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase, the publicly-traded parent of the largest federally-insured bank in the United States as well as a five-count felon, revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that on top of the $348 million it paid out in March to two of its banking regulators for sketchy trading violations involving “billions” of trades on 30 global trading venues, it “expects to enter into a resolution with a third U.S. regulator that will require the Firm to, among other things, pay a civil penalty of $100 million….” (See “Trading Venues Investigations” on page 168 of the SEC filing at this link.) JPMorgan Chase did not name this third regulator but Bloomberg News reported that it is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The two federal banking regulators that imposed the trading fines in March are the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which fined JPMorgan Chase Bank $250 million, while the Federal Reserve fined the bank holding company $98.2 million. The OCC said the misconduct occurred since at least 2019. The Fed said the bank had engaged in the misconduct over the span of nine years, from 2014 to 2023.
Common Knowledge Alert! NYTimes Covers Vaccine Injuries
There’s a clear program of admitting vaccine injuries afoot. While certainly a cold and calculated move on the part of the PsyOp team, it risks an outbreak of Common Knowledge, which could get away from them.
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
Even though it’s clearly still part of the ongoing Covid vaccine PsyOp, the NYTimes felt compelled to grudgingly cover vaccine injuries.
They used Apoorva Mandavilli as the “”journalist”” presumably because of her solid credentials as a card-carrying pharma apologist. She predictably used minimizing language like that some people “believe” they were vaccine injured and always sticking to the Pharma pre-approved script that avoids ever using actual numbers.
So things were described as “rare” or “uncommon” or “mild” instead of using the actual numbers or rates as anybody would do prior to Covid.
Even the Soviet Union Had Better Sense Than This…
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
“Today, it’s Climate Day,” said President Biden in a speech on January 27, 2021, “which means that today is Jobs Day.”
“Dealing with [climate change] and increasing our economic growth and prosperity, are one and the same. When I think of Climate Change, I think of jobs.”
These were among the remarks the President made before signing an executive order which created the American Climate Corps.
And while it took more than three years, Mr. Biden’s Climate Corps is finally up and running, and the President inaugurated its new website a few days ago… which currently shows more than 2,000 new jobs available, with another 20,000 coming soon.
Withdrawing From the Rat Race is Going Global
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they’re withdrawing from the competition en masse.
The world has changed over the past two generations in ways that don’t fit the heavily promoted narratives of “growth” and “progress.” The “growth” and “progress” narratives hold that everything is getting better in every way and every day–next stop, Mars!–but if we consider everyday life, a much different picture emerges.
1. Globalization shifted high-pay work overseas to the benefit of capital, who reaped the profits from global wage arbitrage and to the detriment of workers in developed-nation economies.
The conventional-economic apologists glorified this as a net positive: everyone who lost their jobs to globalization would move up the food chain and get jobs as currency traders, highly paid tech workers, etc.
Buffett Invests in T-Bills Instead of Stocks, Waits for Bad Stuff to Happen, Cash is King at 5%-Plus
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
When the Oracle of Omaha gets dark-ish on stocks at these prices, he isn’t taken seriously, suddenly. It’s only when he hypes stocks that everyone jumps in behind him.
Treasury bills are now all the rage at Berkshire Hathaway. They have been earning between 5.0% and 5.5% since mid-2023, and Warren Buffett decided they’re a great deal, rather than stocks at current prices, and loaded up on them.
At the end of March, the huge conglomerate held $153 billion in T-bills, up by $24 billion from three months earlier, and up by nearly $50 billion from March 2023, and up by $86 billion from March 2022 ($67 billion), according to BRK’s 10-Q filings. The year 2022 was when T-bills began paying a noticeable interest once again.
A CoT and a Grain of Salt
by Craig Hemke
Sprott Money
Once per week, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requires that market participants submit data on their proprietary and customer positions. These surveys are then cobbled together as Commitment of Traders reports, and they are typically issued after the market close each Friday.
These reports are surveyed every Tuesday but are not always issued on Fridays. If a U.S. government holiday intervenes midweek, the reports will be delayed until Monday. So, at best, the data is already 74 hours stale when issued. At worst, it’s 98 hours stale. As such, the degree to which the reports are helpful is already limited.
But they’re all we have. Could the CFTC demand a survey every day and then crank out the data the next morning? In a perfect world, yes. But anything that has to do with a U.S. government agency does not fall within a “perfect world” category. Instead, we just take what we can get.
An Enormous Chunk of the U.S. Population is Either Homeless, Living in Poverty or Considered to Be Among the Working Poor
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
As the U.S. economy slows down, those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. Homelessness is surging, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, and more Americans are considered to be among “the working poor” than ever before. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead. Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us.
According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year. That represented an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2015…
A January 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimated that over 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness in 2023—up almost 50% from 2015. Costs of renting and home ownership have skyrocketed while wages largely stagnate. The Harvard report found that half of U.S. households are “cost-burdened” (meaning that 30-50% of monthly income goes to housing), and 12 million people are “severely cost-burdened.” These Americans stand one accident, health setback, or employment disruption away from eviction.
During the past several years, scores of tent cities have sprouted like mushrooms in and around U.S. cities from coast to coast.
Get Ready for Weaker Growth and Higher Inflation. The Consensus Was Wrong.
by Daniel Lacalle
Mises.org
The weak GDP figure for the first quarter came with a double negative: poor consumer spending and exports, plus a rise in core inflation. The US administration’s enormous fiscal stimulus underscores the importance of considering the weaker-than-expected data.
A deceleration in consumer spending, a decline in the personal savings ratio to 3.6%, and poor exports added to a set of figures for investment that were also negative when we looked at the details.
