Jun 05

Today’s News 5th June 2022

  • Escobar: Bilderberg Does China, Realizes "The Chessboard Sucks"
    Escobar: Bilderberg Does China, Realizes “The Chessboard Sucks”

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    When Davos and Bilderberg messenger boys look at The Grand Chessboard, they realize that their era of perpetual free lunch is over.

    Discreetly, as under the radar as a looming virus, the 68th Bilderberg meeting  is currently underway in Washington, D.C. Nothing to see here. No conspiracy theories about a “secret cabal”, please. This is just a docile, “diverse group of political leaders and experts” having a chat, a laugh, and a bubbly.

    Still, one cannot but notice that the choice of venue speaks more volumes than the entire – burned to the ground – Library of Alexandria. In the year heralding the explosion of a much-awaited NATO vs. Russia proxy war, discussing its myriad ramifications does suit the capital of the Empire of Lies, much more than Davos a few weeks ago, where one Henry Kissinger sent them into a frenzy by advancing the necessity of a toxic compromise named “diplomacy”.

    The list of Bilderberg 2022 participants is a joy to peruse. Here are just some of the stalwarts:

    • James Baker, Consigliere extraordinaire, now a mere Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon.

    • José Manuel Barroso, former head of the European Commission, later the recipient of a golden parachute in the form of Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

    • Albert Bourla, the Pfizer Big Guy.

    • William Burns, CIA director.

    • Kurt Campbell, the guy who invented the Obama/Hillary “pivot to Asia”, now White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific.

    • Mark Carney, former Bank of England, one of the designers of the Great Reset, now Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.

    • Henry Kissinger, The Establishment’s Voice (or a war criminal: take your pick).

    • Charles Michel, President of the European Council.

    • Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, which will duly relay all major Bilderberg directives in the magazine’s upcoming cover stories.

    • David Petraeus, certified loser of endless surges and Chairman of KKR Global Institute.

    • Mark Rutte, hawkish Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

    • Jens Stoltenberg, NATO top parrot, sorry, secretary-general.

    • Jake Sullivan, Director of the National Security Council.

    The ideological and geopolitical affiliations of these members of the “diverse group” need no further elaboration. It gets positively sexier when we see what they will be discussing.

    Among other issues we find “NATO challenges”; “Indo-Pacific realignment”; “continuity of government and economy” (Conspirationists: continuity in case of nuclear war?); “disruption of global financial system” (already on); “post-pandemic health” (Conspirationists: how to engineer the next pandemic?); “trade and deglobalization”; and of course, the choice wagyu beef steaks: Russia and China.

    As Bilderberg follows Chatham House Rules, mere mortals won’t have a clue of what they actually “proposed” or approved, and none of the participants will be allowed to talk about it with anyone else. One of my top New York sources, with direct access to most of the Masters of the Universe, loves to quip that Davos and Bilderberg are just for the messenger boys: the guys who really run the show don’t even bother to show up, ensconced in their uber-private meetings in uber-private clubs, where the real decisions are made.

    Still, anyone following in some detail the rotten state of the “rules-based international order” will have a pretty good idea about the 2022 Bilderberg chatter.

    What the Chinese say

    Secretary of State Little Blinken – Sullivan’s sidekick in the ongoing Crash Test Dummy administration’s Dumb and Dumber remake – has recently claimed that China “supports” Russia on Ukraine instead of remaining neutral.

    What really matters here is that Little Blinken is implying that Beijing wants to destabilize Asia-Pacific – which is a notorious absurdity. Yet that’s the master narrative that must pave the way for the US to muscle up its “Indo-Pacific” concoction. And that’s the briefing Sullivan and Kurt Campbell will be delivering to the “diverse group”.

    Davos – with its new self-billed mantra, “The Great Narrative” – completely excluded Russia. Bilderberg is mostly about containment of China – which after all is the number one existential threat to the Empire of Lies and its satrapies.

    Rather than wait for Bilderberg morsels dispensed by The Economist, it’s much more productive to check out what a cross-section of fact-based Chinese intelligentsia thinks about the new “collective West” racket.

    Let’s start with Justin Lin Yifu, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and now Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, and Sheng Songcheng, former head of the Financial Survey and Statistic Dept. a the Bank of China.

    They advance that if China achieves “dynamic zero infection” on Covid-19 by the end of May (that actually happened: see the end of the Shanghai lockdown), China’s economy may grow by 5.5% in 2022.

    They dismiss the imperial attempt to establish an “Asian version of NATO”: “As long as China continues to grow at a higher rate and to open up, European and ASEAN countries would not participate in the US’s decoupling trap so as to ensure their economic growth and job creation.”

    Three academics from the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and Fudan University touch on the same point: the American-announced “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework”, supposed to be the economic pillar of the Indo-Pacific strategy, is nothing but a cumbersome attempt to “weaken the internal cohesion and regional autonomy of ASEAN.”

    Liu Zongyi stresses that China’s position at the heart of the vastly inter-connected Asian supply chains “has been consolidated”, especially now with the onset of the largest trade deal on the planet, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

    Chen Wengling, Chief Economist of a think tank under the key National Development and Reform Commission, notes  the “comprehensive ideological and technological war against China” launched by the Americans.

    But he’s keen to stress how they are “not ready for a hot war as the US and Chinese economies are so closely linked.” The crucial vector is that “the US has not yet made substantial progress in strengthening its supply chain focusing on four key fields including semiconductors.”

    Chen worries about “China’s energy security”; “China’s silence” on US sanctions on Russia, which “may result in US retaliation”; and crucially, how “China’s plan of building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Ukraine and EU countries will be affected.” What will happen in practice is BRI will be privileging economic corridors across Iran and West Asia, as well as the Maritime Silk Road, instead of the Trans-Siberian corridor across Russia.

    It’s up to Yu Yongding, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank, to go for the jugular, noting how” the global financial system and the US dollar have been weaponized into geopolitical tools. The nefarious behavior of the US in freezing foreign exchange reserves has not only seriously damaged the international credibility of the US but has also shaken the credit foundation of the dominant international financial system in the West.”

    He expresses the consensus among Chinese intel, that “if there is a geopolitical conflict between the US and China, then China’s overseas assets will be seriously threatened, especially its huge reserves. Therefore, the composition of China’s external financial assets and liabilities urgently needs to be adjusted and the portion of US dollar denominated assets in its reserves portfolio should be reduced.”

    This chessboard sucks

    A serious debate is raging across virtually all sectors of Chinese society on the American weaponization of the world financial casino. The conclusions are inevitable: get rid of US Treasuries, fast, by any means necessary; more imports of commodities and strategic materials (thus the importance of the Russia-China strategic partnership); and firmly secure overseas assets, especially those foreign currency reserves.

    Meanwhile Bilderberg’s “diverse group”, on the other side of the pond, is discussing, among other things, what will really happen in case they force the IMF racket to blow up (a key plan to implement The Great Reset, or “Great Narrative”).

    They are starting to literally freak out with the slowly but surely emergence of an alternative, resource-based monetary/financial system: exactly what the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is currently discussing and designing, with Chinese input.

    Imagine a counter-Bilderberg system where a basket of Global South actors, resource-rich but economically poor, are able to issue their own currencies backed by commodities, and finally get rid of their status of IMF hostages. They are all paying close attention to the Russia gas-for-rubles experiment.

    And in China’s particular case, what will always matter is loads of productive capital underpinning a massive, extremely deep industrial and civil infrastructure.

    No wonder Davos and Bilderberg messenger boys, when they look at The Grand Chessboard, are filled with dread: their era of perpetual free lunch is over. What would delight cynics, skeptics, neoplatonists and Taoists galore is that it was Davos-Bilderberg Men (and Women) who actually boxed themselves into zugzwang.

    All dressed up – with nowhere to go. Even JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon – who didn’t even bother to go to Bilderberg – is scared, saying an economic “hurricane” is coming. And overturning the chessboard is no remedy: at best that may invite a ceremonious tuxedo visit by Mr. Sarmat and Mr. Zircon carrying some hypersonic bubbly.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/05/2022 – 00:00

  • The Top 10 Creepiest & Most Dystopian Things Pushed By The World Economic Forum
    The Top 10 Creepiest & Most Dystopian Things Pushed By The World Economic Forum

    Authored by Vigilant Citizen,

    When one talks about the “global elite”, one usually refers to a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals who operate beyond national borders. Through various organizations, these non-elected individuals gather in semi-secrecy to decide policies they want to see applied on a global level.

    The World Economic Forum (WEF) is smack dab in the middle of it all. Indeed, through its annual Davos meetings, the WEF attempts to legitimize and normalize its influence on the world’s democratic nations by having a panel of world leaders attending and speaking at the event.

    A simple look at the list of attendees at these meetings reveals the organization’s incredible reach and influence. The biggest names in media, politics, business, science, technology, and finance are represented at the WEF.

    According to mass media, the Davos meetings gather people to discuss issues such as “inequality, climate change, and international cooperation”. This simplistic description appears to be custom-made to cause the average citizen to yawn in boredom. But topics at the WEF go much further than “inequality”.

    Throughout the years, people at the WEF have said some highly disturbing things, none of which garnered proper media attention. In fact, when one pieces together the topics championed by the WEF, an overarching theme emerges: The total control of humanity using media, science, and technology while reshaping democracies to form a global government.

    If this sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy theory, keep reading. Here are the 10 most dystopian things that are being pushed by the WEF right now. This list sorted is in no particular order. Because they’re all equally crazy.

    #10 Penetrating Governments

    The least one can say is that Klaus Schwab, the founder and the head of the WEF is not a fan of democracy. In fact, he perceives it as an obstacle to a fully globalized world.

    In the 2010 WEF report titled “Global Redesign”, Schwab postulates that a globalized world is best managed by a “self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments (including through the UN system), and select civil society organizations (CSOs)”. This is the exact opposite of a democracy.

    He argued that governments are no longer “the overwhelmingly dominant actors on the world stage” and that “the time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international governance”. For this reason, the Transnational Institute (TNI) described the WEF as “a silent global coup d’état” to capture governance.

    In 2017, at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Schwab blatantly admitted what is continually dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by mass media: The WEF is “penetrating” governments around the world.

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    Schwab said:

    “I have to say, when I mention now names, like Mrs. (Angela) Merkel and even Vladimir Putin, and so on, they all have been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum. But what we are very proud of now is the young generation, like Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau, the President of Argentina and so on.

    We penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau and I know that half of his cabinet, or even more than half of his cabinet, are actually Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum. (…) It’s true in Argentina and it’s true in France, with the President – a Young Global Leader.”

    In this outstanding talk, Schwab blatantly stated that Angela Merkel of Germany, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Emmanuel Macron of France were “groomed” by the WEF. He even adds that at least half of Canada’s cabinet consists of representatives sold to the WEF’s agenda. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the absolute truth, confirmed by the head of the WEF himself.

    #9 Controlling Minds Using Sound Waves

    In 2018, one of the topics of discussion at the WEF was “Mind Control Using Sound Waves” (read my full article about it here). I did not alter this title for sensationalism, those are exactly the words used by the WEF.

    This is the title of an actual article published on the WEF’s official website. It was deleted for obscure reasons, but it is still viewable in web archives.

    In the article, the technology is touted as a possible treatment for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. However, the article also states that “it can cure you, it can get you addicted, and it can kill you”. It can also be used to completely control a person’s mind, remotely. The article states:

    “I can see the day coming where a scientist will be able to control what a person sees in their mind’s eye, by sending the right waves to the right place in their brain. My guess is that most objections will be similar to those we hear today about subliminal messages in advertisements, only much more vehement.

    This technology is not without its risks of misuse. It could be a revolutionary healthcare technology for the sick, or a perfect controlling tool with which the ruthless control the weak. This time though, the control would be literal.”

    The conclusion of the article: Nobody can stop scientists from developing this technology. To prevent misuse, it should be regulated by organizations such as … the WEF. That’s convenient because some companies developing this technology are part of the WEF. Do you see where this is going?

    #8 Pills That Contain Microchips

    Once again, this title sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy theory cleverly worded for sensationalism. It is not. Here’s a video from the WEF’s 2018 meeting where Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, talks about pills that contain microchips.

    Bourla says:

    “FDA approved the first ‘electronic pill’, if I can call it like that. It is basically a biological chip that is in the tablet and, once you take the tablet, and it disolves into your stomach, it sends a signal that you took the tablet. So imagine the applications of that, the compliance. The insurance companies would know that the medicines that patients should take, they do take them. It is fascinating what happens in this field.”

    Is this field truly fascinating? Or utterly dystopian? As Bourla himself said: Imagine the compliance. This kind of technology could easily open the door to all kinds of nefarious applications. Since then, COVID put Pfizer in a position of power never seen before for a pharmaceutical company.

    Like Pfizer, the WEF is also using COVID to further its agenda.

