Today’s News 16th May 2023

Ever since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI tools have been all the rage. However, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, while there have been AI-powered tools before OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, none of them gained as much public attention and hype.

Word of ChatGPT’s capabilities spread like wildfire online and within days, more than a million people had registered to use it.

You will find more infographics at Statista

ChatGPT was the first generative AI tool to reach mass adoption, giving millions of people around the world a taste of what large language models are capable of. Ever since then, other tools, for example AI-based image generation tools such as Midjourney or DALL-E, have also gotten more attention, but so far none has come as close to mainstream adoption as ChatGPT has.

According to a survey conducted by Statista Consumer Insights, 20 percent of U.S. respondents had tried ChatGPT by the time the survey was fielded in March and April 2023, putting it far ahead of other AI tools such as Jasper Chat, GetGenie or Simplified, most of which have been designed to assist users in text generation and copywriting. Among the tools that most people have tried, ChatGPT also left its users most impressed, with 89 percent of prior users saying they would use it again. In that respect, Midjourney, a powerful text-to-image generator achieved the worst score, with just 65 percent of prior users saying they’d return to the tool.

Authored by Steve Straub via The Federalist Papers,

In an alarming move that has raised eyebrows and suspicions about the integrity of federal agencies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) abruptly removed the entire team working on the high-profile tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden, first son of President Joe Biden.

This drastic action allegedly came on the orders of the Justice Department, adding to the widespread concern among conservatives about potential corruption and the abuse of power within the federal government.

The abrupt reassignment of the investigative team has been perceived by many as retaliation against the supervisory special agent whistleblower, who alleged a coverup of the controversial probe.

The agent, who has been overseeing the investigation since early 2020, was informed of this sudden personnel change, according to a letter from his attorneys, Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt, to Congress.

Scoop: IRS whistleblower who alleged coverup in Hunter Biden tax investigation says his entire team was removed from case

His lawyers tell Congress that ‘this move is clearly retaliatory and may also constitute obstruction of a congressional inquiry’ https://t.co/bvAys2dUGS

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) May 15, 2023

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In the letter, Lytle and Leavitt suggested that the removal of the investigators not only constituted retaliation but could also be construed as an obstruction of a congressional inquiry.

The attorneys pointed out that their client had a legal right to make disclosures to Congress under 5 U.S.C. § 2302 and that any attempt to prevent a federal employee from furnishing information to Congress is a direct violation of long-standing appropriations restrictions.

They further emphasized that the removal of the experienced investigative team was the very issue the whistleblower initially sought to expose.

Hunter Biden, who was seen giving journalists a thumbs-up during his daughter Maisy’s graduation ceremony from the University of Pennsylvania, is the alleged subject of the coverup claims.

Communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop revealed that he had paid up to “half” of his income to his father, President Joe Biden.

This controversy arose simultaneously with the release of the long-awaited report by special counsel John Durham detailing bias in the FBI’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia.

The timing of these events has further incensed conservatives, fueling claims of a biased news cycle.

The IRS whistleblower first surfaced last month when Lytle informed congressional leaders that his client wished to expose the “preferential treatment” in the Hunter Biden case and the alleged false testimony to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Garland had repeatedly reassured lawmakers that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss could unilaterally make charging decisions in the investigation.

This information comes amid reports of “growing frustration” within the FBI over Weiss’s failure to bring charges against Hunter Biden, despite the bureau concluding most of its work last year.

Weiss, a Trump administration holdover endorsed by Delaware’s two Democratic senators, had been at the helm of the investigation, which reportedly began in 2018.

This incident is not the only whistleblower complaint to surface recently. Another whistleblower informed Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that the FBI has a file from 2020 alleging that Joe Biden accepted bribes as vice president.

These allegations led House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to issue a legally binding subpoena for the document.

However, the FBI, in a move that further intensifies the scrutiny on federal agencies, refused to comply and submit the document to Congress last week.

The meeting between Hunter Biden’s attorneys and Justice Department leaders a week after the IRS whistleblower stepped forward has sparked speculation that a charging decision may soon be reached in the tax fraud investigation.

Nonetheless, critics argue that such a decision has been long overdue, and the delay only adds to the growing frustration within the FBI and the mounting skepticism among conservatives.

These recent events have raised serious questions about the impartiality of federal agencies and their alleged use as political tools.

The sudden removal of the IRS investigative team from the Hunter Biden probe, particularly in the wake of the whistleblower’s allegations of a coverup, signifies a troubling trend.

It serves as a stark reminder of the need for transparency, accountability, and the rule of law within these agencies to ensure they act in the best interest of the American people, rather than as political instruments.

The weaponization of federal agencies is a matter of grave concern for conservatives, who view these incidents as blatant attempts to shield the Biden administration and hamper the proper functioning of democratic institutions.

As this story unfolds, it further underscores the pressing need for an unbiased investigation into these allegations to restore public faith in the integrity and independence of federal agencies.

NASA has built an artificial intelligence system that analyzes satellite data to provide advance warning, like a tornado siren for life-threatening tornados, pinpointing exactly where solar storms will wreak havoc on Earth. 

The AI system analyzes spacecraft measurements of electrically charged plasma from the Sun, also known as coronal mass ejection, and will be able to determine exactly where the space weather will strike Earth within 30 minutes before impact. Such an early warning system could help power grid operators and others managing critical systems, such as ground and space-based communication devices, take preventive action before a storm arrives. 

Although these geomagnetic storms vary in intensity from mild to severe, their impact could become disruptive in a world heavily reliant on advanced microchips. Take, for instance, these space weather events:

For example, a destructive solar storm in 1989 caused electrical blackouts across Quebec for 12 hours, plunging millions of Canadians into the dark and closing schools and businesses. The most intense solar storm on record, the Carrington Event in 1859, sparked fires at telegraph stations and prevented messages from being sent. If the Carrington Event happened today, it would have even more severe impacts, such as widespread electrical disruptions, persistent blackouts, and interruptions to global communications. Such technological chaos could cripple economies and endanger the safety and livelihoods of people worldwide. -NASA

We have warned over the years that the risk of a devastating CME strike on Earth is increasing as we next “solar maximum” – a peak in the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle approaches. 

• The Next Big Geomagnetic Storm Poses An Astronomical Risk To Modern Man
• Rare Solar Superstorm Could Prompt ‘Internet Apocalypse’ Lasting Several Months: Study
• Digital Economy Disruption Possible As “Terminator Event” Suggests Strongest Sunspot Cycle On Record Imminent

In late March, Earth was blasted with the strongest geomagnetic storm in six years. It generated auroras across North America, but there were no reports of communication blackouts. 

