We found a bridge in Maine that wasn’t “built Ford tough”. 

When an overweight F-750 drove over it, ignoring signs warning about the weight limit, the bridge – one of 9 covered bridges left in the state – gave out and the vehicle plunged into the water below, according to a report from The Drive. 

The report says that Babb’s Bridge in Gorham, Maine, the state’s oldest remaining covered bridge dating back to 1840, has a strict weight limit of three tons.

Despite this, the driver of a Ford F-750, which weighs over 9,000 pounds empty and can reach a GVWR of 26,000 to 37,000 pounds with cargo, attempted to cross it. To make matters worse, the truck was hauling crushed gravel, according to the Gorham Police Department.

Even an older F-Series truck without any cargo would exceed the bridge’s weight capacity.

While there are no weight limit signs directly on the bridge, clear signs on Hurricane Road, before the bridge, indicate a 10-foot height, single-lane width, and a three-ton maximum weight limit.

These signs are large and easy to see, making it hard to believe the driver didn’t notice them. It seems the ability to read a sign doesn’t always equate to understanding or following it, the report suggested. 

Photos show the bridge collapsing almost immediately under the truck’s weight. The driver sustained minor injuries but managed to exit the vehicle unassisted. No one else was hurt, despite the bridge being a popular spot for swimmers and kayakers.

Originally built in the 1800s, Babb’s Bridge served as a vital crossing over the Presumpscot River for over a century. It was destroyed by vandals in 1973 but was rebuilt that same year using historically accurate, locally sourced materials. Now, it will require partial reconstruction again.

The Maine Department of Transportation estimates that repairs won’t be finished until next spring, as sourcing the appropriate lumber could take several months. While the bridge remains closed, other repairs will be conducted. The cost of the repairs has not been disclosed, but the truck company owner has offered to contribute to the rebuilding costs. The incident is still under investigation by local authorities.

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As Ford took steps last week to distance itself from the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) movement that has swept the corporate world in recent years, it became just one of a number of companies that are rethinking their commitments to race-based ideology.

In an Aug. 28 memo to employees, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he is “mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs,” and that the company is taking “a fresh look” at its DEI program.

Ford’s reversal on DEI follows that of other major corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, and most recently Molson Coors, which have reportedly revised their DEI policies, either due to public pressure or legal challenges.

In addition, 25 companies have been formally notified by shareholders since 2021 that their DEI programs constitute illegal discrimination under federal and state civil rights laws, as well as a breach of fiduciary duty to investors.

“This is a trend, for sure,” Jerry Bowyer, president of Bowyer Research, a conservative investment consulting firm, told The Epoch Times. “The rapid succession, the way it’s occurred, there’s almost a cascade effect going on.

“That whole world of ESG, stakeholder capitalism, DEI—the whole idea of companies as social engineers rather than as value producing business—had just gotten so far ahead of what customers wanted,” Bowyer said. “Shareholders were not asking for this.”

According to conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has been posting on social media regarding his investigation of “woke” policies at numerous companies, Ford confirmed to him that it would end its participation in a number of DEI related efforts.

“One by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America,” Starbuck stated.

In response to a request by The Epoch Times for comment, a Ford spokesperson stated: “The communication to our global employees speaks for itself. We have nothing further to add.”

Starbuck’s postings went viral when they were supported by people such as SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who stated on X that “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.”

Taking on Customer Feedback

A number of companies that pursued DEI and other progressive programs have come under pressure from activists, shareholders, customers, and state attorneys general to end them.

Responding to consumer backlash, Tractor Supply issued a statement in June that said, “We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart.”

The company stated that it would no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign rating system but instead “focus on rural America priorities including ag education, animal welfare, veteran causes and being a good neighbor, and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns.”

It further pledged to eliminate DEI roles within the company and drop CO2 emission goals, focusing instead on land and water conservation.

Law firms are also stepping back from DEI programs. Legal suits by conservative nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) have compelled some major law firms to allow people of all races to apply for fellowships previously reserved for people of color.

“Using someone’s race as a factor in employment decisions is unfair, polarizing, and illegal,” Edward Blum, president of AAER, told The Epoch Times.

“Significant majorities of Americans of all races do not believe someone’s race should be used by any employer to hire or promote any individual. Corporations are at risk of being sued for their DEI practices.”

On the other side, organizations that support DEI policies have had harsh words for companies that backtrack.