    #7 Praising Massive Lockdowns

    In 2020 and 2021, cities around the world were subjected to massive and drastic lockdowns, causing job losses, suicides, drug overdoses, isolation, mental health issues, domestic abuse, bankruptcies, and homelessness. During this horrific period, children could not attend school for months and were essentially barred from interacting with other children. A slew of small and medium businesses was destroyed while large corporations strived.

    Despite all of this, the WEF could not hide its love of drastic, life-destroying lockdowns. In fact, it released a video surrealistically called “Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world”. Here’s this piece of complete insanity.

    The video states “Lockdowns significantly reduced human activity … leading to Earth’s quietest period in decades,” while showing dystopian images of empty cities and planes stuck on the ground.

    Completely ignoring the immense human suffering caused by these lockdowns, the WEF considered it was all worth it because “carbon emissions were down 7% in 2020”.

    When this thing was first posted, it garnered intense backlash. So the WEF deleted the video above and posted this tweet.

    As you can see, despite deleting the video, the WEF kept praising lockdowns. That’s because the WEF would love to see “covidian” life become permanent.

    #6 “Take a Peek at the Future”

    Judging by comments on YouTube and social media, people absolutely hate videos created by the WEF. But they keep coming. Because they don’t care what you think. They just want to plant their seed of insanity into your mind. In a video titled “How our lives could soon look” (read my full article about it here), the WEF invites viewers to “take a peek at the future”. And it is BLEAK. It is all about making COVID life permanent.

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    The video is filled with masked people, purell dispensers, and QR codes. This is the future they want. Then, there’s this nugget of insanity.

    No. Go away.

    The video proudly says:

    “NASA has invented a system that can ID you from your heartbeat using a laser.”

    As if that wasn’t enough, the video shows children stuck at home and being schooled through screens. The video ends by showing people wearing masks outside, like crazy people.

    NONE. Go away.

    #5 Pushing For a Great Reset

    As stated above, the WEF perceives the pandemic as an “opportunity”. It is not only an opportunity to reshape our personal existence but to restructure the entire world structure according to its principles. The WEF calls it “the Great Reset”. To promote this Reset (that absolutely nobody wants) the WEF released a propaganda video (it really fits the definition of “propaganda”). Here it is in all of its insanity. 

    When I posted an article about this video in 2021, the comments were not yet turned off. And I took a screenshot of the top ones.

    This short video manages to contain an incredible amount of subversive messages. It even ridiculizes “conspiracy theories” while, astoundingly, confirming these theories.

    A screenshot from the video. Are you serious?

    The video also announced the “death of capitalism”.

    Another surreal screenshot from the video.

    While capitalism is based on a self-regulating system of offer and demand, the Great Reset looks to redefine the way businesses are evaluated through new parameters. The main one: Compliance with the elite’s social and political agendas.

    Towards the end, the narrator utters this enigmatic sentence:

    “And that’s all about getting the right people in the right place at the right time”.

    While the video doesn’t quite explain what this sentence actually means in real-life situations, its implications are rather chilling. Instead of allowing successful individuals and businesses to grow organically, the elite’s system would interfere to “get the right people at the right place at the right time”, in accordance with its agenda. In other words, the system would be rigged and compliance with a wider agenda would be mandatory in a new economy.

    The video ends with a call to viewers to get involved. However, of course, you’re not actually invited to the WEF. In fact, they’re actually looking to “recalibrate” your freedom of speech.

    #4 “Recalibrating” freedom of speech

    An easy way to identify world leaders who are groomed by the WEF is through their incessant railing against free speech. They absolutely hate it and they’re constantly calling for the internet to be censored and highly regulated. At the 2022 Davos meeting, Australian “eSafety commissioner” Julie Inman Grant stated that we need a “recalibration of free speech”.

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    Grant said:

    “We are finding ourselves in a place where we have increasing polarization everywhere and everything feels binary when it doesn’t need to be. So I think we’re going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online. You know, from freedom of speech to the freedom to be free from online violence.”

    Here, Grant essentially calls for censorship. She even believes that freedom of speech as a human right should be “recalibrated” using “online violence” as an excuse. There is no such thing as “online violence”. They love to equate speech with violence. It is an extremely manipulative way of justifying China-style censorship.

    Free speech is, in fact, binary. Either it exists or it doesn’t. And they clearly don’t want it to exist.

    #3 Tracking Your Clothes

    The WEF wants to control your clothes. And they’ve made a video about it. Did I mention that people absolutely hate WEF videos? Here’s another one that got people’s blood boiling.

    Using the environment as an excuse (as usual), the WEF announced the coming of clothing laced with “digital passports” that can be traced at all times. Backed by Microsoft (of course), these garments will apparently flood the market by 2025.

    According to the WEF, these chips will allow fashion brands to resell their clothes. I have no idea how that would work. The video makes sure NOT to mention that this technology would be a great way of tracking those who ditched their smartphones.

    But ditching your smartphone might become … impossible.

    #2 “Smartphones will be in your body by 2030”

    At the 2022 Davos meeting, Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark claimed that, by 2030, “smartphones will be implanted directly into the body.” This would coincide with the coming of 6G technology, which is expected to be launched by the end of the decade.

    For years, this site has been documenting the elite’s incessant push for transhumanism, which is the merging of humans with machines. They’re looking to accelerate this transition by making things people cannot live without (such as smartphones) available in transhumanist form.

    Are you noticing their creepy eagerness to insert things inside our bodies?

    #1 “You’ll Own Nothing. And You’ll Be Happy.”

    This is probably the most dystopian moment in WEF history. In 2016, Ida Auken, a Member of Parliament in Denmark said:

    “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better”.

    The WEF loved that quote so much that it tweeted about it.

    The WEF also created a video (that everybody absolutely hated) titled “8 Predictions for the World in 2030”. Here’s a screenshot.

    The WEF loves to phrase its “predictions” in a non-conditional form, as if they’re an inevitability. But look at this smiling guy. He’s clearly happy. Thank you WEF!

    An article on the WEF’s website explains:

    “I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes,” writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand. It sounds utopian, until she mentions that her every move is tracked and outside the city live swathes of discontents, the ultimate vision of a society split in two.

    In this dystopian future, there are no products you can own. Only “services” that are rented and delivered using drones. This system would make all humans completely dependent on WEF-controlled corporations for every single basic need. There would be absolutely no autonomy, no freedom, and no privacy. And you’ll be happy.

    Honorable Mention: Individual carbon footprint tracker

    At the 2022 Davos meeting, Alibaba Group president J. Michael Evans announced the development of an “individual carbon tracker”.

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    Once again, the WEF uses the environment to promote the micro-management of human behavior. Evans says that the tracker can monitor “where they’re traveling, how they’re traveling, what are they’re eating and what are they consuming on the platform”.

    Notice that he used the pronoun “they” and not “we” because there is no way in hell he’s going to use that thing. Me neither.

    In Conclusion

    Upon reviewing this list, two common themes become obvious. The first theme is “penetration”. The WEF wants to penetrate governments using “Global Leaders” (aka Manchurian candidates). It also wants to penetrate our bodies through pills, microchips, and vaccines. It also wants to penetrate our minds using soundwaves, censorship, and propaganda.

    The other theme is “control”. They want to control what we think, where we go, what we say, what we eat, and what we wear.

    Do you know who agrees with the WEF? China. Censorship is widespread, a social credit system controls people’s behaviors and COVID is still used as an excuse for massive lockdowns and total population control. Not to mention the literal concentration camps. Despite all of this, Chinese officials are constantly present at WEF meetings. Why? Because China is basically a laboratory for the WEF’s policies.

    With all of that being said, how can we counteract the WEF’s insanity? How can we vote them out if they were never voted in? A first step would be to elect – at all levels of government – representatives that want nothing to do with the WEF. If our elected officials treated the WEF as the rogue, illegitimate organization that it is, its influence would be greatly reduced.

    Second, we can boycott every company that is part of the WEF. I realize this is easier said than done because many of these companies are virtual monopolies. However, if we stop giving them our money, they’ll stop using our money to poison our lives.

    Then, they’ll own nothing. And we’ll all be happy.

    P.S. If you appreciated this article, please consider supporting The Vigilant Citizen through a VC Membership (which allows you to view the site ad-free + a free copy of the VC e-book) or through Patreon (same perks as a VC Membership). Alternatively, you can make one-time donation here. Thank you for your support!

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 23:03

  • Red Flag Gun Laws Set The Stage For Selective Disarmament Of Conservatives
    Red Flag Gun Laws Set The Stage For Selective Disarmament Of Conservatives

    In his recent address on gun violence, Joe Biden called for a number of new measures to limit 2nd Amendment rights, but two of them stood out as starkly unconstitutional – The issuance of an “assault weapons” ban and the institution of national Red Flag gun laws.

    Both are egregious in their violations of the Bill of Rights, but Red Flag laws set an Orwellian standard that will likely be used against conservatives as a whole.

    How? We have to examine the situation within the context of Joe Biden’s domestic terrorism policies, but first lets explain what Red Flag laws are.

    Red Flag laws, also known as “Extreme Protection Orders,” are generally associated with assumptions of mental health and instability (remember the word “assumptions”). The parameters of such laws tend to be incredibly broad and ambiguous, and allow for almost anyone in regular proximity to a person to accuse them of being psychologically unstable. The accusation can come from a family member, a significant other, a work associate, etc.

    Once the accusation is made, authorities can confiscate the target person’s firearms without due process under the law on the grounds that they present a danger to themselves and others. No jury, no testing, no proof is required to get a court order. It is then up to the accused to prove they are NOT unstable and that they deserve to have their firearms returned. This process could take years, if the guns are ever returned at all.

    Some versions of Red Flag bills even allow police to declare you dangerous on their own accord, even without direct contact or a witness. In other words, it’s a pre-crime system open for massive abuse. And keep in mind, we live in a digital era in which social media is carefully monitored, often by people that do not have our best interests at heart. Red Flag laws could even extend to comments made and taken out of context on social media platforms.

    But why should this be dangerous to conservatives in particular?

    Biden’s White House has made it abundantly clear that he intends to conflate many conservative positions with “extremism.” In his policies on domestic terrorism, Biden and his handlers insinuate that the majority of terrorist concerns come from right leaning Americans, even though the White House is unable to produce more than a few examples of “right leaning” people committing terrorist acts and is rather loose with their definitions of terrorism. Remember, they continue to call the protests of January 6th an “insurrection” despite the fact that there was no insurrection and no one was even armed.

    The White House blatantly ignores terrorist acts by people associated with the political left and makes no mention of the “Summer of Love” in which BLM and ANTIFA attempted to burn the country to the ground.

    As with all leftist propaganda, Biden and the Democrats have sought to associate normal political and social concerns as well as constitutional concerns with nefarious behaviors such as racism and treason. If you oppose illegal immigration, want proof of citizenship for voting, support gun rights and the constitutional right to a militia, believe the government is corrupt and has overstepped its constitutional mandate, oppose globalism and corporate monopoly, etc. then you are an extremist in the eyes of the Biden Administration. Not only that, but you are comparable to groups like the KKK and individual terrorists like the Oklahoma City Bomber.

    The message is clear within White House policy papers – Domestic terrorist concerns will revolve around conservatives and patriots. They will be pigeon holed as the worst humans imaginable, while any other potential threats will be dismissed.

    Red Flag laws open the door for punishment of political opposition by associating contrary views with “extremism” and then extremism with mental instability. Biden’s policies specifically mention people who are hostile to government authority, which falls right in line with rhetoric used by the DHS and other alphabet agencies over the past several years relating to something called “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.”

    When gun control laws were initiated by the Third Reich in Germany in 1938, guns were confiscated from political enemies and the Jews while gun rights were granted to loyal party members. This standard of selective confiscation helped to strengthen the Nazi Party through a system of rights as rewards; if you said the correct things and virtue signaled your love of the state, you got to keep certain freedoms. If you spoke out of line, your freedoms were immediately forfeit. This included access to firearms.

    Red Flag laws create an environment where political opposition to the prevailing order can be legally punished as psychological instability. Under the Biden Admin, leftists may feel emboldened to take advantage of the open ended nature of the laws to threaten individual conservative and patriot activists, or, the government could simply declare all conservatives dangerous by default. Leftists would remain happy and secure in their ability to hold onto their weapons while incrementally depriving their enemies of a means of defense.

    This attack should be taken seriously by all gun rights advocates and anyone outside of the far left cult, but the leftists are not the biggest danger. It’s perhaps not surprising that some members of the GOP have expressed support for Red Flag laws as a “bipartisan compromise” to outright gun bans. These politicians are either too stupid to see the long term consequences of Red Flags, or they are well away and don’t care because they are fake conservatives.