Recall the federal government began to prepare the nation for a space weather disaster in 2016 with the executive order signed by the Obama Administration titled “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events.”  

Update (2230ET): Musk has replied news that he’s been subpoenaed in the US Virgin Islands lawsuit against JPMorgan over their relationship with Epstein.

“This is idiotic on so many levels,” said Musk, adding “That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever.“

“The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd.”

Lastly, Musk claims that JPMorgan “let Tesla down ten years ago, despite having Tesla’s global commercial banking business, which I then withdrew. I have never forgiven them.”

This is idiotic on so many levels:

1. That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever.

2. The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd.

3. JPM let Tesla down ten years ago, despite having Tesla’s global commercial banking…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2023

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Elon Musk was issued a subpoena by the US Virgin Islands as part of its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s alleged facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, a court filing revealed Monday.

According to the filing, the Virgin Islands has attempted to serve Musk since late April, because Epstein “may have referred or attempted to refer” Musk as a client to JPMorgan.

The USVI hired an investigative firm to try to locate an address from Musk, and also contacted one of the CEO’s lawyers, who in the past has waived the requirement of him being personally served with legal documents in past federal cases, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. -CNBC

“The Government contacted Mr. Musk’s counsel via email to ask if he would be authorized to accept service on Mr. Musk’s behalf in this matter but did not receive a response confirming or denying his authority,” reads the filing.

JPMorgan is accused of servicing approximately 55 Epstein accounts between 1998 and 2013, years after his 2006 arrest for soliciting minors in Florida.

Meanwhile, the US Virgin Islands has also been unable to subpoena Google co-founder Larry Page in connection with its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, according to federal court filings.

In a motion filed last week by the USVI Attorney General, process servers have attempted to reach Page at four different addresses – none of which were ‘valid.’

“The Government made good-faith attempts to obtain an address for Larry Page, including hiring an investigative firm to search public records databases for possible addresses,” reads a filing. “Our process server attempted service at the addresses identified by our investigative firm, but discovered the addresses were not valid for Mr. Page.”

As such, prosecutors are asking the court to allow Page to be summoned via Alphabet, Google’s parent company, as Page still serves on its board.

Page’s whereabouts are largely unknown, though he was said in December to have spent the bulk of the COVID pandemic on one of his growing number of private islands – some of which are within the US Virgin Islands.

Page purchased Hans Lollik and its smaller neighboring island, Little Hans Lollik, in 2014 for $23 million. -Daily Mail

“Larry Page – the co-founder and co-owner of Alphabet Inc. (Google LLC’s parent company) – is a high-net-worth individual who Epstein may have referred or attempted to refer to JPMorgan,” reads a filing in the case.

As Ben Bartee notes in PJ Media;

It seems there are two potential explanations for Mr. Page’s disappearing act: either he himself doesn’t want to testify because of personal fears of what crimes it might implicate him in, or someone or something else doesn’t want Mr. Page discussing what he knows about Jeffrey Epstein’s activities.

I recently made a half-serious petition for Elon Musk to slap a Twitter “red check” on all known Jeffrey Epstein associates. When this ordeal is said and done, there might be a new Silicon Valley tech overlord to add to the list.

The subpoena efforts are part of the ongoing Virgin Islands prosecution of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, implicating the highest level of multinational banking as potential accomplices in the years-long trafficking ring.

Via CNBC:

CEO Jamie Dimon in an interview Thursday said he was “so sad” the bank had any business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — but denied the firm is legally liable for the dead predator’s sex trafficking.

Dimon also said, in the televised interview with Bloomberg, that if JPMorgan had known everything that has become public in recent years about its former customer Epstein “we would have done things differently.”

What sad propaganda.

If anyone believes that a multinational banker like Jamie Dimon is psychologically capable of regret over facilitating immoral/illegal activities on behalf of his clientele, I have oceanfront property in Montana to sell you.

Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness,

During the 2020 presidential election cycle, Matthew M. Graves donated $2,000 to the Biden-Harris campaign. The modest contribution was a no-brainer for Graves. Not only was he a domestic policy advisor for the campaign, he worked at the time for the same white-shoe law firm as Douglas Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband.

Graves’ kowtowing paid off. In November 2021, Graves took the helm of one of the most politically-charged U.S. attorneys office’s in the country: the District of Columbia. 

Since then, Graves has escalated the pace and nature of the ongoing investigation into the events of January 6. His fixation on a four-hour disturbance that occurred more than 28 months ago has nothing to do with law and order and everything to do with using the full weight of the federal government to punish Americans who protested Biden’s election that afternoon.

At the same time, Graves, who is in the unique position of prosecuting both local and federal crimes in the nation’s capital, has allowed D.C. to descend into violent chaos.

Gun crimes and carjackings are skyrocketing: homicides are up nine percent over last year. Graves is under fire from community groups, police, and government leaders.

The House Oversight Committee will hear from Graves on Tuesday morning. Finally. Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) threatened to issue a subpoena after the Justice Department first refused to make Graves available for questions. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, departing D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee, and city administrator Kevin Donahue also are expected to testify.

But rather than press D.C. officials responsible for the lawlessness rampant in their city—important as that is—Republicans should instead use their time to confront Graves about his selective prosecution of January 6 defendants and force him to account for his actions publicly. The Biden regime’s double standard of justice runs directly through Graves’ office.

Here is a partial list of questions for committee members to consider:

1) Mr. Graves, the Washington Post recently reported that you have one of the highest, if not the highest, declination rates in the country. According to one site that tracks crime data in D.C., you have refused to prosecute two-thirds of all criminal cases brought to you by police—double what it was in 2015. You blame a lack of resources for refusing to prosecute repeat, violent offenders who threaten the security of the nation’s capital.

How many January 6 cases brought to you by the FBI over the past 28 months have you declined to prosecute?

2) Not only are you proceeding at full steam with January 6 cases, you told the Washington Post last year you planned to double the current caseload—currently more than 1,000 cases—to at least 2,000. What percentage of your office’s time is spent on January 6 cases versus the prosecution of local criminal cases?

3) In court documents, your office repeatedly refers to January 6 as a domestic terror attack. In some cases, you are asking for domestic terror enhancements at sentencing.

Terror attacks always involve the killing of innocent individuals. Mr. Graves, how many January 6 defendants are charged with murder? To continue that inquiry, how many are charged with using a firearm or bringing a firearm inside the building?