“Harley-Davidson’s choice to back away from the Corporate Equality Index is an impulsive decision,” Human Rights Campaign Vice President Eric Bloem said in a statement on Aug. 20. The group introduced the Corporate Equality Index as a social credit rating system for corporations.

Bloem said that activists who are pushing against DEI “believe they can bully their way into dismantling initiatives that help everyone thrive in the workplace.”

Bloem said with the LGBT community “wielding $1.4 trillion in spending power, retreating from these principles undermines both consumer trust and employee success.”

Advocates of DEI programs say that they are legal and beneficial.

“The purpose of DEI and other remedial workplace programs is to improve the process by which employment decisions are made and close the gap in opportunities among workers,” Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, said in a statement.

“They do not disadvantage any particular worker. This is why they have long been held lawful.”

And many companies, such as Microsoft, have reiterated their commitment to DEI programs.

“Our focus on diversity and inclusion is unwavering,” Microsoft spokesperson Jeff Jones stated in July, disputing news reports that Microsoft had fired its entire DEI staff.

Read more here…

Dollar General and Dollar Tree, with over 19,000 stores and nearly 16,800 US stores, respectively, delivered some alarming news in the past week about their crumbling core customer bases battered by elevated inflation and high interest rates—consequences of failed Bidenomics. The extensive nationwide footprint these two discount retailers have could give political strategists a glimpse into even gloomier consumer sentiment on a state-by-state basis, even potentially capturing some consumer sentiment in critical battleground states.

Last Thursday, Dollar General shares crashed the most on record after earnings underwhelmed for the second quarter, and the sales outlook for the full year was slashed on what management warned its core customers “feel financially constrained.”

About one week later, on Wednesday, Dollar Tree shares plunged after second-quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations. The discount retailer also cut its full-year outlook, pointing to mounting financial pressures on middle-income and higher-income customers.

Dollar Tree Chief Financial Officer Jeff Davis wrote in a statement that the “increasing effect of macro pressures on the purchasing behavior of Dollar Tree’s middle- and higher-income customers” was the main driver in reducing its full-year sales forecast. 

Given that Dollar General and Dollar Tree have a combined footprint of over 36,000 stores, primarily centered in the eastern half of the US, the warnings from both management teams about faltering low/mid-tier customer bases provide political strategists with deeper insight into how consumers feel ahead of the elections this fall and what topics dominate at the dinner table. We suspect Biden-Harris’ inflation storm is the most dominant topic as folks can barely afford discount retailer junk food.

A recent report from analytics firm Numerator prepared for Bussiness Insider noted about 40% of shoppers in the US buy from Dollar General. There was no data on Dollar Tree. What’s very clear is that millions upon millions of Americans shop at both of these discount retailers. Suppose average ticket sizes are sliding for junk food, such as candy, chips, and sodas, basically a one-stop-shop for diabetes. In that case, the average shopper at these discount retailers is feeling the financially crushing effects of failed Bidneomics. This type of sentiment can impact elections and make ‘inflation’ a top concern when choosing their candidate. 

Geographically, Dollar General stores are primarily centered in the eastern half of the US. Thousands of these stores are clustered in critical swing states in the region, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and some in Georgia.  

Data from Statista shows swing state North Carolina has 1,035 Dollar General Stores, Pennsylvania has 914, and Michigan 696.

For Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, most of the stores reside in the eastern half of the US. Again, given what management has said about its core customer base under pressure, the geographical locations of the stores can suggest a whole lot of gloom and doom for the working poor across critical swing states.

This gives us a much more true glimpse into souring consumer sentiment on a geographical basis, where inflation dominates household discussions ahead of the fall elections, especially in critical swing states.

Meanwhile, former President Trump has hammered VP Harris for igniting the inflation storm with President Biden. VP Harris offered communist price controls as a solution, but the entire nation was in disbelief. Folks realize they had it good under Trump’s first term, and just awful under Biden-Harris.

Two days ago when president Trump first floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund…

… hard-core Democrats and/or socialist billionaires balked at the idea, mocking it as wannabe Saudi Arabia.

So the republican nominee, a few hours ago, said he wants to take taxpayer money and put it in a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Who thinks it’s a good idea to give Donald Trump
taxpayer money to invest in businesses that he picks ?

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 5, 2024

Trump, speaking to economic leaders on Thursday, said he envisioned the fund as a way to address persistent debt issues and said it would be funded through his plan to impose tariffs on all imports.