    Any Republican that throws their weight behind Red Flag laws should be treated as hostile to the constitution and the 2nd Amendment in particular. Red flag laws are not a “compromise,” they are the Holy Grail of gun control. They are the ultimate Trojan Horse. They are the means to deprive anyone of their firearms for any fabricated reason, and they will create an automatic culture of self censorship in which all anti-establishment voices live in terror of speaking out.

    Anti-gun authoritarians are fearful of direct confrontation and direct confiscation. Going door-to-door is not their idea of a good time. Instead, they prefer the use of backdoor confiscation, going after a handful of people and then moving on to the next group. Slowly at first, until it is too late for people to organize effectively against it. The 2nd Amendment is not a privilege granted for loyalty to a particular regime or ideology and it is not dependent on the crime rate; it is sacrosanct and stands outside of the conditions of the times we live. Shootings may rise and fall, but none of this matters – once gun rights are taken away, it is unlikely they will ever be returned.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 23:00

  • US State-Affiliated NewsGuard Targets Consortium News
    US State-Affiliated NewsGuard Targets Consortium News

    Authored by Joe Lauria via Consortium News,

    Consortium News is being “reviewed” by NewsGuard, a U.S. government-linked organization that is trying to enforce a narrative on Ukraine while seeking to discredit dissenting views. The organization has accused Consortium News, begun in 1995 by former Associated Press investigative reporter Robert Parry, of publishing “false content” on Ukraine.  

    It calls “false” essential facts about Ukraine that have been suppressed in mainstream media: 1) that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and 2) that neo-Nazism is a significant force in Ukraine. Reporting crucial information left out of corporate media is Consortium News‘ essential mission. But NewsGuard considers these facts to be “myths” and is demanding Consortium News “correct” these “errors.”

    NewsGuard has a partnership with the Pentagon. (Joe Lauria)

    Who is NewsGuard?

    NewsGuard set itself up in 2018 as a judge of news organizations’ credibility. The front page of NewsGuard’s website shows that it is “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as with several major corporations, such as Microsoft. The nature of these “partnerships” is not entirely clear. 

    NewsGuard is a private corporation that can shield itself from First Amendment obligations. But it has connections to formerly high-ranking U.S. government officials in addition to its “partnerships” with the State Dept. and the Pentagon.

    Among those sitting on NewsGuard’s advisory board are Gen. Michael Hayden, the former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director; Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Homeland Security director and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO. NewGuard says its ”advisors provide advice and subject-matter expertise to NewsGuard. They play no role in the determinations of ratings or the Nutrition Label write ups of websites unless otherwise noted and have no role in the governance or management of the organization.”

    The co-CEO, with former Wall Street Journal publisher Louis Gordon Crovitz, is Steven Brill, who in the 1990s published Brill’s Content, a magazine that was billed as a watchdog of the press, critiquing the role of the media to hold government to account.  NewsGuard is a government-affiliated organization judging media like Consortium News that is totally independent of government or corporations.   

    NewsGuard has a rating process that results in a news organization receiving either a green or red label. Fox News and other major media, for example, have received green labels. 

    Getting a red label means that potentially millions of people that have the NewsGuard extension installed and operating on their browsers will see the  green or red mark affixed to websites on social media and Google searches. (For individuals that do not already have it installed and operating on Microsoft’s browser, it costs $4.95 a month in the U.S., £4.95 in the U.K., or €4.95 in the EU to run the extension.) 

    Ex-N.S.A. and C.IA. director Michael Hayden in 2015. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

    According to NewsGuard, libraries in the U.S. and Britain have had it installed on their computers, and it is also being put on computers of U.S. active duty personnel.  Slate reported in January 2019 that NewsGuard:

    “struck a deal with Microsoft to incorporate those ratings into the tech giant’s Edge browser as an optional setting. That’s when the Guardian noticed that the Mail Online had been tagged by NewsGuard with a ‘red’ label, a reliability score of 3 out of 9, and the following warning: ‘Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.’ For Microsoft Edge users with the ‘News Ratings’ feature turned on, that warning appeared alongside every link to the Mail Online—whether in Google search results, Facebook or Twitter feeds, or the Mail’s own homepage.”

    Approach to Consortium News

    Consortium News was contacted by NewsGuard analyst Zachary Fishman. In his request to speak to someone at Consortium News he said categorically that CN had published “false content” and that the interview would be on the record. “I’m hoping to talk with someone who could answer a few questions about its structure and editorial processes — including its ownership, its handling of corrections, and its publication of false content,” he wrote in an email.

    As editor-in-chief, I informed him that our founder, editors and writers came from high levels of establishment journalism. I told him that in thousands of press interviews I’ve conducted over nearly half a century in journalism I had never known anyone accusing a prospective interviewee of misconduct upfront and then determining that the interview would be on the record, when the ground rules are usually set by the person being interviewed. 

    Fishman apologized and tried to say his mind wasn’t made up about Consortium News, when he had clearly stated that it was. “I do apologize that the wording of my email insinuated that I had come to a predetermined conclusion on whether your website has published false content, when I have not — be sure that I am interested in your responses to my questions,” he wrote in an email.

    According to his LinkedIn profile, Fishman had one previous job in science and financial journalism that lasted 15 months for a company called Fastinform that is now defunct. Last month, all the links of his published pieces on LinkedIn went to a site that no longer exists. The links have now been removed.

    Fishman has degrees in health, environment and science journalism and engineering physics. He has no experience in political reporting and especially of the politics of Eastern Europe and U.S.-Russia relations.

    NewsGuard’s determination on Consortium News will be made by the analyst and, “At least one senior editor and NewsGuard’s co-CEOs review every Nutrition Label prior to publication to ensure that the rating is as fair and accurate as possible.”

    Charge: There Was ‘No US-Backed Coup’

    NewsGuard alleges that Consortium News has published “false content” by reporting that there was a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 and that neo-Nazis have significant influence in the country.

    Fishman took issue with a:

    “February 2022 article ‘Ukraine: Guides to Reflection,’ [which] asserted, ‘Hence, the inflation of Russian behavior in Ukraine (where Washington organized a coup against a democratically elected government because we disliked its political complexion) … .’

    Fishman then wrote: 

    “The U.S. supported the Maidan revolution that ousted then-Ukraine President Viktor Yanikovych (sic) in 2014 — including a December 2013 visit by John McCain to Kyiv in support of protesters — but there is no evidence that the U.S. ‘organized’ a ‘coup.’ Instead, it has the markings of a popular uprising, precipitated by widely covered protests against Yanukovych’s decision to suspend preparations for the signing of an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union.”

    Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected as president of Ukraine in 2010 in an election certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a fact not mentioned in NewsGuard’s writings on the change of government in Ukraine.  Even though Yanukovych agreed to an EU political settlement and early elections, violence forced him to flee from the capital on Feb. 21, 2014. Reporting that the neo-Nazi Right Sector was at the forefront of the violent overthrow, The New York Times (green check) wrote earlier that day:

    “Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd.

    ‘The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,’ he said. ‘Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.’ He added that he and his supporters were ‘ready to take responsibility for the further development of the revolution.’ The crowd shouted: ‘Good! Good!’

    A study on the violence used to overthrow the government, by Prof. Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University, says the overthrow succeeded because of “the embeddedness of violent groups” in a non-violent protest. The violence began on Dec.  1, 2013 when these violent groups attacked police with “iron chains, flares, stones and petrol bombs” and tried to ram a bulldozer through police lines.  The police viciously fought back that day.  

    As the International Business Times (IBT) (green check) wrote about these groups at the time:

    “According to a member of anti-fascist Union Ukraine, a group that monitors and fights fascism in Ukraine, ‘There are lots of nationalists here [EuroMaidan] including Nazis. They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.

    Different groups [of anarchists] came together for a meeting on the Maidan. While they were meeting, a group of Nazis came in a larger group, they had axes and baseball bats and sticks, helmets, they said it was their territory. They called the anarchists things like Jews, blacks, communists. There weren’t even any communists, that was just an insult. The anarchists weren’t expecting this and they left. People with other political views can’t stay in certain places, they aren’t tolerated,’ a member of the group continued.”

    The violence by far-right groups was evidently condoned by Sen. John McCain who expressed his support for the uprising by addressing the Maidan crowd later that month. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and then U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt visited the square after the violence had broken out.

    Violence during the Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)

    NewsGuard’s account of the events of Feb. 21, 2014 says that even though Yanukovych agreed to the early elections, “angry protestors demanded Yanukovych’s immediate resignation,” and he fled on that day after “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts.” NewsGuard then says “protestors took control of several government buildings the next day.”

    Government Buildings Seized

    But protestors had already seized government buildings as early as December 2013. On Jan. 24 protestors broke into the Agriculture Ministry building in Kiev and occupied it. On the same day barricades were set up near the presidential headquarters.  Government buildings in the west of the country had also been occupied. The Guardian  (green check) reported on Jan. 24: 

    “There were dramatic developments in the west of the country on Thursday as hundreds of people forced their way into the office of the regional governor in the city of Lviv, and forced him to sign a resignation letter. Oleh Salo, a Yanukovych appointee in a city where support for the president is in the low single digits, later said he signed the letter under duress and was rescinding his resignation.

    Thousands also stormed regional administration headquarters in Rivne on Thursday, breaking down doors and demanding the release of people detained in the unrest there, Unian news agency reported. In the town of Cherkasy, 125 miles south of Kiev, about 1,000 protesters took over the first two floors of the main administration building and lit fires outside the building.

    Similar action took place in Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytsky in western and central Ukraine, as well as parts of the north-east, the Party of the Regions said.”

    Protestors had begun occupying Kiev City Hall in December, with a portrait of Ukraine’s World War II fascist leader Stepan Bandera hanging from the rafters. On the night of Feb. 21, the leader of the Neo-fascist Right Sector, Andriy Parubiy, announced that the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), the Presidential Administration, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had all come under control of the protestors.

    Therefore NewsGuard has published “false content” by reporting that government buildings were occupied the day after Yanukovych fled the capital. It should print a correction.

    On the day after Yanukovych fled, the Rada voted without the presence of Yanukovych’s party — the largest in the country — to impeach him after the fact of his violent overthrow. NewsGuard omitted the key fact that the impeachment vote was tainted by the absence of Yanukovych’s party and that the impeachment became largely irrelevant after violence forced him to flee the capital.

    Democratically-elected leaders are removed by electoral defeat, impeachment or votes of no confidence, not by violence.  NewsGuard writes that “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts” on the day Yanukovych was forced out, but doesn’t say why.  As Jacobin (NewsGuard green check) magazine reports:

    “Whatever one thinks of the Maidan protests, the increasing violence of those involved was key to their ultimate victory. In response to a brutal police crackdown, protesters began fighting with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, even a bulldozer — and, eventually, firearms, all culminating in what was effectively an armed battle in February, which left thirteen police officers and nearly fifty protesters dead. The police ‘could no longer defend themselves’ from protesters’ attacks,’ writes political scientist Sergiy Kudelia, causing them to retreat, and precipitating Yanukovych’s exit.”

    NewsGuard calls the events a “revolution,” yet revolutions in history have typically been against monarchs or dictators, not against democratically-elected leaders. For instance, the 1776 American Revolution, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and countless others were against monarchs. Coups have been against both elected and non-elected leaders. Revolutions change political systems, usually from monarchies to republics. Ukraine’s political system was not changed, only its leader.

    By any measure, Yanukovych’s ouster was an unconstitutional change in government. His “impeachment” without his party present for the vote came after government buildings had been seized and after violence drove him from the capital.  

    Circumstantial Evidence

    In its version of these events, NewsGuard only refers to circumstantial evidence of the coup, interpreting it as U.S. “support” for a “revolution” against a democratically-elected president.

    NewsGuard fails to point out that McCain, Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) as well as  Nuland appeared on stage in the Maidan with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Neo-fascist Svoboda Party, formerly known as the Social National Party.

    NewsGuard does not consider how such events would be seen in the United States if a senior Russian foreign ministry official, two leading Russian lawmakers and Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. appeared on stage with a far-right American leader to address a crowd on the Washington Mall seeking to oust an elected U.S. president. If that president were overthrown violently, would Americans think it Russian-backed the coup?

    McCain addressing crowd in Kiev, Dec. 15, 2013. (U.S. Senate/Office of Chris Murphy/Wikimedia Commons)

    NewsGuard discusses Nuland’s 2013 speech in which she revealed that since 1991 the U.S. had spent $5 billion to help bring about Ukraine’s “aspirations.” What it fails to point out is that U.S. aspirations were to turn Ukraine towards the West and away from Russia. And the U.S. had work to do.

    In a 2008 poll, 17 years after this U.S. effort began, and the year in which the U.S. said Ukraine would one day join NATO, 50 percent of Ukrainians actually opposed NATO membership against just 24.3 percent who favored it. A 2010 Gallup poll showed that 40 percent of Ukrainians viewed NATO as more threat than protector.  Just 17 percent had the opposite view. So building up civil society through U.S.-funded NGOs to favor the West was the U.S. challenge.  