The gross domestic product is much weaker than the headlines suggest. If we look at consumption, both durable and non-durable goods were flat or down, while the only item that increased modestly was the services factor. Residential and intellectual property boosted investment, while equipment remained weak in the past two quarters. The slump in export growth coincided with a significant increase in imports, which weakened the trade deficit. Government spending continues to rise, albeit at a slower pace, and becomes the main factor to disguise what is evidently a concerning level of growth for a leading economy with enormous potential.
Breathe Deep…..
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
…. the gathering gloom.
Plenty of people — including obviously the stock market and its commentators — believe everything will be ok.
Deficits don’t matter.
The government cannot go broke.
There will never be a loss of confidence.
I travel quite a bit. Like most people I have my habits — places I like, things I go to do and if I enjoy them I’ll go back and do them again. This means I see patterns and, unlike many, I tend to notice them immediately. Perhaps its a blessing — or perhaps a curse.
Black Voter Enthusiasm Dips for Joe Biden
by Wendell Husebo
Breitbart.com
Enthusiasm among black voters for President Joe Biden is sharply less than it was four years ago, according to a Washington Post analysis of Ipsos polling, underscoring Biden’s challenge of maintaining his core constituency.
Voters told the Post their lack of enthusiasm was due to Biden’s economy, Middle East tension, criminal justice, and election integrity reforms.
- Only 62 percent of black Americans said they are “certain to vote,” down 12 points from June 2020.
- About one and five black voters who supported Biden in 2020 plan to vote for him again in 2024.
- About 62 percent of black Americans approved of Biden’s job performance, down from 66 percent in 2023, and down from 70 percent in 2022.
Murder Rates Are Plummeting. What Should We Make of It?
In data from over 200 cities, homicides are down a little over 19 percent when compared to a similar time frame in 2023.
by Billy Binion
Reason.com
A few weeks ago, I watched as several people, myself included, stepped on a bit of a digital landmine. The landmine: celebrating declining murder rates.
Homicides spiked in 2020. The trend was real and worrisome. It understandably put many people on edge, particularly in the context of a 24-hour news cycle that favors content that bleeds. But those murderous numbers dropped substantially in 2023 and are, quite thankfully, continuing to retreat significantly. So what should we make of the new data? What are the appropriate caveats? And where are we now in comparison to the Before Times (in this case, before COVID-19)?
First, the big picture: In data from over 200 cities, murder rates are down a little over 19 percent when compared to a similar time frame in 2023. Specifically, New York’s homicide rate is down about 18 percent, Washington, D.C.’s has declined 21 percent, Baltimore’s has dropped 39 percent, Philadelphia’s is down 40 percent, Chicago’s has decreased by about 9 percent, Detroit’s has fallen about 28 percent, and Cleveland’s is down by approximately 33 percent. The list goes on. There are a few outliers—Los Angeles’ rate, for instance, has increased by about 6 percent—but overwhelmingly the trend is highly encouraging.
Warning: Everything On Social Media is Probably Fake
by Alicia Colon
American Thinker
When I first starting writing for Breitbart.com way back in its first year, I was urged by my editors to make sure I carefully researched and documented any information in my columns. I would often insert the verifying link of the videos or newspaper resources to support the charges I asserted in the piece. At that time, I had full confidence in the videos I used as proof that supported the claims I was writing about.
It is now 2024 and I have found that thanks to the technical advances in media manipulation, nothing is credible anymore.
I have already written about the danger of AI (artificial intelligence) being used to create misinformation for political purposes, but AI is now being used at an alarming rate to scam the elderly and rob the gullible of life savings. What made me cognizant of how terribly advanced the technology is was by trying out an animation app that my grandkids suggested I try.
German Politician Fined $6k for Pointing to Government’s Own Stats On Rapes by Migrants
Found guilty of ‘incitement’ by a district court
by Steve Watson
Modernity News
A German politician has been found guilty of ‘incitement’ by a district court after she posted a link to the government’s own statistics on crimes committed by migrants, specifically rape, and asked why they are so disproportionately high.
A report by the German outlet Kreiszeitung notes that District council member Marie-Thérèse Kaiser of the AfD Party shared a post on social media in 2021 regarding refugee resettlement, asking the question “Afghan refugees, welcome culture for group rapes?”
She included a link to government stats that highlighted a massive disproportion in the number of Afghan migrants who have committed gang rapes in Germany compared to other foreigners and native Germans.
The Tax Free Business Owner with Mark Miller
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Kerry interviewed Mark Miller about his book, “The Tax-Free Business Owner,” which offers over 130 tax mitigation strategies. Miller emphasized the importance of proactive planning to reduce taxes and highlighted the need for formalized tax plans and working towards a zero tax bracket. The conversation also covered the significance of trusts and wealth strategies in minimizing taxes and building wealth, as well as the importance of estate planning and utilizing advanced investing strategies from the Hilton True Wealth portfolios. Miller also shared information about an upcoming book that will delve into the advanced investing strategies utilized by the Hiltons.
Click Here to Listen to the Audio
Sign up (on the right side) for the free weekly newsletter.
Potential Future of Electronic Payment Systems with Jeremy Lessaris
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Kerry and Jeremy Lessaris discussed cost reduction in credit card processing. Lessaris explained his method of using machine learning to assess the profitability of current processors and negotiate lower fees without requiring businesses to switch processors. He emphasized the importance of regularly reviewing processing statements as pricing can change unpredictably. The conversation also delved into the intricacies of credit card processing fees, the predatory practices of companies, and the potential for alternative payment methods like cryptocurrencies and ACH transactions to offer solutions to these challenges. Paymentbrokers.com was mentioned as a resource for further information on these topics.
Click Here to Listen to the Audio
Sign up (on the right side) for the free weekly newsletter.