“We’ll be able to invest in state-of-the-art manufacturing hubs, advanced defense capabilities, cutting-edge medical research and help save billions of dollars in preventing disease in the first place,” Trump said. “And it is many of the people in this room who will be helping to advise and recommend investments for this fund.”

But expect all the leftist critics to positively love the idea now, just a few hours later, because late on Friday Bloomberg reported that the Kamala/Biden admin has stolen yet another idea from Trump (after eliminating tax on tips, and stimulating new business creation): aides to Joe Biden “have been crafting a proposal to create a sovereign wealth fund” that would allow the US to invest in national security interests including technology, energy, and critical links in the supply chain, a person familiar with the effort, told Bloomberg.

As Bloomberg admits, the “behind-the-scenes work” by NSA Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Daleep Singh, mirrors – at least in spirit – a proposal floated Thursday by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who called for a government-owned investment fund to finance “great national endeavors” during a speech to the Economic Club of New York. Of course, it would look just a little suspicious if the admin of the president in absentia were to float a wealth fund idea just one day after Trump did the same, so Bloomberg had to make it seem that Biden had been working on their version of Trump’s idea “for months” and that’s precisely what it said:

Sullivan and Singh have been working on the project for months across a series of weekly brainstorming efforts, and have met with economic experts on the National Security Council to debate the size, structure, funding, leadership, and potential guardrails for a proposed fund.

It wasn’t clear if it was the “sources” that clarified on the ongoing duration of the project, or just Bloomberg’s attempt to make the latest policy theft appear a bit more organic. It gets funnier:

The work has progressed to the point where planning documents have been circulated among White House staffers and key agencies, according to the person familiar, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Sure it has: and Biden waited until 2 months before the end of his presidency to make the push… or rather waht push:

But even as the work has progressed, key details — including, critically, the fund’s structure, funding model, and investment strategy — remain unclear.

And so, just like every aspect in Kamala’s policy agenda, we’ll have to wait for Trump to reveal the details of his own plan before “sources” leak what Biden was working on before he decided to hit Rehoboth beach permanently after Nancy Pelosi’s July putsch. One thing is certain though: whether it its Trump or the puppetmasters who control Kamala, a SWF – especially one of material size in the $1+ trillion range – will lead to another sharp spike in US debt, pushing US debt sharply higher from its latest record daily print just over $35.3 trillion, and making holders of non fiat assets richer as the US careens toward a monetary and fiscal solvency crisis.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has launched a lawsuit against Snap Inc. following an undercover investigation, accusing it of creating a “breeding ground” for child sexual exploitation through its Snapchat app. The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, alleges that Snapchat’s disappearing images and messages have facilitated predators in collecting sexually explicit images of children and using them for extortion.

According to the state, Snapchat has become the “predominant forum” for these “sextortion” schemes, largely because of its unique design features. The platform’s ephemeral messaging and other elements that connect users have created a “false sense of security,” making it easier for predators to target minors, the lawsuit argues.

The suit follows a months-long undercover investigation by the New Mexico Department of Justice, which uncovered a “vast network” of dark websites that are sharing nonconsensual images from Snapchat. According to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office, the investigation found over 10,000 such records in the past year alone.

“Our undercover investigation revealed that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse,” Attorney General Torrez said in a statement.

Torrez blasted Snap Inc. for allegedly misleading users into believing their content would disappear after being viewed. “Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely,” he added.

The lawsuit also argues that Snapchat’s efforts to differentiate itself from other social media platforms are misleading and potentially dangerous.

“Snap may claim that Snapchat is unlike other social media, but those claims are false and knowingly so,” the lawsuit states. “Snap’s conduct is not only dangerously deceptive; it is unlawful.”

New Mexico is not stopping with Snap Inc. The state is also suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for allegedly enabling similar child sexual exploitation activities on its platforms.

Snap Inc. responded to the allegations on Thursday, stating that they are reviewing the Attorney General’s complaint and will respond in court.

“We share Attorney General Torrez’s and the public’s concerns about the online safety of young people and are deeply committed to Snapchat being a safe and positive place for our entire community, particularly for our younger users,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement. “We have been working diligently to find, remove and report bad actors, educate our community, and give teens, as well as parents and guardians, tools to help them be safe online.”