    NewsGuard does not mention that part of the $5 billion the U.S. spent was to help organize protests. There was genuine popular dissatisfaction with Yanukovych that the NED nurtured and trained. Jacobin reported of the 2014 events:

    “US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests. Just two months before they broke out, the NED’s then president, pointing to Yanukovych’s European outreach, wrote that “the opportunities are considerable, and there are important ways Washington could help.”

    In practice, this meant funding groups like New Citizen, which the Financial Times reported “played a big role in getting the protest up and running,” led by a pro-EU opposition figure. Journalist Mark Ames discovered the organization had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from US democracy promotion initiatives.”

    Writing in Consortium News six days after Yanukovych’s ouster, Parry reported that over the previous year, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds NGOs in countries the U.S. targets for regime change, had bankrolled 65 projects in Ukraine totaling more than $20 million. Parry called it “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

    The NED, on Feb. 25, the day after the Russian invasion, deleted all projects in Ukraine it funded, which are archived here. The NED meddled in Ukrainian politics in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution.  The Washington Post (green check) wrote in 1991 that what the C.I.A. once did in secret — destabilizing and overthrowing regimes —  the NED was now doing openly.

    C.I.A. or NED-led coups are never made up out of whole cloth. The U.S. works with genuine opposition movements within a country, sometimes popular uprisings, to finance, train and direct them. This U.S. has a long history of overthrowing foreign governments, the most infamous examples being Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954,  and Chile in 1973.

    In September 2013, before the Maidan uprising began, long-time NED head Carl Gerhsman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” in a Washington Post op-ed piece, and warned that “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

    In 2016 he said the NED has been involved in Ukraine since the 1980s and he praised the “overthrow of Yanukovych.”

    Nuland-Pyatt Tape Omitted

    Most significantly, NewsGuard’s attempt to refute U.S. involvement in the coup omits the 2014 intercepted and leaked telephone call between Nuland and Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before Yanukovych was overthrown. 

    On the leaked tape, Nuland and Pyatt talk about “midwifing” a new government; Vice President Joe Biden’s role, and setting up meetings with Ukrainian politicians to make it happen. Nuland says the prime minister should be Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and indeed he became prime minister after the coup.

    At the time, the BBC (green check) wrote of the leak: “The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that ‘ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future’. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals.”

    The U.S. State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the EU.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark as a distraction from the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs. 

    Why did Nuland say, “Fuck the EU”? At the time she said it, France, Germany and Poland were working for the EU on a political settlement with Russia to the Maidan crisis that would leave Yanukovych in power. 

    Indeed the E.U. brokered a deal with Yanukovych, who agreed to early elections by December, a restoration of the 2004 Constitution and an amnesty for all protestors, clearing the way for no one to be held responsible for the violent ouster. Yanukovych  announced the agreement, with E.U. officials at his side in Kiev, on Feb. 21, 2014. Later that day he was violently driven from power.

    Leaving the historic role of the NED and the essential Nuland-Pyatt conversation out of its reporting is an omission of evidence by NewsGuard, typical of corporate media. Omitting crucial elements of a story changes its meaning and in this case undermines NewsGuard’s account of the events of 2014. 

    This is an excellent example of why Parry started Consortium News: to report on crucial information that corporate media sometimes purposely and deceptively leave out to change the meaning of a story. NewsGuard should correct its story about the coup, not Consortium News.

    The rest of the full report at Consortium News…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 22:30

  • Watch: An Enraged Peter Navarro Describes Being Arrested And Shackled Over Misdemeanor J6 Indictment
    Watch: An Enraged Peter Navarro Describes Being Arrested And Shackled Over Misdemeanor J6 Indictment

    Former Trump adviser and Director of Trade Peter Navarro is livid after the Biden DOJ arrested him at a DC-area airport prior to a scheduled flight to Nashville, Tennessee, for telling the House January 6 committee to pound sand over a subpoena.

    In a recently filed lawsuit challenging the J6 Committee, Navarro disclosed that he had been commanded to appear before a DC grand jury, as well as turn over all documents requested by the J6 Committee “including but not limited to any communications with formal [sic] President Trump and/or his counsel or representative.”

    “Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said during his arraignment, adding: “I was with distinguished public servants for four years. Nobody ever questioned my ethics.”

    Outside, the 72-year-old explained that he’d been hauled in and shackled.

    “Instead of coming to my door where I live – which by the way, is right next to the FBI. Instead of calling me and saying ‘hey, we need you down at court, we’ve got a warrant for you’ – I’d have gladly come. What did they do? They intercepted me getting on a plane, and then they put me in handcuffs, they bring me here, they put me in leg irons, they stick me in a cell … that’s punitive.”

    “What they did to me today violated the constitution,” he continued.

    Former White House adviser Stephen Miller had Navarro’s back.

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    As did Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

    Others pointed out that former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder did the same thing and was held in contempt of Congress without similar treatment.

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    Rudy Giuliani called it shameful.

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     In Navarro’s lawsuit, he argues that his responsibilities to the Trump White House should be taken into consideration.

    “Given the economic and national security ramifications of a possibly stolen election, I worked diligently in my official capacity as a government official within the White House and as a senior White House adviser to help the president and other senior advisers navigate what appeared to be the most sophisticated assault on American democracy ever perpetrated,” reads the filing.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 22:00

  • Yellen Throws Biden Under The Bus On Runaway Inflation: She "Wanted" $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Cut By A Third
    Yellen Throws Biden Under The Bus On Runaway Inflation: She “Wanted” $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Cut By A Third

    Perhaps the most idiotic thing to ever come out of the Biden administration – and there has been plenty to choose from – was the repeated lie that (trillions in) stimulus does not cause runaway inflation, but rather lowers it.

    And while Biden’s handlers were generous enough to bribe supposedly smart people to repeat said lie to give it credibility, like for example the chief economist at JPMorgan who last March said that the $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus “won’t spark runaway inflation” (narrator: it did)…

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    … and of course Janet Yellen, whom we mocked last March when she said that an “inflation problem was unlikely to result from stimulus”…

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    … the truth, of course, as Jeff Gundlach noted recently, is that an “intelligent twelve year old” was able to predict that excessive stimulus causes inflation…

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    … and yet the 75-year-old Treasury Secretary and former Fed chief could not, as she herself admitted last week when Yellen told CNN “Well, look, I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take” when she was shown previous remarks she’d made last year where she indicated there would only be a “small risk” of inflation, and that it would be “manageable.”

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    Only instead of taking one for the team of senile, clueless economists and Putin puppets (because if there is any admin that has done the Kremlin’s bidding by sending oil prices to near record highs, it is Biden’s) especially after the so-called “president” made it clear he will blame Powell and the Fed ahead of the midterms for his admin’s catastrophic MMT policies which have assured an avalanche this November that will hand control of Congress to republicans on a silver platter…

    …  Yellen has decided to strike back, and as Bloomberg reports citing an advance copy of the Treasury secretary’s biography- due out on Sept. 27, just weeks before the midterms –  the treasury secretary initially urged Biden administration officials to scale back the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan by a third “worried by the specter of inflation“… the same stimulus plan that she herself said last March would not lead to an inflation problem. But, in retrospect, she appears to have changed her mind.

    “Privately, Yellen agreed with Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly,” writes Owen Ullmann, the book’s author and a veteran Washington journalist who has covered economics and politics in Washington since 1983, referring to former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who severely criticized the size of the aid plan.

    Of course, since it would be an act of near treason for the Secretary of the Treasury to confirm now (if not then) that she personally was against what has emerged as Biden’s most hated policy, prompting questions about how actually gives economic advice to Biden and why does Soros have more influence on US policies than the Treasury, the denials came in fast and furious, with Bloomberg reporting that a Treasury spokesperson disputed the claims.

    “The Secretary did not urge a smaller package and, as she has said, believes that without the American Rescue Plan, millions of people would have been economically scarred, and the country’s historically fast recovery would have been far slower,” Treasury spokesperson Lily Adams said in response to the book’s claims. What Lily failed to mention is that without the package, US gas prices wouldn’t be on the verge of double digits.

    Ullmann’s account sheds new light on a policy debate that preceded the eruption of inflation, which now poses a major political threat to President Joe Biden and his Democratic party’s control of Congress.

    Fears of overheating have since been confirmed making a mockery of the idiots known as “team transitory” as price increases this year hit a 40-year high and have destroyed Biden’s standing among voters, who is now even more unpopular than Trump was at this time in his tenure. Meanwhile, sensing doom in November, Democrats have blamed the cost surge on supply-chain bottlenecks caused by the pandemic and on energy price surges following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They’ve also pointed the finger at US energy companies, and most recently, the Fed itself. But as it has now become clear to both smart 12 year olds and even economists, outsize demand – fueled in part by Biden’s spending plan – was the driving force behind galloping inflation.

    Yellen’s concern about inflation “is why she had sought without success to scale back the $1.9 trillion relief plan by a third early in 2021 before Congress passed the enormous program,” wrote Ullmann, who had “unfiltered access” to Yellen as he researched the book, according to publisher PublicAffairs.

    Ullmann wrote, “She worried that so much money in the pockets of consumers and businesses would drive up prices at a time when the pandemic had caused severe shortages of goods that were in unprecedentedly high demand.”

    Now if only she had said as much instead of – say – repeating the opposite over and over, just to placate her senile boss and lose every last shred of credibility she may have had. Hilarious, even the biography – her desperate attempt at expiration – is confused how to spin Yellen’s revisionary view of events:

    It’s unclear from the book how staunchly Yellen lobbied to cut back the size of the third wave of aid or whom she engaged with in the administration. And Ullmann goes on to emphasize that Yellen threw her full weight behind the bill as it moved ahead in its larger size.

    The Treasury chief endorsed the package before US lawmakers, telling them that historically low interest costs on federal debt had given the government space for fiscal expansion. She has continued to defend the ARP even as high inflation proved persistent. In an April 28 speech, she said it had helped drive unemployment to 3.6%, practically a 50-year low, and had prevented the pandemic from causing a much higher degree of suffering for Americans.

    Still, Yellen “would have preferred something closer to $1.3 trillion, according to colleagues,” Ullmann wrote. “But given the choice between Biden’s full $1.9 trillion package and less than $1 trillion that some in Congress preferred, Yellen believed going big was the better course.”

    Yellen also felt that even if the bill pumped too much money into the economy, the subsequent spike in inflation would be “transitory,” a term she used through 2021.

    Even more remarkable is that according to the biography, while Yellen pushed back against Biden’s stimmies, but not really and endorsed them in public at every opportunity, Yellen was angered by Summers’ attacks on the stimulus plan, “even though she shared some of his worries.” Yes, you read that right: Yellen disagreed with Biden, but she was more angry when someone else criticized his plan! This kind of cognitive dissonance of the highest order has to be a Democrat thing.

    “Yellen was irritated that he would cause his own party so much grief by arming Republicans and some Democrats — such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative by Democratic standards — with a justification for opposing subsequent spending proposals on Biden’s agenda,” Ullmann wrote.

    Manchin cited rising inflation, along with long-term debt concerns, when he later opposed Biden’s 10-year $3.5 trillion economic development proposal known as Build Back Better.

    Of course, it’s too little too late now, and with even the liberal media turning on Biden, Yellen’s last-ditch attempt to preserve some of her reputation in the twilight of her career, and life, will be a miserable failure just like Biden’s entire administration as even Jeff Bezos of Democracy Dies In Doublespeak fame, now attests…

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 21:44

  • The Complexity Trap
    The Complexity Trap

    Via The Consciousness of Sheep blog,

    Let’s talk about “value.”  Value, at its simplest, is merely the consequences of acting upon the world in a manner which “improves” (some might say despoils) some part of it.  If, for example, someone takes a pile of timber, a saw and some glue and nails, and then turns it into a table, they have added value.  The same is true of goods and services across the economy.  Wherever people act to improve the goods and services that we collectively consume, value is added… governments even attempt to tax that additional value via, well, Value Added Tax.

    Value also has a clear relationship to another key factor in the way an economy works – productivity.  We have all been brought up to understand that the simplest way of growing an economy is to improve productivity.  In effect, to do more for less, or to put it another way, to make the addition of value more efficient.

    In the coming months, as the western economies crater as a consequence of the follies of their elites, we are going to hear a great many siren voices urging us to improve our collective productivity in order to pull our stagnating economies out of the doldrums and to put an end to the cost-of-living crisis.  And yet, among the biggest mistakes made by almost all of us is the false attribution of value and productivity.