Explosives also are a common feature of terror attacks. Do you have an update on the pipe bombs found at the headquarters of both the RNC and DNC on January 6, which prompted the evacuation of adjacent House buildings and diverted law enforcement away from the Capitol?

4) In fact, Mr. Graves, most of the charges against Capitol protesters are misdemeanors, correct? According to your latest Capitol “attack” update, 80 percent of the plea deals you’ve extracted from January 6 defendants are for misdemeanor offenses.

The most common charge is “parading or picketing” in the Capitol, a petty offense almost always handled in the D.C. Superior Court that results in a ticket and minimal fine. But your office is asking for prison time from between 14 days and six months for plea deals or convictions for parading. Could you explain why you are departing from precedent?

5) Mayor Bowser said last week that she would propose legislation to reform the city’s pretrial detention policies for repeat offenders arrested for new crimes. In response, you said recent dialogue related to pretrial detention—meaning denied bail—“has been over how can we have more people released because they have not been convicted.”

But that isn’t the standard your office applies for those charged in the January 6 investigation, is it? You’ve demanded pretrial detention for dozens of Capitol protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom have no criminal record and some accused of committing no violent crime on January 6. A handful were in custody for nearly two years awaiting trials your office continued to delay.

How many January 6 defendants are currently behind bars under pretrial detention orders sought by your office?

6) On that note, you seek excessive prison sentences for January 6 defendants. For example, Thomas Caldwell is a decorated and disabled Navy veteran with no criminal history.

Mr. Caldwell was not charged with any violent crime on January 6. In fact, he never entered the Capitol Building. Nevertheless, you added a seditious conspiracy charge to his case shortly after taking office.

After a jury trial, Caldwell was convicted of one obstruction count and one count of tampering with evidence. Yet you’re asking the judge to sentence Mr. Caldwell, who’s nearly 70 years old, to 14 years in prison, a sentence usually reserved for violent criminals who harm other people.

Could you explain why you believe Thomas Caldwell deserves to die in jail?

7) In May and June 2020, rioters vandalized federal property and assaulted federal officers in Lafayette Square, a federal park across the street from the White House. According to the inspector general’s report, U.S. Park Police “reported that some protesters threw projectiles, such as bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, frozen water bottles, glass bottles, lit flares, rental scooters, and fireworks, at law enforcement officials. Overall, 49 Park Police officers were injured. The Secret Service also reported injuries to their personnel.”

The violence was so bad it prompted the lockdown of the White House.

Mr. Graves, are you still investigating damage to federal property and assaults on federal officers related to the riot at Lafayette Square? When was the last time your office charged a 2020 rioter for similar if not worse conduct than that of January 6 protesters?

8) In the statement furnished to the Senate prior to your confirmation, you disclosed pro bono work for a group called the National Women’s Law Center, a left-wing nonprofit based in D.C. The head of that group is Fatima Goss Graves. She is your wife, correct?

In addition to promoting issues aligned with the Democratic Party, your wife is part of the current crusade against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Last month, she participated in a press conference on Capitol Hill to demand Justice Thomas’ resignation.

Right before the 2020 election, her group donated $5,000 to the Women’s March to protest the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and the reelection of Donald Trump.

After the election, she said this of the 55 percent of white women who voted for Trump: “White women who support Trump are not blindly voting against their own self-interest. These Trump supporters, aided by a toxic mix of racism and disinformation, seem to be consciously supporting what they believe to be their own group interest, putting them on the same team as the White men society has been largely built to benefit.”

Do you view your wife’s activism on behalf of the Democratic Party and disparaging comments about Trump supporters as a conflict of interest as you continue to use your office to charge and prosecute Trump supporters?

Four months after taking control of the House, Republicans are overdue in holding Biden officials publicly accountable for the most political and vengeful use of the Justice Department in history. Tuesday’s hearing is a ripe opportunity to turn the tables on Graves. Let’s hope they do. 

In the run-up to tonight’s extravaganza of centrally-managed “economic” data, China’s macro data has been serially disappointing for six weeks as the re-opening narrative fails to deliver…

Source: Bloomberg

Even with the almost infallible credit impulse on the rise again, recent aggregate financing data has been dramatically weaker than expected…

Source: Bloomberg

And before we break down the data, one huge caveat, the official headline figures that China’s National Bureau of Statistics released tonight compares with last year – when much of country was in total lockdown due to COVID, bringing the economy to a standstill everywhere.

Therefore, what’s more telling is that the pace of overall growth on a month-on-month basis – that’s the key gauge of the recovery’s health right now.

EVERYTHING MISSED!

• *CHINA JAN.-APRIL FIXED INVESTMENT FALLS 0.64% M/M;RISES 4.7% Y/Y; EST. 5.7%

• *CHINA JAN.-APRIL PROPERTY DEV. INVESTMENT FELL 6.2% Y/Y, EST. -5.7%

• *CHINA APRIL RETAIL SALES ROSE ONLY 18.4% Y/Y; EST. 21.9%

• *CHINA JAN.-APRIL INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT FALLS 0.47% M/M; RISES 3.6% Y/Y; EST. 4.9%

There was a modest silver lining with the Surveyed Jobless rate dropped to 5.2% (exp 5.3%), BUT, Youth unemployment soared to a record high 20.4%…

Source: Bloomberg

The numbers are significantly worse than expected (and in most cases worse than the worst economist forecasts).

As Bloomberg reports, Raymond Yeung, chief economist for Greater China at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd noted it “is a weak print.”

“The headline data fail to impress despite base effect from Shanghai lockdown last year. Youth jobless rate passed 20%. The reopening dividend is losing steam.”

China’s NBS said “China faces insufficient domestic demand.”

Finally, after all that, bear in mind that China has not raised its rates (like the rest of the world) in over nine months and continues to flood the system with cash every month (also unlike almost every other nation on earth).

Simply put, China has a seemingly bottomless liquidity hole somewhere in the middle and no matter how much credit they inject, it all gets soaked up offering no stimulation to the economy.

Goldman’s economists expect more easing to come…

“In light of the sharp deceleration of April credit growth, this statement suggests PBOC might want to manage the pace of credit growth deceleration…which potentially opens the door to another RRR cut, in our view. We expect a 25bp broad RRR cut in June when liquidity demand picks up at quarter-end to boost market sentiment and facilitate overall credit growth.”

And tonight’s data disaster may have sealed that.

The siege of the US southern border post-Title 42 has begun, with apprehended migrants already hitting historic single day records. 

Illegal immigration is not just a political or social issue, it is also a security issue, and it would seem that America’s border security is fading fast.