    For many on the political left, and at least some on the right, labour is the source of value – a view which can be traced back to classical liberal economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo.  In classic Marxist thinking, capitalism uses the payment of wages for workers’ time as a means of converting the surplus value they create into profit.  Politics in a capitalist economy then becomes an ongoing struggle over the respective shares of surplus value divided into the wages of workers and the profits of capitalists.  According to Ricardo:

    “The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production…”

    Smith qualified this by arguing it was labour time rather than quantity which mattered:

    “If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for, or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days’ or two hours’ labour, should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.”

    This line of thinking was flawed, since it allowed that the product of a bad or slow worker would have more value than the product of a good and fast worker.  Marx was to tidy the thinking up by insisting that it was “socially necessary labour time” which mattered.  The value of our wooden table was not the time our worker took to construct it, but rather the average time that a skilled carpenter would take to construct a wooden table.  The other useful line of thought offered by Marx was that there is a difference between exchange and use value.  This, for example, helps us understand why a Chippendale table might sell for a much higher amount than a plain utilitarian table.  In monetary terms, the value of an item is merely whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.  Nevertheless, there was something about socially necessary labour time which set a minimum value below which an item is neither worth selling nor even constructing.

    Labour, in its naked form, however, is an incredibly weak source of value.  And as Marx began to see later in his life – when Britain’s industrialisation had matured significantly – industrial machinery clearly added far more value than labour alone. (Although Marx refused to take this observation to its logical conclusion since it contradicted his class-based politics).  In any case, Marx was wrong.  It was not the machines themselves which were the source of value, but the coal-power which drove them.  Nobel Prize-winning chemist and contrarian economist Frederick Soddy arrived at the real source of value in the early 1930s:

    “Still one point seemed lacking to account for the phenomenal outburst of activity that followed in the Western world the invention of the steam engine, for it could not be ascribed simply to the substitution of inanimate energy for animal labour. The ancients used the wind in navigation and drew upon water-power in rudimentary ways. The profound change that then occurred seemed to be rather due to the fact that, for the first time in history, men began to tap a large capital store of energy and ceased to be entirely dependent on the revenue of sunshine. All the requirements of pre-scientific men were met out of the solar energy of their own times. The food they ate, the clothes they wore, and the wood they burnt could be envisaged, as regards the energy content which gives them use-value, as stores of sunlight. But in burning coal one releases a store of sunshine that reached the earth millions of years ago. In so far as it can be used for the purposes of life, the scale of living may be, to almost any necessary extent, augmented, devotion to the primitive ideas of the peoples of Kirkcaldy [i.e., Adam Smith and his followers] and Judea notwithstanding [i.e., economics is more religion than science].

    “Then came the odd thought about fuel considered as a capital store, out of the consumption of which our whole civilisation, in so far as it is modern, has been built. You cannot burn it and still have it, and once burnt there is no way, thermodynamically, of extracting perennial interest from it. Such mysteries are among the inexorable laws of economics rather than of physics. With the doctrine of evolution, the real Adam turns out to have been an animal, and with the doctrine of energy the real capitalist proves to be a plant. The flamboyant era through which we have been passing is due not to our own merits, but to our having inherited accumulations of solar energy from the carboniferous era, so that life for once has been able to live beyond its income. Had it but known it, it might have been a merrier age!”

    Insofar as the physiocrats, living during the heyday of pre-industrial landed estates, saw the land as the source of value it is because of the way the plants which grow on the land are able to photosynthesize solar energy and convert it into hydrocarbons which can feed humans directly or feed the animals which humans consume for fat and protein.  In the same way, it was not so much the industrial machinery – still less the mass army of industrial workers – which provided the eighteenth and nineteenth century economy with massive quantities of surplus value so much as the fossilised solar energy locked up in the form of the coal which provided the energy behind the industrial economy.

    Soddy also pointed to what was then the future predicament of fossil fuel depletion.  Not only did we burn our way through the once-and-done “capital store” of accessible coal, but from the early twentieth century we set about the rapid depletion of oil and gas too.  It is the surplus useful energy (sometimes referred to as exergy) – the amount left over after we have obtained the energy to begin with – which is the source of the surplus value generated in the industrial economy.  And the huge quantities involved explain why a large part of the population of western states have enjoyed a standard of living which would be the envy of kings, and, indeed, why we are ruled over by a handful of godzillionaires whose wealth is so vast as to make the Gods of Olympus jealous…  which is something of a problem because the world recently passed peak exergy.

    That is, while there may be roughly as much fossil fuel in the ground as we have consumed in the course of three centuries of industrialisation, we also burned our way through the cheap and easy deposits first.  Consider this an issue of “socially necessary exergy” – nobody was going to buy or even extract oil from deep beneath the North Sea or from hydraulically fractured shale deposits while it was still possible to obtain all the oil you needed by knocking a pipe into the ground.  We will, of course, continue to extract ever more difficult and expensive fossil fuels, but their extraction will remorselessly consume an ever-greater part of the exergy previously available to the wider economy.  Which, in turn, means that the wider economy is going to shrink… and we have no economic theory to explain how we are going to handle this.

    What of productivity?  Surely – and visibly – technology adds value.  After all, we now have automated production processes which can manufacture goods with barely a human finger laid upon them.  But as with labour back in Adam Smith’s day, what the technology is achieving is the efficient conversion of exergy into value.  And while this can have massive results – there is a big difference, for example, between Trevithick’s 1804 steam locomotive trundling down the Taff valley at walking pace (and later having to be towed back up by horses) and Gresley’s Mallard achieving the world record for a steam locomotive of 126 mph in 1938 – there are both physical (thermodynamic) and economic limits to what can be achieved.  As with fossil fuels themselves, technological improvement – aka productivity gains, i.e., optimising the conversion of exergy into value – is cheap and easy to begin with but hard and expensive later on:

    There is a reason why Mallard still holds the speed record for a steam locomotive, and it is the same reason why nobody has replaced Concorde in providing supersonic commercial flight – it costs too much!  Indeed, Mallard and Concorde both turned out to be state-subsidised luxury passenger transport for the wealthy.  And in both cases, electorates – most of whom could not afford the ticket price – eventually refused to vote for any more corporate welfare.

    Although we like to pretend that the technology which surrounds us is novel and world-changing, as physicist Tom Murphy has shown, much of it would be recognisable to someone in the USA of the 1950s:

    “Look around your environment and imagine your life as seen through the eyes of a mid-century dweller. What’s new? Most things our eyes land on will be pretty well understood. The big differences are cell phones (which they will understand to be a sort of telephone, albeit with no cord and capable of sending telegram-like communications, but still figuring that it works via radio waves rather than magic), computers (which they will see as interactive televisions), and GPS navigation (okay: that one’s thought to be magic even by today’s folk). They will no doubt be impressed with miniaturization as an evolutionary spectacle, but will tend to have a context for the functional capabilities of our gizmos.

    “Telling ourselves that the pace of technological transformation is ever-increasing is just a fun story we like to believe is true. For many of us, I suspect, our whole world order is built on this premise.”

    The point is that most of these technologies have already reaped the cheap and easy, and, indeed, almost all of the hard and expensive improvements that are ever going to be made.  In this respect, we are entering a period similar to the early twentieth century when we hit the limits to coal-powered technologies.  The big difference today being that there is no even more energy-dense and easily available new energy source available to us to usher in a new suite of technologies in the way that oil-based technologies rapidly replaced coal in the years after World War Two.

    From this viewpoint, the smart thing to do today would be to simplify our way of life – and write-off a large part of the monetary claims on future exergy growth which will not be arriving – in order to bring our economies into line with the declining surplus energy available to us.  The paradox though, is that – even at today’s higher prices – energy does not appear to be the biggest problem before us.  For all of the complaints about the rapid and steep rise in fuel and electricity prices, they remain low in comparison to the benefits that we derive from them. 

    In the monetary economy, on the other hand, it is the cost of labour which looks like our biggest headache.  In almost every business, the wage bill is far and away the biggest cost.  And with the price of energy rising as a direct consequence of depleting exergy (and with few more productivity gains to be won) the greatest fear on the part of central bankers and policy-makers is that wage demands will begin to exceed price increases – a process compounded by labour shortages caused by two years of lockdown policies.

    Labour shortages in Britain in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, were an essential part of why we had an industrial revolution to begin with.  The use of machinery to harness water and steam power rapidly out-produced craft workers, soon enough turning skilled artisans into mere machine-minders.  And with labour shortages appearing again, the complexity trap is that corporations turn to technological automation to fill the gap.  From supermarkets installing ever more self-service tills and automated farming to the end of High Street banking and the move to digital currencies, the trend toward technological fixes for our growing predicament is irresistible.  But without the exergy to make it all work, something – very likely something big – is going to break.

    The counter trend to technological automation can already be seen in less profitable sectors of the economy, where cheap labour has been used to replace increasingly unaffordable technologies such as the once ubiquitous automated car wash.  Add these to a growing list of things that ordinary people used to be able to afford but no longer can.  As the cost of necessities like food and temperature control continue to increase, the list will grow.  And this will cause huge problems for the corporations which are pursuing the automation route… and, indeed, those of us who rely upon them as the customer base shrinks.

    This loss of critical mass is one jaw of the complexity trap.  Much of the automation that corporations are pursuing is only cheaper if a mass of the population uses it.  As Netflix and Facebook have discovered recently, things go badly awry when people begin to unsubscribe.  The same is true for the energy companies themselves since they rely on our collective willingness to continue using electricity and gas even as the price spirals upward.  The problem, of course, is that we are not prepared to do this.  Instead, we seek ways of cutting our use, with those at the bottom disconnecting themselves entirely.  So much so that even that bastion of neoliberal austerity, the IMF, is now calling on states to subsidise energy and food…  Not, as establishment media outlets may pretend, out of some sudden desire to alleviate the plight of the poor, but because when we stop buying, their system gets flushed around the U-bend.

    Declining surplus energy is the other jaw of the trap.  The immanent, and partially self-inflicted, loss of firm – 24/7/365 – electricity, along with periodic shortages of diesel, gas and food, are going to render hi-tech automated processes unworkable in practice.  Your driverless tractor may plough the straightest furrows possible.  But without diesel to fill the tank, it is no more than an expensive art installation.  Digital currency is of little use when the servers are down and/or when the users have no electricity with which to transact.  Try shopping during a power cut – something that is happening more often in the UK these days.  You might want to pay, and the supermarket would be delighted to take your money.  But if the tills aren’t working, it can’t be done… not even if you still use notes and coins, because without electricity, the system can’t process them.  Oh, and as an aside, when the power goes off, the supermarket is legally bound to dump its frozen and chilled foods… even during a food shortage.

    Several decades ago, sociologist Joseph Tainter observed that collapsing civilisations have a habit of unconsciously entering into complexity traps, adding energy-intensive complexity in a desperate attempt to sustain themselves.  Our turn to energy-intensive automation in an attempt to overcome our growing woes and to maintain economic growth is likely repeating the same folly.  The difference – at least for those who see the economy as primarily an energy rather than a monetary system – is that we have the necessary knowledge to avoid our complexity trap if only we are prepared to actively simplify away from an economy based on mass consumption in favour of one based around material simplicity…  I’m not holding my breath though.

    *  *  *

    As you made it to the end…you might consider supporting The Consciousness of Sheep.  There are five ways in which you could help me continue my work.  First – and easiest by far – please share and like this article on social media.  Second follow my page on Facebook.  Third, sign up for my monthly e-mail digest to ensure you do not miss my posts, and to stay up to date with news about Energy, Environment and Economy more broadly.  Fourth, if you enjoy reading my work and feel able, please leave a tip. Fifth, buy one or more of my publications

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 21:30

  • Israel's "Iron Beam" Laser Shield Zaps Threats Out Of Sky
    Israel’s “Iron Beam” Laser Shield Zaps Threats Out Of Sky

    With Israel facing an increasing threat of a barrage of enemy rockets as well as war with Iran, the Jewish state has developed a working prototype high-powered laser system known as “Iron Beam” to intercept aerial targets, such as mortars, rockets, and anti-tank missiles, and drones, bringing down the cost of interception from tens of thousands of dollars to cheaper than a McDonald’s Big Mac.

    Reuters reports the laser-based air defense system is in prototype form and has been successfully tested in Israel’s South by the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. 

    On Wednesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett commented on the Iron Beam, calling it “a game-changer, not just because we are striking at the enemy military, but also because we are bankrupting it.” 

    “Until today, it cost us a lot of money to intercept each rocket. Today they (the enemy) can invest tens of thousands of dollars in a rocket and we will invest $2 on the electricity for intercepting that rocket,” Bennett continued.

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    Palestinian and Lebanese forces have launched thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel, costing the government tens of millions of dollars in interception costs. Each Iron Dome interceptor missile around $50,000. 

    Fielding Iron Beam could be several years away — and is a move to modernize forces with laser weapons that appear to be from a science-fiction movie. 

    “There is a lot of promising laser work going on,” Thomas Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told NYTimes. “This isn’t ‘Star Wars’ science fiction anymore.” 

    For years the US Army has been working on lasers. The service is reportedly working on a laser weapon system that’s a “million times stronger” than anything ever used before, able to fire bullet-like pulses of light to vaporize drones, cruise missiles, and mortars.

    Countries developing laser weapons have one goal: bringing down the cost per round of costly interceptor missiles. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 21:00

  • Watch: Tucker Carlson Warns "Disarming You Is The Point" Of Biden Gun Control Push
    Watch: Tucker Carlson Warns “Disarming You Is The Point” Of Biden Gun Control Push

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Responding to Joe Biden’s announcement that he intends to institute unprecedented gun control laws, Tucker Carlson warned that the intention is to disarm those who didn’t vote for him.

    “This is about saving the children, Joe Biden just told us, but how many lives would this new law save?” Carlson asked.

    “Well, we know the answer. Zero. Not one,” Carlson ciontuned, explaining “We know that because there’s precisely no evidence at all and never has been that larger magazines somehow inspire mass shootings. But of course saving lives is not the point of this.”

    “Disarming you is the point,” the host further urged.

    Carlson even used the example of Biden’s own son being accused of lying on a federal firearm background check, which is a felony. 

    “If you’re at all confused about whether the effort here is selective, if this is enforcement only of certain people, you’ll notice the President never mentioned the apparent federal gun felony his own son committed when he lied on a federal background form when he bought a handgun,” Carlson asserted.

    The host went on to note that “facing almost certain defeat for his party in the midterm elections five months from now, Joe Biden has become desperate. He’s decided to leverage the murder of nineteen children in Texas last week for political advantage.” 

    He continued, “To summarize the President’s remarks tonight, your constitutional rights are not absolute but in taking them away, we’re not actually taking away your rights we’re protecting children to which you might ask, am I a threat to children? That question is never answered by the President.”

    “The point of this, of course, is to disarm people who did not vote for Joe Biden, and that is why simultaneous with this, this effort to recategorize the guns in your closet as felonies, Democrats have been failing to prosecute gun crimes in our cities where most of the crime is,” Carlson further declared.

    “Biden’s fellow Democrats and the House of Representatives spent the day debating ways to disarm you, Americans who have committed no crime at all and want only to protect themselves and their families,” Carlson concluded.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 20:30

  • The Hamptons Summer Rental Market Is Collapsing
    The Hamptons Summer Rental Market Is Collapsing

    For the last decade and certainly during the pandemic, real estate in the Hamptons (and anywhere located outside of major U.S. cities) was in such high demand that prices skyrocketed and inventory became sparse.

    Now, for the first time, it looks like the opposite is happening and the market is loosening up – at least in the Hamptons. 

    Enzo Morabito of Douglas Elliman told CNBC this week: “There is a tremendous amount of inventory and people are not renting it. And it’s across all segments, from the very low to the very top of the market.”

    The same article notes that the Hamptons is seeing “a wave of last-minute price cuts” while rental prices in the first quarter fell 26%. Some owners are even cutting prices by 30% or more just to fill their properties, the report says. 

    One property that was formerly $70,000 per month is now being rented at just $45,000 per month, for example. “We were hoping the renter would split the difference, but it’s a different market right now,” Morabito said of the discount.

    After years of no properties being available, “there are hundreds of rentals still available for the summer,” according to brokers.

    The demand is a result of increased travel, according to brokers. Many New Yorkers who spent the last few summers in the Hamptons due to travel restrictions are now free to vacation in other countries. 

    That is not to overlook the effect of the economy slowing down, either. Harald Grant with Sotheby’s International Realty commented: “There are a lot of questions in the air, about the economy, both locally and nationally. It all effects the market.”

    “The assumption that rents would be sustainable at these elevated levels has been proven to be false,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel.

    There has been only a slight pickup, brokers said, as a result of last minute renters looking for a potential deal. Gary DePersia of Corcoran said: “We had a lull from February to April, but now it’s picking up again. The inventory we had is going.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 20:00

  • Ostentatious Stupidity
    Ostentatious Stupidity

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via DailyReckoning.com,

    When I wrote the book The Long Emergency nearly 20 years ago, I never thought that, once it got going, our government would work so hard to make it worse. My theory then was just that government would become increasingly bloated, ineffectual, impotent and uncomprehending of the forces converging to undermine our advanced techno-industrial societies.

    What I didn’t imagine was that government would bring such ostentatious stupidity to all that.

    Obviously, there was some recognition that ominous changes were coming down. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have heard so much chatter about alt energy, “sustainable growth,” “green” this-and-that.

    But the chatter was more symptomatic of wishful thinking for at least a couple of reasons:

    1) Mostly it ignored the laws of physics, despite the fact that so many people involved in enterprises such as wind and solar energy were science-and-tech mavens; and…

    2) There was a dumb assumption that the general shape and scale of daily life would remain as it had been — in other words, that we could still run suburbia, the giant cities, Disney World, Walmart, the U.S. military and the Interstate Highway System just the way they were already set up, only by other means than oil and gas.

    Now we’re finding out the hard way how much daily life must change, and is changing and how disorderly that process is in every way from the imperative personal adjustments to our spiritual attitudes about them.

    God Is a Prankster

    As with so many things in history, this disorder expresses itself strangely, even prankishly, as if God were a practical joker.

    Who would’ve imagined that our politics would become so deranged? That there would be battles over teaching sex in the fifth-grade? That the CDC would keep pushing vaccines that obviously don’t work (and that so many people would still take them)? That stealing stuff under a thousand dollars in value wouldn’t merit prosecution?

    That riots featuring arson and looting are “mostly peaceful?” That we’d send $50-billion halfway around the world to defend the borders of another country while ignoring the defense of our own borders? That financially beset Americans would spend their dwindling spare cash on… tattoos?

    Notice that all of these strange behaviors have really nothing to do with making practical adjustments to the way we live. The collective psychology of all this is bizarre. Of course, mass formation psychosis accounts for a lot of it.

    Groups of people under duress, suffering from loneliness, purposelessness, helplessness, and anxiety will fall into coordinated thought-and-action if presented with some object or someone to fixate their ill feelings upon.

    Donald Trump was such an object. He galvanized about half the country into an intoxicated fury aimed at destroying him. It actually managed to drive him off the scene via a fraud-laced election which many in-power (local officials, judges) deemed a means justifying the desired end. That success reinforced their mass formation psychosis.

    Vaccines to the Rescue

    Alas, having succeeded against Mr. Trump, they were left without a galvanizing object to focus on. So, they adopted one of the devices of Trump-riddance, Covid-19, as the next object of all their distress and anxiety, adopting the mRNA vaccinations as their next savior du jour.

    Unfortunately, the vaccination scheme has gone very much awry, and now millions face a future with damaged immune systems. The horror of that is too awful to comprehend, especially by government, which caused the problem in the first place and can’t possibly admit it without demolishing its legitimacy… so it presses on stupidly and heinously with the vaccine program.

    Already all-causes deaths are substantially up, and in time the recognition of how-and-why this happened will reach a point of criticality.

    It will be too obvious to ignore.

    But by that time (probably not far away), the economy will be so wrecked, the people of America so deranged, and our circumstances so desperate, that the government will resort to a supremely stupid act of national suicide, say, starting a nuclear war.

    The government under “Joe Biden” seems perfectly disposed to that possible outcome. Which brings us to the spiritual part of the story: those unused to consorting with alleged “higher powers” might consider getting used to prayer.

    Build Back Better

    Lately, a new derangement is overtaking Western Civ, for the excellent reason that Western Civ gave birth to techno industrial societies and is now first to undergo the alarming demise of that system.

    I speak of the World Economic Forum (under one Klaus Schwab) and its stated ambition to Build Back Better — based on its unstated premise that the current system must be nudged to its death sooner rather than later, and on-purpose.

    All the governments of Western Civ nations seem coordinated on this.

    But it’s not going to happen as Mr. Schwab and his followers hoped, for at least a couple of reasons. First, as already stated, God is a prankster and likes to throw knuckleballs at the human race.

    Anyway, the “better” that Mr. Schwab expects is an ultra-techno-industrial “trans-human” scheme that is unlikely to come about if the support system of the older techno-industrial system is no longer available to support it.

    As currently conceived, BBB depends on electric power, and that is one of the major sub-systems of our system that already looks like it’s going janky.

    Maybe the Amish Have It Right

    You get the idea, I’m sure, so I’ll cut to the chase for now. About a year ago I had my French easel set up on a country road nearby and was busy painting a motif at-hand when along came a horse-drawn wagon filled with four men in severe black-and-white clothing, wearing beards.

    They were apparently a bit surprised by the strange sight of me painting a picture and they stopped to chat. They were Amish and had lately moved to the county from down in Pennsylvania, which was running out of farmland for their fruitful people.

    Not a half-hour later a second horse-drawn wagon passed by. I admit, the incident gave me a thrill — not just the sensory pleasure of the horses’ ripe animal smell, and the gentle rhythm of their clip-clopping along.

    But since I had lately been writing a bunch of novels about life in a post-economic collapse town like my own (the World Made by Hand series), I enjoyed the strange delight of being transported briefly into a scene of my own imagining — the prequel of my own books.

    Many more Amish are landing in the county these days. I hear they go around to the failing or inactive farms with bundles of cash and make an offer, just like that. Evidently the method works.

    It’s given me a business idea: to start an Amish skills school, buy a few acres with a barn and hire some Amish men to teach all us non-Amish how to do a few things that might be good to know in the years ahead, like how to harness horses to a cart or a mule to a plow. (The Amish like to make a bit of cash-money when they can.) That’s my idea of how to build back better.

    What do you think?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 19:30

  • "The Options Are Looking Pretty Bleak": California Gas Prices Sprint Past $6 Per Gallon As Mendocino Station Approaches Double Digits
    “The Options Are Looking Pretty Bleak”: California Gas Prices Sprint Past $6 Per Gallon As Mendocino Station Approaches Double Digits

    California: come for the poo-covered streets, stay for the crippling gas prices.

    That’s right, while the national average gas price hit $4.76 per gallon this week according to AAA, Californians are now paying a record $6.24 average per gallon after the state saw prices surge past the $6 mark for the first time in history last week.

    Via the Daily Mail

    At one station in coastal Mendocino, prices are just pennies away from $10 – the highest ever in history, according to the Daily Mail.

    Breaking it down by city, San Francisco motorists are paying an average of $6.50, while San Jose drivers are paying $6.38, and Oakland drivers are forking over $6.37. LA drivers are only doing slightly better at $6.26 per gallon on average.

    This is at least $2 more per gallon in the same cities vs. this time last year.

    And based on the 3-2-1 crack spread, which measures the difference in price between a barrel of crude oil and its byproducts, it appears prices at the pump are about to head even higher.

    Indeed, the Mail notes that supplies at US refineries remain tight – with Thursday’s US weekly inventory report showing that crude stock had fallen by more than the expected 5.1 million barrels, while gasoline inventories have also dropped to dangerous levels.

    What’s more, Chinese oil demand is back online after recently relaxing COVID restrictions, the Saudis are near peak output, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being drained by the Biden administration at 1mmb/d.

     “I don’t think as many people are going to hit the road,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “And if they do, I think a good portion are going to be staying close to home,” he told CNBC last weekend.

    “They’re definitely should be a noticeable bump – but my impression is people are not driving as far,” he continued, adding “The concern is high prices that are keeping people a little closer.”

    Diesel prices have also skyrocketed over 80% vs. last year to around $5.58 per gallon, an all-time record.

    The rising cost of the fuel – commonly used by truckers for their rigs – has further hampered America’s embattled economy, driving up prices of good being transported cross-country by truckers, who are now electing for shorter routes due to the ‘unprecedented’ increase.

    ‘I can pretty much count on setting on fire $5-$700 a day…minimum,’ 22-wheel driver Eric Jammer told NPR Saturday of the rise in diesel costs seen over the past 12 months. 

    He told the outlet that he typically transports military and construction equipment – gear that often weighs well into the ton. He even once hauled an Apache helicopter. 

    Jammer says the crisis has forced him not to take routes that are too far away from his home in Houston, Texas, forced to only accept jobs with destinations and pickups within a day or two from his residence. -Daily Mail

    For reference, the national average on President Trump’s last day in office was $2.41 per gallon. 

    “If exports persist at this elevated pace and refinery runs – already near the top range for reasonable utilization rates – fall within our expectations, gasoline inventories could continue to draw to levels below 2008 lows and retail gasoline prices could climb to $6/gallon or even higher,” JPMorgan warned, adding that total US gasoline inventories could soon fall to levels not seen since the 1950s – a perfect storm.

    “There is a real risk the price could reach $6+ a gallon by August,” JPM head of commodities research, Natasha Kaneva, told CNN last week.