It is so weak, in fact, that a confirmed Afghan terrorist suspect has decided to give the border a try. 

While the following suspect was captured, the real question is how many terror suspects are they not catching as the border remains wide open on the whims of Joe Biden?

Authored by Adam Morrow via The Epoch Times,

Moscow says its forces have destroyed a large munitions depot in Ukraine’s western city of Khmelnytskyi.

“One AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] ammunition depot has been destroyed close to Khmelnytskyi,” the Russian Defense Ministry stated in its daily briefing for May 14. Khmelnytskyi, the target of Russian strikes in February, is located roughly 170 miles southwest of Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry confirmed that a “massive” Russian barrage damaged an energy facility in the city in the early hours of May 13.

According to the ministry, the local power supply wasn’t affected by the strikes.

The city’s local military administration similarly reported that multiple drones had targeted “critical infrastructure.”

Khmelnytskyi’s mayor, Oleksandr Symchyshyn, said schools, residential buildings, and industrial facilities were damaged in what he described as a “terrorist attack.”

Speaking on the Telegram messaging app, Symchyshyn claimed that the Russian strikes had left a number of civilian residents injured.

On the same day, a Russian missile barrage destroyed a storage facility in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil, located just west of Khmelnytskyi.

Fallout Concerns

Following the strike in Khmelnytskyi, video footage began circulating on Russian social media accounts that purportedly shows CCTV footage of the blast. The footage shows a facility—the nature of which is unclear—being rocked by a massive explosion, sending an enormous fireball into the sky.

This is probably the biggest explosion of the entire Ukrainian war

The Khmelnytskyi depot must’ve had a massive amount of fuel/ammunition for it to have multiple big recurring explosions pic.twitter.com/rpigK3D4qV

— LogKa (@LogKa11) May 13, 2023

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The Epoch Times couldn’t verify the authenticity of the footage or whether it portrayed the recent Russian strike in Khmelnytskyi.

Nevertheless, the scope of the blast—and its fiery aftermath—has reportedly prompted speculation online that the targeted facility housed Western-supplied munitions containing depleted uranium.

In March, the UK announced plans to provide Kyiv with depleted uranium shells for its Challenger 2 combat tanks, 14 of which have already been sent to Ukraine.

Due to their extremely high density, depleted uranium shells are able to penetrate heavy armor. But they can also pose health risks to humans, animals, and ecosystems in and around impact areas.

Following London’s announcement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned that the potential effects of munitions containing depleted uranium would be “impossible to control.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to “respond accordingly” if such munitions are employed on the battlefield.

According to Intel Slava Z, a pro-Moscow news aggregator, rumors have spread on Ukrainian social media that the recent explosion in Khmelnytskyi had led to the dispersal of depleted uranium particles.

In a Telegram post, it claimed that there were “already reports” that radiation levels had surged in the vicinity of the city.

The Epoch Times was unable to verify the assertions.

If the NATO arms depots that Russia is blowing up contain depleted uranium munitions as supplied by the UK those areas of Ukraine may become hotbeds for lung cancer and birth defects as the dust from those exploded DU munitions can contaminate large areas of land for decades.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 14, 2023

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Allies Pledge More Arms to Kyiv

The strike in Khmelnytskyi coincided with a trip by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Berlin, where he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

It was Zelenskyy’s first visit to the German capital since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine—Moscow calls it a “special military operation”—early last year.

Shortly before the Ukrainian leader’s arrival, Germany unveiled a fresh $3 billion aid package for Kyiv—its single largest contribution to date.

On May 15, Zelenskyy visited London, where UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to provide Ukraine with additional long-range missiles and attack drones. Last week, the UK announced that it had delivered Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which boast a range of more than 150 miles.

Speaking to Sunak, Zelenskyy said his country’s ongoing conflict with Russia was a matter of “security” for Ukraine and “all of Europe.”

Satellite images of the result of the missile attack of the Russian Aerospace Forces on May 13 on the ammunition depot of the Armed Forces of Ukraine west of Khmelnitsky (before and after) pic.twitter.com/NPLCZhaI97

— Dagny Taggart (@DagnyTaggart963) May 15, 2023

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Soon afterward, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the UK of “pumping weapons” into Ukraine.

“This won’t drastically change the course of the special military operation,” he said. “But it will definitely lead to further destruction.”

According to Sunak’s office, the UK prime minister plans to urge Kyiv’s other allies to step up support for Ukraine’s war effort at an upcoming meeting of G-7 leaders.

Reuters contributed to this report.

On Jan 31, just one day before a dovish Powell presser sent stocks surging higher in what to this date remains the biggest short squeeze in a decade, boosted by a historic 0DTE buying frenzy, the “Big Short” Michael Burry tweeted one word: “sell.”

Then, when stocks spiked higher, Burry promptly deleted not just the tweet but his entire account, only to reactivate it one week later for yet another sarcastic tweet, suggesting that this time was no different than the dot com crisis (the tweet has also since been deleted).

In retrospect, it may have been a little bit different after all because with just hours left to the end of the first quarter, Burry again flipped, and informed his audience – with one of his patented self-destructing tweets – that he was “wrong to say sell“…

…. which incidentally is something we predicted just two weeks prior when days after the SVB failure when the Fed panicked and injected $400 billion in reserves into the system, we warned that the “chase begins” just as stocks were about to ramp higher, not lower as so many expected would be the obvious, logical outcome to the biggest financial crisis since Lehman.

Chase begins pic.twitter.com/DLPt5w8DG4

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 17, 2023

In any case, fast forward to today some 45 days after the end of the quarter – better known as 13F filing time – when we found out just why Burry was “wrong to say sell”: according to his latest SEC filing, his Scion Capital was busy buying stocks in Q1. In fact, at $106 million in notional value of his disclosed positions, this was Burry’s biggest buying spree in years.

Looking at Scion’s latest 13F reveals that once again Burry liquidated the rest of his legacy 2022 holdings, dumping his entire stake in companies like Black Knight, Wolverine World Wide, MGM Resorts and Qurate; he also trimmed his formerly largest holding, private prison operator GEO group, and reallocated the proceeds in three ways

• Adding to his Chinese exposure, making JD.com and Alibaba his top stocks (a move which appears to have been driven by the Q4 momentum and which has since fizzled, leading to substantial losses in Chinese names).
• Launching a handful of new positions in energy names such as Coterra, NOV and Devon
• Most notably, a third – or seven of the fund’s total 21 positions – were financial names, and with the exception of Wells, they were mostly distressed, regional, small banks and/or credit card companies, such as CapitalOne, Western Alliance, Pacwest, First Republic, and Huntington Bancshares.