    According to JPM, unless refineries “immediately” halt most exports and shift towards domestic gasoline production, ‘‘US consumers should not expect much in the way of relief in prices at the pump until the end of the year.”

    On Monday, CNN business correspondent acknowledged that President Biden had exhausted his short-term solutions for high gas prices – including tapping the SPR.

    “The pain is widespread,” she said on Monday, adding: “The options are looking pretty bleak at this point.“

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 19:00

  • Real Estate Agents Raked In $3.9 Billion In PPP Loans, Only To Pocket The Money Amid Housing Boom
    Real Estate Agents Raked In $3.9 Billion In PPP Loans, Only To Pocket The Money Amid Housing Boom

    The federal government handed out more than 300,000 loans to the real estate industry as part of the Paycheck Protection Program – however few of them have been paid back despite a booming housing market as the Covid-19 pandemic ran its course.

    According to data from the government’s Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, some $3.9 billion was given to real estate entities claiming just one employee. While the average loan was around $13,000, 146 entities received more than $90,000 each, NBC News reports.

    Many of the loans, as were the case in other industries, were forgiven if the recipient met certain criteria, including spending 60% of the loan on payroll and the rest on eligible expenses. For realtors, $3.1 out of the $3.9 in PPP loans have been forgiven – which has been rapidly sped up over the last eight months.

    One such forgiven loan:

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    The SBA, which governs the PPP, says it has denied forgiveness for around 12,000 loans (out of 9.9 million), while around 4,200 borrowers have appealed that decision. 215,000 loans were also selected for manual review.

    The $789 billion Paycheck Protection Program was intended to rescue American jobs and shore up businesses during the pandemic. Now 80 percent of all PPP loans — 9.9 million of them — and 84 percent of the total dollar amount have been forgiven by the SBA, according to the PRAC.

    For real estate entities the percentage of forgiveness is almost the same, at 83 percent of all loans and 84 percent of the dollar amount, according to the PRAC website. -NBC News

    According to a senior SBA official, programs which were passed with bipartisan support were “extremely liberal” and “extremely generous” when it came to loan forgiveness.

    PPP loans were handed out by private lenders and backed by the SBA. In order to obtain forgiveness, borrowers simply had to apply to their lender and submit forms and documentation. In most cases, the lender will recommend for forgiveness or denial.

    As NBC notes, the real estate industry boomed after the pandemic hit despite an initial shock “because obviously people didn’t want people traipsing through their homes,” according to Erin Stackley, senior policy representative for commercial issues at the National Association of Realtors.

    Yet while other industries cratered, residential real estate boomed as people of means working under lockdown conditions sought larger properties. By early May of 2020, it became clear from nationwide open house data that “something was about to happen.”

    And it did. Between April 2020 and Jan  1, 2021, housing sales jumped 53%, while prices are now 40% higher than they were in January 2020.

    “I’ve been in this business since the 1970’s and I’ve never seen that kind of explosion in sales,” said Steve Murray, a partner at Real Trends consulting.

    And while sales boomed, commissions soard as well – jumping from $76.2 billion in 2019 to $85.9 billion in 2020, and $98.8 billion in 2021.

    NBC News tracked down a few real estate agents who had successful years in 2020, obtained PPP loans in excess of $90,000, and who then had them partially or completely forgiven by the federal government.

    Tina Guerrieri, who sells houses in suburban Philadelphia, sold more than $25 million worth of real estate in 2020, according to Zillow, and she also got a PPP loan for $100,000. Her loan was forgiven in 2021, and she no longer has to pay the money back, according to public records.

    NBC News asked Guerrieri why she needed the $100,000. She told a reporter she did not want to share what she used the money for or how it was approved, saying, “So many people know me, I wouldn’t want all those details shared.”

    Real estate agent Jenna Jacques sold $25 million worth of real estate in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2020 according to Zillow data. She also received three loans totaling $141,664 that were all forgiven by the federal government. Jacques did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    New Jersey commercial real estate agent Shane Wierks got two PPP loans for $151,833, according to federal records, and has paid $103,000 back to the federal government. Public records show $48,918 was forgiven. He said based on his conversations with other real estate agents that was “pretty much what everyone got.”

    One real estate agent who got the money told NBC News she came to believe that asking for a loan of taxpayer money to be forgiven after a successful year could be inappropriate. -NBC News

    Another agent, Gary Goldberg, sold more than $27 million of luxury homes in the Santa Barbara, CA region – down slightly from the $31 million he closed in 2019 according to data from Zillow. In 2021, Goldberg sold $82 million of real estate.

    He also received $95,832 across two PPP loans, listing one employee. According to federal records, Goldberg asked for, and received, forgiveness for both loans by November 2021. Given that the average real estate commission is 2.5% of the sale price, making US taxpayers foot Goldberg’s PPP loans – given his enormous income – adds insult to injury.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 18:00

  • The "Net Zero" Agenda Has Devastating Consequences… Here's What You Need To Know
    The “Net Zero” Agenda Has Devastating Consequences… Here’s What You Need To Know

    Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

    Human beings — regardless of race, religion or culture — like to embrace any belief that is absolute. This is because absolute beliefs are simple, easy to comprehend, and false positives that offer us a false sense of security.

    If we come to believe that a particular idea, place, or group of people are either all good or all bad, then we humans fool ourselves into thinking that we have got a piece of a particular equation all figured out.

    Such a binary viewpoint is psychologically comforting, allowing us to feel assured and in control. The more control we feel the more assured we feel so there is a feedback loop here which takes hold.

    Now, think of propaganda, which is, of course, a group reassuring another group of a particular narrative. Consider that if you have decided that a group of people are all bad, then all you have to do is stay away from them or keep them away from you. Life just got easier. If you decide that a group of people are your enemy, all you have to do is make war against them and once they are all gone, life would surely be better, right?

    The problem with absolute thinking

    The problem with absolute thinking is that it causes pain and suffering in the life of the person who adheres to an all-or-nothing attitude in any facet of his thought process. This is because the person is routinely exposed to contradictions to his beliefs, which creates a sense of threat to his world view. Eliminating the threat (canceling) brings about relief and even the canceling of any contradiction provides reassurance.

    This is why absolute thinking is the genesis of, among other things, genocides.

    Why bring this up? Because when hearing statements that are universally absolute like: “the science is settled.”, you know that we are dealing with a cult, not science.

    It is why the governments’ statements about carbon zero and the road to zero emissions are dangerous. Because they’re absolute, allow for the demonization, and hence eradication of anyone that opposes this narrative.

    It is literally impossible to get to truth without the ability to view the possibilities of other or new facts.

    This is true of any field, not just climate science.

    As of right now you’ll notice the “absolute,” which cannot therefore be questioned can be found in the following topics:

    • Covid

    • Climate change (CO2 emissions and “net zero”)

    • Ukraine

    • BLM

    • LGBQT

    • Critical race theory

    • Privileged white males

    There are others, but you’ll know that all of the above will bring hell fury if you are to question the orthodoxy of views held in relation to these topics.

    This means that most anything can be done in the name of these topics and escape scrutiny which would otherwise not be the case.

    These are all worrying attributes of this current hysteria we’re living in, but let us deal with the facts and the realities.

    Facts and realities

    Facts and realities are what typically bring societies back to some sense of rationality. Mao’s China never gave up on attempting centralized farming because debate and discussion resulted in their thinking to themselves, “My oh my, this doesn’t look good, perhaps we were wrong in our assumptions.” No, they starved tens of millions of people first and only when the evidence was absolutely overwhelming and the hysteria had burned itself out there was the ability to chart a different course.

    We’ve many examples throughout history but let us today consider this one of CO2 emissions which feeds into “renewables” and a “sustainable” future.

    Never in the history of man have we transitioned from a more dense energy form to a less dense one. The reason is simple. It is “barse-ackward.”

    If we look at any time we’ve transitioned from a less energy dense form to a more energy dense one we see a number of things.

    • Higher productivity

    • Lowered inflation (the two going hand in hand)

    • Rising standards of living

    It stands to reason that by doing the opposite we’re likely to see the following:

    • Lower productivity

    • Increased inflation

    • Falling standard of living

    Energy Return on Investment (EROI)

    Looked at purely from an investment perspective an important ratio is energy return on investment. The multiple of your energy input that translates into output.

    Proponents of solar will point out that solar generates decent energy returns.

    What is often missed is that the numbers used to support this are more often than not cherry picked from locations (enjoying sunlight) and daytime hours. This is a problem given that solar doesn’t work when the sun doesn’t shine, which is on a cloudy or rainy day as well as at night. And this is the time when the bulk electricity demand comes into play to cover for the lack of solar energy.

    If a source generates electricity at a time inconsistent with demand, the price it can sell for can often be negative. It’s like trying to sell me a cold cappuccino at 3pm. I don’t want it. I want it hot and at 7am, thanks.

    However, to get a true reflection of overall electricity costs, we need to factor in the storage and delivery costs to obtain the EROI (energy return on investment).

    If future EROI will be lower than any preceding electricity EROI (and it will be due to more costly, less dense and less effective energy sources), then consequently we can expect lower productivity, higher costs, higher inflation, and lower living standards.

    If we look at man’s history from an energy perspective, we see the following: wood, biomass, coal, oil, natural gas, uranium. Biomass is denser in energy than wood, and coal denser still, and so on.

    Dense forms of energy with high EROI let nature do the work. For example, oil is just concentrated solar from eons ago.

    Infrastructure

    Another issue that requires consideration is that solar and wind infrastructure require a lot of dense fuel to build.

    Those wind turbines require a lot of steel. In order to produce steel we need iron ore mines and coking coal to form the steel. Then there is the concrete and the graphite. All of these things need to be mined, brought to the earth’s surface, trucked, shipped, forged, and so on. All of these processes are, if you think about it, components of energy density.

    But we’re told by the absolutists that we’re getting rid of all of these processes. Zero is the absolute word.

    Achieving Net Zero

    We may well approach some level of “zero” in parts of the world. It’ll be zero energy, zero food, zero life. And that means conflict of the sort we’ve never experienced in our lives.

    I wish it wasn’t so, but that is the road we’re on with the absolutists steering this titanic catastrophe in the making.

    *  *  *

    Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed. Most troubling of all, they cannot be stopped. The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s why contrarian money manager Chris Macintosh just released the most critical report on these trends, What Happens Next. This free special report explains precisely what’s coming down the pike and what it means for your wealth and well-being. Click here to access it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 17:30

  • "Pay-To-Play" Looms For The Rest Of Us
    “Pay-To-Play” Looms For The Rest Of Us

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    The more kafkaesque quagmires you’ve slogged through, the more you hope “pay-to-play for the rest of us” beomes ubiquitous.

    You know how “pay-to-play” works: contribute a couple of million dollars to key political players, and then get your tax break, subsidy, no-bid contract, etc., slipped into some nook or cranny of the legislative process that few (if any) will notice because the legislation is hundreds of pages long or a “gut and replace” magic wand was wielded at the last minute.

    As the essential systems of everyday life break down and become increasingly dysfunctional, I predict the rise of what I’m calling “pay-to-play” for the rest of us: if you pay for expedited service, concierge service, etc., you will get the kind of service everyone used to get, i.e. functional, prompt and efficient.

    As I detailed in Who’s Going to Fix What’s Broken?, systems such as vehicle registration and tax collection are becoming kafkaesque quagmires where the expected (or promised) services are not provided or are botched.

    Waiting for services at the DMV, IRS, et al. and the county welfare office are identical experiences. Poor people have no choice but to put up with long waits and bureaucratic quagmires, but the top 10% who earn almost half of all income and are responsible for roughly half the consumer spending are not amused by services that are equivalent to what the bottom 10% must tolerate out of necessity.

    Since nobody in power is truly interested in fixing these large-scale, complex systems, then it’s easy to predict the rise of “pay-to-play” for the rest of us: pay an extra fee, get much better service.

    There are already examples of this trend. For example, if you want expedited processing of your U.S. passport renewal, that will cost you $60. Given my previous experience with passport renewals, I was happy to pay the extra $60 just to have some additional assurance I was actually going to receive the new passport in a timely manner.

    Would I have paid an extra $100 for “expedited processing” of my DMV registration to avoid a 7-month descent into bureaucratic Heck? Yes, with no hesitation whatsoever. Would I have paid $200 for “expedited processing” of my federal tax return to bypass that 7-month kafkaesque quagmire? Gladly, without hesitation.

    How about a $500 “expedited processing” of your building permit? Given that those long months of slogging through the quagmire cost real money, a $500 “concierge service” fee to get your permit in 8 weeks rather than 8 months would be a bargain.

    “Pay-to-play” is inherently unfair: the wealthy get their interests served, the rest of us tax donkeys and debt-serfs slog through kafkaesque quagmires. “Pay-to-play” for the rest of us will also be inherently unfair, but at least it will democratize “pay-to-play” to the degree that a couple hundred bucks will actually buy better service, and that’s within reach of many more households than the million dollars required to access political “pay-to-play.”