Unfortunately for Burry, one of those banks is already a doughnut which means that unless he promptly sold out of his FRC stake, Burry is down some $2 million on this particular bank. As for the others, they may yet bounce but so far they have not. Meanwhile, as we showed yesterday, as long as QT continues, so will the deposit drain which is mostly hitting small and regional banks, and will inevitably lead to many more failures…

… unless the Fed suddenly decides it has unleashed enough bank sector destruction and reverses, cutting rates and restarting QE. Point being Burry appears to have enough of being called the “big short” and in this particular twist of the liquidity cycle is positioning himself to be the next “big long.”

Here is a summary of Scion’s holdings as of March 31.

Source: SEC

Over the weekend, we reported that the bottom finally appears to be falling from under the US consumer, where the high-end income household – which until recently had been propping up the broader deceleration in lower-income Americans – appears to have hit an income brick wall, leading to the first decline in wages in three years for those earning over $125,000…

… which in turn led to the first spending decline since February 2021: according to Bank of America’s latest debit and credit card data, total card spending per household was down 1.2% year-over-year (y/y) in April…

… and is only partially explained by the y/y drop in gas prices.

Does that mean that tomorrow’s retail sales report will be another disaster? Not just yet: according to BofA’s economists, tomorrow the census bureau’s retail sales report – the most important report of the week – will show a modest increase of 0.2% m/m in retail sales ex-autos and core control retail sales figures for April, both coming in just below expectations.

What is more concerning, is that what until recently was the strongest spending category, leisure services, appears to have peaked. According to BofA, on a m/m SA basis, online retail (card not present) and department stores saw the strongest growth, while airlines, furniture and lodging were the weakest categories.

We will get a better sense over the summer of whether the reopening tailwind to leisure services has run its course. Meanwhile, durable goods spending continues its relatively steady decline after peaking more than two years ago.

Spending weakness is usually the result of a decline in incomes, and this time is no different. According to BofA, weakness in tax refunds was likely a headwind to spending once again in April. The Internal Revenue Service reports that it issued $70.5 billion of Federal individual income tax refunds in April, compared to $85.3bn in April 2022. This shortfall of around $15bn amounts to 0.9% of monthly disposable income, and comes on the back of an even larger $25bn shortfall in March.

The next chart shows that the average number of refunds issued was close to 2022 levels at the end of April. However, the average refund size has been 8% smaller than it was last year. This suggests to BofA that total refunds are unlikely to catch up to 2022 levels as more returns are processed.

The silver lining is that BofA’s headline retail sales forecast of 0.7% is driven by the sharp pickup in auto sales in April: this should support total  consumer spending growth on the month. However, the BAC card data suggest that other spending categories look soft. As discussed above, services demand appears to be slowing. And if the bank’s retail sales forecast is correct, growth in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) retail sales ex-autos would be close to zero in April. Therefore, BofA continues to expect positive but weak GDP growth in 2Q 2023 and a mild recession thereafter.

Meanwhile, as the bank’s economists search for the key downward inflection point, it is monitoring the spending patterns of lower-income households, who would be most impacted by an economic shock. So far, lower-income HHs continue to outperform higher income HHs in terms of y/y spending growth…

… and they are still allocating a larger share of total card spending to discretionary items than they did in 2019.

Finally, BofA is also watching for signs of the impact of regional bank stress, but so far it finds that San Francisco and New York, the headquarters of the three failed domestic banks, outpaced the other major metros in terms of retail ex-auto spending in both March and April.

Much more in the full report available to pro subs in the usual place.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An attorney has called on House Republicans to investigate and defund the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) efforts to prosecute defendants being treated as domestic terrorists for their presence at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol.

“This could go on for two or three more years unless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy takes the floor and declares that the DOJ is abusing legislation,” Carol Stewart, who represents several J6 defendants, told The Epoch Times.

Stewart said McCarthy can make a resolution and start an investigation into the abuse of U.S. criminal codes 1752, 231, and 1512, which relate to restricted buildings or grounds; civil disorders; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant, respectively. She said these laws are being misinterpreted to frame American citizens who protested at the Capitol building as culprits in a plot to overthrow the 2020 election through a violent insurrection.

The problem, Stewart argues, is that the story the DOJ, the FBI, and the mainstream media are telling “is a lie.”

One of her clients, 56-year-old Eric Christie, is charged with violating statute 1752, a misdemeanor that criminalizes the act of entering or remaining in “any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so.”

In addition, he’s alleged under subsection (b) of the law to have been brandishing “a dangerous weapon or firearm” on restricted grounds.

On Christie’s tool belt was a hammer that Stewart said was never removed, as it was part of a construction worker costume.

“He did not breach or push aside any barriers, assault police, participate in any violence, witness violence, encourage violence, enter the building, or do anything besides use protected First Amendment speech in a peaceful manner in a location that he believed was approved for speech,” Stewart wrote in her facts of the case.

Unaware of Restricted Area

Christie, an advocate for the Make America Great Again movement from California, believed he could “lawfully go forward” into an area he didn’t know was restricted, Stewart argued, because someone had removed a barricade of bike racks without his knowledge.

Though he never entered the Capitol, Christie was arrested at his apartment on Dec. 22, 2022—almost two years later—surrounded by a SWAT team of 20 to 30 people in a histrionic show of force, Stewart said.

According to Stewart, there was no knock, and Christie was never told he was under arrest, only that the officers wanted to search his apartment. When he asked for a search warrant, officials had to retrieve it, as they had not brought it with them.

His water and electricity had been turned off. A drone was sent into his home and determined that he had guns with the intent to use them.

Having arrived at 9 a.m., it took the officers until 10:45 a.m. to get the warrant. Instead of bringing it to him directly, they sent in a robot, which took 30 to 40 minutes of everyone watching it make its way downstairs.

The FBI had already rammed in the front door and broken the glass, thrown in flash-bangs and tear gas, and brought in a crisis negotiator, Stewart said, which led Christie to believe that they were there to abduct or kill him.

“Other people I’ve interviewed have examined this situation and agreed with Christie’s assessment,” Stewart said. “You don’t do all of that unless you’re going in. It’s not done, because you’re inviting danger if you do that.”

The fiasco was framed as a three-hour standoff, Stewart said.

“His delay in exiting his home had nothing to do with any falsely claimed ‘barricade,’” Stewart wrote in the court report. “It was due to shock, anxiety, the belief that the FBI wanted to murder him or take him to Guantanamo as a terrorist, and the failure of the FBI to have a search warrant on-site to present to him.”

Created Circumstances

At any point, however, the FBI could have gone to Christie’s attorney and asked to have Christie self-surrender.

Instead, Stewart said, the FBI engaged in tactics designed to elicit a reaction, not obtain facts.

A week before on Dec. 16, Christie had been pulled over by a state highway patrolman.

“Understand the bizarre nature of this,” Stewart said. “The FBI has the California Highway Patrol (CHP) pull him over just to create the circumstances for a person with anxiety.”

In the time between Jan. 6 and his arrest at his apartment, every nook and cranny of Christie’s life was investigated using avenues opened by the Patriot Act, which would not only include a forensic investigation into his online profile but also into his medical history, Stewart said.

It’s the kind of information that can be weaponized in a psychological operation, Stewart said.

Later, in court, Stewart said the FBI admitted to using the state law enforcement pretextually.

Under California law, an officer has the right to ask someone to get out of their car. However, with Christie, there was no traffic violation. The officer yelled at Christie, telling him that if he didn’t get out of the car, he would break his window.

In a panic, Christie fled, Stewart said, aware of what was happening with other J6 defendants.

It was agreed that he wouldn’t be pursued, Stewart said, so he went about his life until the day of his arrest.

The CHP alleged that the officer pulled Christie over because the officer saw Christie rolling through a stop sign, which Stewart said is not true.

“The dash cam footage shows that this is false,” Stewart said. “They didn’t even have him in sight. They left out the threat to break his window. They said he fled arrest. For what? The CHP filed a false report and not once said they were operating in coordination with the FBI. So, there’s some dirty dealing going on at that level between the guys in that unit and the local FBI agents.”

Then there is the probability that the FBI had been entering Christie’s condominium for several months, as there was a mock-up made of his apartment, Stewart said.

“This is the kind of stuff they’re doing,” Stewart said. “I’ve worked with special forces a lot. They don’t build mock-ups for a normal arrest. For all the people we went and grabbed in Afghanistan, they didn’t build mock-ups.”

‘I Know What a Setup Looks Like’

Stewart’s seen these strategies before during her time working in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency while serving 25 years of active duty with the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel.

Stewart’s counterterrorism work dates to 1993. She served as an intelligence battalion commander in Bosnia from 1998 to 1999 and continued to work in military intelligence in Kosovo from 2001 to 2002 and at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2002 to 2005.

Stewart spent six and a half years working as a senior intelligence officer with the Department of Defense at CENTCOM with strategic assessments related to terrorism, insurgency, and regional issues; targeting; and special projects that included terrorism, counterintelligence, and insider threats.

Considering her work in military intelligence, Stewart said the tactical operations used on Christie and other J6 defendants are strikingly familiar.

“This is how the military in Iraq organized for urban warfare to go in and clear houses,” she said. “This isn’t much different. I know what a setup looks like.”

Before the engagement even takes place, the FBI creates a “baseball card” on the suspects, which is a dossier developed for targeting terrorists.

“This is for kill or capture missions, so I want that to set in for a minute,” Stewart said. “The whole concept of a baseball card for overseas terrorism was based on creating a targeting package to go on kill or capture missions. This has now been transported back into the United States to go after American citizens.”

Read more here…

Last week when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna, following a prior canceled meeting due to the spy balloon shootdown drama of early February which set off a firestorm of angry accusations between Beijing and Washington, the US side reportedly voiced concerns over American citizens held in Chinese prisons.

On Monday a Chinese court “answered” Washington’s complaints over detained Americans, sentencing a 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison for alleged spying. 

Little is known of the American, John Shing-Wan Leung, who holds permanent residency in Hong Kong. China’s counterintelligence agency arrested him on April 15, 2021 in the southeastern city of Suzhou.

His plight was made worse in terms of the prospect of US consular contact or representation given the detention had happened at a moment China was under strict Covid-19 lockdown, with borders closed.

Leung had a lengthy pre-trial detention, which is not uncommon for cases involving charges of espionage. But the details of what precisely the Chinese state is alleging have not emerged. CNN reviews based on scant government and court statements–

The court also confiscated personal property worth 500,000 yuan ($71,797), the statement added.

Chinese authorities and state media have not previously disclosed any information on Leung’s detention or the court process that led to his conviction. Cases involving state security are usually strictly handled behind closed doors, where the judicial system has a conviction rate of around 99%, according to legal observers.

And the US Embassy in Beijing had nothing to say other than it was “aware” of reports of the life sentence. “The Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” a statement said.

As NBC notes, the worsened US-China relations of late have led to a climate of fear for foreign and Western firms operating in China: 

Chinese national security agencies have also raided the offices of foreign business consulting firms in Beijing and other cities as part of an ongoing crackdown on foreign businesses that provide sensitive economic data.

Foreign companies operating in China have come under increasing pressure as Xi Jinping’s government tightens control over the economy. That stands in stark contrast to efforts to lure back foreign investors after draconian Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted at the beginning of the year.

A number of foreigners, including from Japan and Canada, have recently been detained by Chinese authorities related to suspicion of spying. Chinese law also looks to only get more draconian, given last month already sweeping counter-espionage laws were expanded further. Likely more Westerners will eventually fall under this crackdown dragnet as the pressure ratchets. 

Authored by Jan Jekielek and Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

America’s intellectual class has been given so much power by the public that their misuse of such power is threatening the fundamental freedom of speech in the country, says scholar and author Tom Harrington.

“It’s absolutely remarkable how easily we’ve gone from free speech to asking, ‘How can I make my way around the censorship that’s here?’” Harrington said in a recent interview with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders” that premiered on May 11.

“Sometimes, there’s this idea that reality just is. That’s partially true but in the cultural realm, there’s always someone developing it and distributing it who has more access to power.

“Those people generally are well-educated people who we hold up as exemplars of knowledge. They have a lot of power and they are deferred to quite readily.”

Harrington warned that people are delivering a lot of their power into the hands of “experts” who tend to have a “flipness” with which they have used such power.

“Worse than flipness, there seems to be almost a perversion and a joy in making us obey and be compliant for compliance’s sake. This is very troubling in a society.

“You need the intellectual class or the credentialed class to have the reality of their status back up the title of their status. It seems to me these two things have separated in these last few years, and that’s really troubling to me.”

Harrington pointed out that censorship and cancellation are “two cudgels” used against the public.