    If systems can’t or won’t be fixed, then having access to the 10% which still functions is worth a great deal. The more kafkaesque quagmires you’ve slogged through, the more you hope “pay-to-play” for the rest of us becomes ubiquitous.

    How much would you pay for expedited emergency services?

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 10% discount this month: When You Can’t Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 16:30

  • Russia Threatens To 'Strike The West' If US-Supplied Rockets Hit Its Territory
    Russia Threatens To ‘Strike The West’ If US-Supplied Rockets Hit Its Territory

    Following on the heels of the Biden administration announcing it would send longer range rocket systems to Ukraine, the Kremlin has issued a veiled threat that if it’s territory is hit it could strike back directly at the West.

    “One of President Putin’s closest allies has warned that Moscow could target western cities if Ukraine uses rocket systems supplied by the United States to carry out strikes on Russian territory,” the UK Times is reporting. The dire warning was given by close top Putin ally and former president Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as the Russian security council deputy chairman. 

    Illustrative image via AP

    “If, God forbid, these weapons are used against Russian territory then our armed forces will have no other choice but to strike decision-making centers,” Medvedev warned in the new statements.

    That’s when he suggested the following for the first time, marking a severe escalation of rhetoric:

    “Of course, it needs to be understood that the final decision-making centers in this case, unfortunately, are not located on the territory of Kyiv” – with the suggesting being that those Western capitals supplying the advanced arms could come under attack in response.

    Previously Russia has threatened to hit “decision-making centers” within Ukraine, such as Kiev and Lviv. These cities have been targeted on occasion, but rarely, throughout the war now in its fourth month.

    The US confirmed this past week that Ukraine would receive M142 high-mobility artillery rocket systems, which are medium-ranged, capable of striking targets some 50 miles away.

    President Biden on Tuesday stressed that “we’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia” – which the Kremlin acknowledged as a “rational” decision, while stilling condemning the transfer of the systems.

    Ukraine’s government, meanwhile, has reportedly given Washington “assurances” that it will not uses US-supplied weaponry to target Russian territory, which Moscow has long made clear would mark severe violation of its ‘red lines’.

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    This as Yahoo News UK has noted that “The West has been increasingly willing to give Ukraine longer-range weaponry, including M777 howitzers, as its forces battle Russians with more success than intelligence officials had predicted.”

    Likely these fresh warnings from Medvedev serve to further warn and enforce over Russia’s red line. While the longer range MLRS missiles are apparently off the table for now, which can reach up to 190 miles away, the shorter-range MLRS systems could easily be updated with the larger, more advanced and longer range systems.

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    On the sanctions and economic war front, Poland officials have on Saturday said the next, seventh round of anti-Russia sanctions are currently being readied – suggesting that for the time being the ongoing Russian-NATO/EU standoff will only escalate further. Negotiations are at the same time stalled completely, and diplomatic openings and communications are fewer and fewer, making the situation even more dangerous.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 16:00

  • Expect A Deep Recession To Start This Quarter Or Early Third Quarter
    Expect A Deep Recession To Start This Quarter Or Early Third Quarter

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    GDP estimates are plunging but are still too high. A recession is on the near horizon.

    GDPNow Data from the Atlanta Fed, Chart by Mish

    The GDPNow Forecast was at 2.5 percent on the May 17 retail sales report. It’s now 1.3 percent and falling fast. 

    This snip is from June 1. 

    The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is 1.3 percent on June 1, down from 1.9 percent on May 27. After this morning’s Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management, and this morning’s construction spending report from the US Census Bureau, the nowcasts of second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth declined from 4.7 percent and -6.4 percent, respectively, to 4.4 percent and -8.2 percent, respectively.

    Stall Rate

    1.3 percent is below the stall rate. However, Real Final Sales is the number to watch. 

    That’s the true bottom line number for the economy. The rest is inventory adjustment which nets to zero over time.

    The GDPNow estimate for Real Final Sales is a very respectable 2.9 percent.

    Why the Recession Call?

    On April 28, I reported GDP Declines 1.4% in First Quarter of 2022 Sounding Recession Bells

    Economists missed the mark badly as GDP shrunk along with real final sales.

    Real final sales was negative in the first quarter and I expect a repeat in the second quarter because I do not believe retail sales will hold up.

    On May 17, I noted Retail Sales Easily Beat Expectations, US Treasury Yields Jump in Response

    However, the next day I noted Target Plunges 25%, What About Yesterday’s Big Retail Sales Blowout?

    The advance retail sales reports by the commerce department were stunning. Reports by Target and Walmart strongly suggest something else.

    Car sales in April were also a disaster.

    Automotive News reports Market loses more steam; SAAR tumbles to 2022 low

    May U.S. auto sales: Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Subaru post declines behind choked supply chains, tough comparison to robust May 2021

    Add it all up and retail sales are crashing. A recession is now on the near horizon.

    *  *  *

    Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 15:30

  • Restaurants Adding Inflation Fees Amid Razor Thin Margins
    Restaurants Adding Inflation Fees Amid Razor Thin Margins

    As restaurants across the country feel the squeeze from rising inflation, a tight labor market, and minimum wage increases on an industry with notoriously thin margins, owners are passing along the pain in the form of various fees tacked onto the tab, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Fees for a “noncash adjustment,” “fuel surcharge,” or “kitchen appreciation” have been showing up on more bills lately. Industry analysts say this wave of surcharges is mostly being driven by restaurants trying to cope with the impact of rising inflation and a tight labor market on their bottom lines. In addition, Mastercard and Visa in April raised transaction fees for many merchants. -WSJ

    According to point-of-sale software developer Lightspeed, fee revenue has nearly doubled from April 2021 to April 2022, based on a sample of 6,000 restaurants on their platform. Restaurants adding service fees increased by 36.4% over the same period.

    “As the costs of doing business have changed, we’ve seen more merchants leverage this tactic,” said exec Peter Dougherty.

    The fees are effective in part because unless people are paying close attention, many fail to notice them. When the bill arrived following a mid-April dinner at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, Lizzie Stephens was about to grab her wallet to pay. Instead, she pulled out her phone to Google the “temporary inflation fee” she noticed had been added to her check. 

    “I was just like—wow, now we’re getting fees at a restaurant, too?” said Ms. Stephens, 34 years old, who lives in the Stockton, Calif., area. 

    Inflation has hit the average restaurant operator to the tune of 17.5% since last year, according to NPD Group. Consumer spending in restaurants, meanwhile, rose just 5% during the same period.

    These charges are nothing new. In February, one restaurant charged a “Temporary Inflation Fee” of $2 on a $15 bill – or 13%.

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    Then we’ve got a ‘Kitchen Appreciation Fee’ of 5%:

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    In October, Sherwin-Williams came under fire for a 4% “supply chain charge.“

    “These are the more cost-sensitive verticals that have a huge demand or need to pass through their credit-card transaction fees against this backdrop of the rising costs,” said Jonathan Razi, founder and chief executive of CardX, which allows merchants to pass along credit-card swipe fees to consumers in the form of surcharges. The company, which was acquired in November by Stax, had 2,600 clients as of November.

    In April, Minneapolis-area restaurant chain Rock Elm Tavern took heat over a 3% “wellness fee” added to checks. Co-owner Troy Reding said the company added the fee right before the pandemic in order to offer health-insurance to its 140 employees who work at least 25 hours per week. Reding will be raising the fee to 5% this fall.

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    “We’ll see if this supply-chain mess straightens out a bit, see if the labor pool comes back at all,” said Reding. “If costs continue to escalate, part of our strategy is gonna be to figure out new and added benefits that we can add to retain the people we have and try and attract new people from other hospitality ventures.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 15:00

  • Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds
    Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

    Have a look at the shock on people’s faces as they leave the grocery stores these days, or the look as they stand filling up their tanks at the gas station. Their jaws drop and they wonder what is happening to the world.

    The answer is the policy disasters of the last two years. The bill is coming due and everyone but the masters of the universe is paying it. The value of the dollar is sinking rapidly, more rapidly than in our lifetimes.

    Nor is it coming back.

    The people who hold power today seem completely clueless about why this is happening. Actually, that’s a charitable interpretation. They might just think it is great.

    High gas prices are pushing a shift to electric cars, presumably to manage global climate (I’m a serious doubter that anything like that is possible by policy). Or maybe there is an impulse here just to redistribute wealth and disorient people to create new levels of dependency.

    Whatever the reason, I’m seeing absolutely no signs that anyone at the top has any intention to put a stop to this.

    Kill the Snake in the Garden!

    The Biden administration — total geniuses up there! — have been hunting around for the source of price increases, as if there is some single greatest offender out there in the markets.

    They won’t blame the Fed of course because the Biden administration considers a monetary policy war against inflation to be a potential political disaster. It would drive the economy into a statistical recession. Then they would doom themselves at the midterm. Better to let inflation rip than risk that.

    So instead, they are looking to scapegoat market actors. It’s preposterous: Markets are linked in ways that are impossible to trace and understand. You cannot map it. It’s too complex. It cannot be designed. It cannot be gamed. But tell that to the credentialled experts who believe that they have it all going.

    So some geek in the White House noted that shipping prices are through the roof. They reasoned that these high costs are putting pressure on all producers, which in turn is being passed on to consumers.

    What to do? Crack down on the shippers! That’s exactly what they have done by unleashing the Federal Maritime Commission, “an independent agency that polices international ocean transportation on behalf of American companies and consumers,” according to The New York Times.

    What the heck is the FMC going to do? Oh, harass people. Send letters. Investigate. Make big demands. But this much is clear during inflation: Everyone, without exception, has a thoroughly valid reason to raise prices.

    In this sense, they are all telling the truth that it is not their fault.

    Finding some single or several or many key offenders during a hyperinflation is like hunting for the offending cloud during a hurricane.

    Another Stimulus

    One of the great independent journalists who has really found his mojo during this crisis has been Jordan Schachtel. His Substack account seems often ahead of the major news. He drew my attention to something so bizarre that I never imagined it would happen.

    He believes that the politicians are, right now, plotting another stimulus check drop on citizens as a way of helping people deal with inflation.

    True story! It’s actually a level of policy insanity I’ve not seen in my lifetime. This would be like pushing a drowning man deep underwater:

    Far from coming to terms with their mistakes and acknowledging their errors, the rulers of our fiat system, in their infinite wisdom, may soon decide to fight inflation with… you guessed it, more inflation.

    Sounds crazy? No way they would be that ridiculous, right? Well, I have some news for you. It’s already happening in Canada.

    Quebec has announced that they will give a $500 stimulus check to everyone that makes $100,000 or less. This handout, which is expected to reach 6.4 million Canadians, will “help Quebecers cope with the sharp increase in the cost of living that we have seen in recent months,” Finance Minister Eric Girard said Tuesday.

    Following Canada’s lead, a group of Democrat congressmen have just introduced a bill to hand out “gas price stimulus checks” to Americans. The timing of this new bill should not go unnoticed, as midterm elections are just around the corner in November.

    Two congressmen are hyping a bill to give $100 a month to all citizens who live in areas where gas prices are above $4 per gallon. Do the math on this and you end up with an annual bill of $168 billion. This comes after many people in Congress have started to slightly worry about their spending programs.

    And of course, once you do this with gas, there is no reason not to do this with food, rent, medical bills or anything else. You end up with a mind-blowing system in which government is forever printing up the currency to compensate people for the consequences of previous money printing.

    CNN is helping to drum up support:

    The administration should ask Congress to authorize a payment of $1,100 per household to pay for four months of higher prices going forward, and provide an option for the president to provide a second or even third check to low- and moderate-income families for an additional four months in the event that prices remain high. We don’t know when this crisis is going to end or when prices for essential goods and services will return to more affordable levels.

    It’s the Interwar Period All Over Again

    Here we have a scenario straight out of the history books. We are talking about Weimar-level insanity here. But what’s to stop it?

    The current political winds all lean in this direction. So long as Democrats are in control and the Republicans are stupid and afraid, even as the Fed is embarrassingly bowing to every political pressure, something like this cannot be stopped.

    If this continues, we could be looking at a full-scale monetary crisis of epic proportions as we approach the midterms. Even then, Congress under Republican control simply cannot manage the Fed, which owes its entire allegiance to the executive in the White House and the deep state.

    That means two more years even after November of utter policy disasters.

    Wow, I really do get tired of reporting terrible news! I wouldn’t have to if the major media could cover these topics with any level of intelligence or honestly. But they don’t. And the failure to do so is having a major impact on the standard of living, which is taking a hit much harder than we have seen since the early 1930s. This is both in the U.S. and Europe. Really all over the world.

    We can hope and pray for policy rationality to return. But we must also be realistic. This is a crisis with no end in sight.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/04/2022 – 14:30

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