“We’re beginning to see that a lot of this hooting down is not as spontaneous as many of us would like to believe. With the recent ‘Twitter Files,’ and the case that the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana are trying now, we’re finding out that this was anything but spontaneous. There were a number of government actors working in concert with private actors to achieve a censorship that, frankly, for those of us of a certain age, is unimaginable.”

On March 17, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi released a version of the so-called “Twitter Files” exposing the alleged collusion between Twitter and Stanford University’s Virality Project (VP) to censor what they deemed to be misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. VP is also found to have colluded with the U.S. government.

“Though the Virality Project reviewed content on a mass scale for Twitter, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest, it knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself,” Taibbi stated on Twitter.

The initiative “accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.”

Reliance on Experts

Harrington, who is a Hispanic studies emeritus professor, pointed out that true experts do not impose their reality on anyone. Experts must be able to keep their ego impulses in check and ensure that they are using their power to help the people. “It seems that that line has been crossed,” he said.

“There’s a lot of ego gratification that is interfering with what should be a real sober taking of responsibility for a gift of power,” he said about the nature of today’s experts.“Power is a gift in a democratic society. It’s not something you own, and it’s not something there to make people obey you. It’s a gift you have that hopefully you can use in constructive ways that preserve the dignity of those who don’t have as much power as you do.”

For the sixth consecutive year, the average age of vehicles in the US has risen, indicating that Americans are holding onto their cars for longer than ever before. 

According to data collected by S&P Global Mobility, the average age of passenger vehicles on the road has reached a record high of 12.5 years. This trend, which began in 2017, has accelerated in a post-Covid world as new car prices soared due to shortages, and more recently, borrowing costs have skyrocketed, causing an affordability crisis. However, this trend might also suggest automobile manufacturers are producing higher-quality vehicles that break down less often. 

“This is the sixth straight year of increase in the average vehicle age of the US fleet. It also reflects the highest yearly increase since the 2008-2009 recession, which caused an acceleration in average age beyond its traditional rate due to the sharp decline in new-vehicle sales demand,” S&P Global Mobility pointed out. 

Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions for S&P Global Mobility, noted a confluence of factors from the pandemic supply chain snarls to soaring interest rates in 2022 “would provide further upward pressure on the average vehicle age.” 

S&P Global Mobility forecasts new vehicle sales will be 14.5 million units in 2023, which is expected to slow the average age growth rate in the coming year. 

“While pressure will remain on average age in 2023, we expect the curve to begin to flatten this year as we look toward returning to historical norms for new vehicle sales in 2024,” Campau said. 

A plethora of used cars on roadways will benefit the vehicle service industry. An aging fleet means vehicles will require more repairs. Campau said:

“Traditionally, the ‘sweet spot’ for aftermarket repair was considered 6-11 years of age, but with average age at 12.5 years, the sweet spot for aftermarket repair is growing.

“There are almost 122 million vehicles in operation over 12 years old.”

As the Bloomberg chart shows below, only the auto parts business continues to register steadily higher top-line revenue. 

Wall Street has priced in the auto parts boom as shares of AutoZone Inc have gone parabolic. 

The auto parts industry is benefiting from America’s aging fleet of vehicles. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Three Rhode Island teachers who were fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine have been offered their jobs back with full back pay after reaching a settlement with the school district.

Teachers Stephanie Hines, Brittany DiOrio, and Kerri Thurber were terminated from their positions in Barrington Public Schools after they had requested a religious exemption after the school mandated employees get the vaccine.

Last week, their attorney, Greg Piccirilli, and the school district said they had reached a settlement, allowing the teachers to return to their jobs. They are also each entitled to $33,333 in damages along with their back pay. DiOrio will get $150,000, Thurber will get $128,000, and Hines will receive $65,000 under the agreement.

“The three teachers have the opportunity to return to teaching positions within the Barrington School District should they choose to do so, at the steps they would have been at had they worked continuously,” the Barrington Public Schools district said in a statement on May 11.

In a statement to the Boston Globe, Piccirilli said that his clients are “extremely gratified that they’ve been vindicated in their position,” adding that he will get $50,000 in attorneys fees as part of the settlement. “A lot of people were dismissive and skeptical of their claims at the time,” he told the Boston Globe. “They went through a lot of personal trauma dealing with this. Their faith has gotten them through this.”

Meanwhile, Barrington Public Schools told the Providence Journal that it reached the settlement because the litigation would likely put a drag on the school’s resources and funding. It attempted to distance itself from its own vaccine mandate by claiming that it was dealing with the spread of COVID-19, although there is a growing body of evidence that shows the vaccines do not prevent the spread of the virus.

“Our district was navigating an unprecedented health pandemic and leaned on the important recommendations by the CDC and the Rhode Island Department of Health to ensure the safety of our students and school community,” the Barrington School Committee said Thursday, according to the outlet. “Our then-policy helped combat the pressing public health crisis of the time, while keeping schools open, and [was] one that nearly all faculty and staff adhered to.”

It added that “we determined this ongoing, expensive litigation” would likely continue for a lengthy period of time, and a resolution should be reached because the “administration’s time, and our district’s financial resources, should be spent on the daily work and mission of Barrington Public Schools … our School Committee looks forward to continuing to support this important work.”

Details

The three were first placed on unpaid leave in late 2021 before they were fired in January 2022, according to statements made by the district and the teachers. During a hearing in Barrington in October 2021, DiOrio said that she “did nothing wrong.”

“I have done nothing wrong. This is destroying my future ability to earn a living,” she said of the mandate. “What makes me more of a threat now? Is this how a highly-rated school department treats its people?”

At the time,  Sara Rapport, a lawyer representing the School Committee, said that the teachers were violating the school policy for not complying, adding that committees have the plenary authority over school interests. She said that the teachers’ decision not to get vaccinated pose a greater risk to students.

“Teachers have a right not to be vaccinated,” she said in late 2021. “But every decision has consequences. Religious beliefs do not override the health and safety of the community.”

Read more here…

Has the race-swapping fad within Hollywood finally hit a brick wall?  Are they going to try to depict historic figures as they really looked once again, or will they double down?  What is the real purpose behind this trend that many people are now referring to as “black washing?” 

The political left often views history as inconvenient to their narrative, which is that different societies and ethnic groups should be homogenized into a single global entity, ostensibly with the same progressive ideology as they have.  However, until the past century this has not been the case.  Humanity remains discerning always, and seeks to group into tribes whenever possible.  

Leftists believe that they can rewrite several thousand years of recorded history through Hollywood magic and con the next generation into thinking “diversity and inclusion” have always been a thing.  In fact, it is nearly impossible to get a streaming show or movie produced these days without filmmakers being forced to follow a list of ESG requirements and a perfect pie chart of on-screen representation, even when the places depicted were historically of only one race.  And, dare we say that it was Netflix that initially pioneered this woke entertainment trend.

Now it appears that their failure has come full circle with a series about Cleopatra VII executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith (wife of the slap-happy Will Smith).  The show, which is part of a project to showcase black girl-bosses through history, is billed as a serious docudrama but the depictions of Cleopatra as black are completely inaccurate. The public response has not been positive.

Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra hit 1% on the Rotten Tomatoes rating website, a historic low for streaming television.

Attempts to paint the Egyptians as Sub-Saharan African in recent years tie into a conspiracy theory among leftist activists who believe that Egypt was actually an ancient black empire that historians have sought to maliciously “white wash.”  In reality, genetic testing shows that ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.  

Cleopatra was Greek/Macedonian, not sub-Saharan African, and there is no serious debate over this in the historic community.  Multiple images of Cleopatra from the 1st Century AD have been found, including frescos which depict Cleopatra as white.

Why not make a television series about actual black ruled kingdoms in Africa, such as the kingdom of Kush (neighbors to the Egyptians in today’s Northern Sudan), or the Mali Empire?  Probably because these groups have a limited impact on the annals of world history and that’s not enough for woke Hollywood.  They want Wakanda.  They want Egypt to be their Wakanda, but it simply isn’t so.  

Why does it matter if a black actress plays Cleopatra?  Because facts matter.  While Hollywood has many times taken liberties with history in past films and shows, the goal should be to improve that pattern and strive for accuracy instead of going backwards.  And, ultimately it matters because these kinds of woke productions are propaganda driven.  These are not changes to history made with the intention to spice things up for audiences; no, these are changes specifically designed to lie to the public and condition them to believe things that are not true.

Black actors are not the problem.  Leftist propaganda is the problem.      

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

“[A] crash is coming, and it may be terrific… The vicious circle will get in full swing and the result will be a serious business depression. There may be a stampede for selling which will exceed anything that the Stock Exchange has ever witnessed. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt.”

The above words could easily have been stated by me or another of the (very) few others who currently predict the coming of crashes in the markets.

But they were not.

The statements above were made by investor Roger Babson at a speech at the Annual Business Conference in Massachusetts on 5th September, 1929.

Mr. Babson’s prediction was not a sudden one. In fact, he had been making the same prediction for the previous two years, although he, in September of 1929, felt the crash was much closer.

News of his speech reached Wall Street by mid-afternoon, causing the market to retreat about 3%. The sudden decline was named the “Babson Break.”

The reaction from business insiders was immediate. Rather than respond by saying, “Thanks for the warning—we’ll proceed cautiously,” Wall Street vilified him. The Chicago Tribune published numerous rebuffs from a host of economists and Wall Street leaders. Even Mr. Babson’s patriotism was taken into question for making so rash a projection. Noted economist Professor Irving Fisher stated emphatically, “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.” He and many others repeatedly soothed investors, advising them that a resumption in the boom was imminent. Financier Bernard Baruch famously cabled Winston Churchill, “Financial storm definitely passed.” Even President Herbert Hoover assured Americans that the market was sound.

But, 55 days after Mr. Babson’s speech, on 29th October, 1929, the market suddenly went into a free-fall, dropping 12% in its first day.

Today, most people have the general impression that on Black Friday, the market crashed and almost immediately, there were breadlines. Not so. In the Great Depression, as in any depression, the market collapsed in stages. The market did not reach its bottom of 89% losses until July of 1932.

Along the way, thousands of banks and lending institutions went belly-up. Thirteen million jobs disappeared.

And of course, the political leaders of the day did their bit. They implemented knee-jerk “solutions” that actually worsened the situation. Restrictive tariffs, gold confiscation, and a more dominant government were employed, just as they will be this time around.

So, as the market tumbled, we would imagine that Babson came to be praised by Wall Street for his insight, but in fact, the opposite occurred. Having accused him of being utterly incorrect in September, they later accused him of having caused the depression.

So, was Babson’s prediction a lucky guess? Did he simply observe the bull market and arbitrarily predict the opposite of the trend of the day to see what would happen? Not at all.

Such predictions are not guesswork, nor are they attributable to a vision seen in some crystal ball. Such crashes are entirely predictable. When any major bull market becomes overbought; when too many investors begin buying on margin because they can’t come up with the purchase price for stocks; when they then become even more obsessive and borrow money to buy on margin, the market has become a house of cards, waiting for the slightest breeze to come along.

So what do we take away from this? First, we can be certain that as the present-day house of cards begins to shake, there will be no warnings from Wall Street. In fact, quite the opposite. Their bread gets buttered by buyers. They will be adamant (and even, in many cases, truly believe) that the sky is the limit and investors should buy, buy, buy, as there are fortunes to be made by doing so. And investors, watching the rise, will fall all over each other, just as in 1929, buying with both hands.

This time around, the crash and its byproducts will be more extreme than in 1929, as the bubble itself is more extreme.

And Wall Street can count on television and a media that has a vested interest in keeping the charade going as long as possible. It will also be more extreme, as the governments of much of the world are now broke and can only worsen their respective economies through the customary “solutions” that governments always employ—tariffs, confiscations, greater government control, etc.

Finally, the aftermath will be more extreme, as—unlike in 1929, when most people actually believed in the government—this time around, there will be dramatic unrest.

Just as in 1929, those who are declaring that “the Emperor has no clothes” are few in number, and their viewpoint is most certainly not put forth in the conventional media. For this reason, it’s understandable that the great majority of people invariably ignore the Babsons of the world as Chicken Littles and blithely charge toward the cliff like lemmings.

Those who do think independently and become convinced that history is repeating itself are focusing their attention on finding a way out of being a casualty in the train wreck that’s coming. This is difficult to do, as invariably, the closer the event becomes, the more difficult it is to swim against the tide. For this reason, even many who conclude that the end is near often fail to act to save themselves and their families.

Internationalisation is both time-consuming and costly. Additionally, it’s lonely, as it’s considered foolish and unnecessary by more than 99% of the population.

The great temptation is to decide, “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe I can live with it.” And in fact, for most people, this will be the prevailing view—that although their personal situation will be diminished in many ways, the crashes will be tolerable.

The question is whether we wish to make the pre-emptive effort to create a life that is far better than tolerable, and possibly even improved, whist the opportunity for doing so still exists.

*  *  *

It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this free report, which shows you exactly what’s happening and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.