The spokesperson added, “We understand that online threats continue to evolve and we will continue to work diligently to address these critical issues.”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“The lies then and now are mind boggling. The people who continue to lap up the lies are beyond reach. The poison unleashed into the population will be with us a long time.”

– Edward Dowd

How is it that our country turned into some kind of theme park spook ride, a cheesy-looking haunted house of programmed frights, howling holograms, phantoms with their hair on fire, doors slamming open on glimpses of hell, ill-winds and foul odors, climaxing in a tableau vivant of death-in-life neverending?

I’m sure that this will surprise you, but you can choose to be sane.

How?

You take care of your business conscientiously; you steer in the direction of what is true and away from what is false; you find purpose in your existence by discovering your talents and using them in ways that do not bring harm to other people; you seek the company of kindred spirits. . . love the one you’re with. . . work hard so you can rest easy. . . express your gratitude for being here. That’s a start.

If you prefer being insane, there’s always the current incarnation of the Democratic Party, dedicated to gaslighting the nation into ruin.

Of course, at this point — the point of extreme desperation — the Dems are just running interference for the distraught intel-Globalist blob. The blob’s agenda has been thwarted, overwhelmed by runaway debt and drinking too much of its own propaganda Kool-aid. A great deal of that has entailed the commission of crimes, which always implies the possibility of having to pay for them.

Russia is about to roll up on what’s left of Ukraine. Our State Department neocon division thought it was wicked-smart to start a little action there in 2014, to provoke Russia into a ruinous war against NATO (the game: “Let’s You and Him Fight”) in order, theoretically, to wreck Russia and depose Mr. Putin. Didn’t work. Do you know why? I will tell you (it’s really simple): Russia’s leadership is more intelligent than ours, and far less psychopathic. They perceived correctly that we were only wrecking ourselves.

Ten years later, the Ukraine caper draws to a humiliating end for our neocons, and a ruinous end for NATO and the EU. So far this year, it appears that “Joe Biden’s” party has ceased paying attention to Ukraine. The pretty yellow and blue flags have all but disappeared — except in Massachusetts, we noticed, the most highly “educated” and most deeply insane state in the union. I’ll be interested in how Kamala Harris explains our Ukraine war policy in Tuesday’s presidential debate. Defending democracy, I suppose.

The governments of the major EU nations stupidly followed the bidding of America’s psychopathic neocons and now they ‘ll have to answer for it as their people awake to the destruction of the EU nations’ economies. Early elections will be called and globalist stooges will be swept away. The turmoil will rhyme with the chaos of 1848, a year of revolution. NATO, finding itself not just purposeless but toxic to Europe’s well-being, must dissolve as members on the periphery withdraw, some seeking to join the BRICs economic bloc. Germany, France, and the UK get sucked helplessly into a new great depression and social turmoil as they contend with many millions of hostile migrants.

Here in America, you can already hear the fake anguished cry of “Russia, Russia, Russia” echoing out of Merrick Garland’s fake Justice Department. We’re to understand that the Russians are coming for our election — more gaslight — when it’s actually the Democratic party, led surreptitiously by its lawfare cadres, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, et al. Their many courtroom pranks have failed against Mr. Trump. Judge Chutkan was bloviating in the DC federal court this week to generate a little heat on MSNBC, but her case has a wooden stake through its heart and Xs where its eyes used to be.

Up in New York, Judge Juan Merchan pretends to wrassle with whether or not to start Civil War Two by remanding Mr. Trump to Rikers Island on September 18 (I doubt that happens). In the event, though, I believe Mr. Trump might simply say, “No thank you,” and go about his business running for president. That would be a counter-prank I’d be eager to see. Who gets in the act then? Federal marshals? The FBI (ha!)? The Supreme Court term begins the first Monday in October. They could have something to say about the steaming pile of horseshit that was Alvin Bragg’s and Mathew Colangelo’s case. (Also, Weissmann’s, Eisen’s, Monaco’s, and McCord’s.)

Gawd knows where things might stand after next Tuesday’s great debate. The rules are pretty stringent. No candidates questioning each other. No audience. No confab with staff during commercial breaks. The mute buttons will be on. Without her “I’m speaking” routine, Ms. Harris has. . . zotz. All Mr. Trump really has to do is be polite for 90-minutes.

More than a few people, meanwhile, are beginning to ask who is running the country, since “Joe Biden” is mostly off-duty, beaching it, not attending cabinet meetings, and probably not being consulted on any number of matters being carried out in his name. Are you comforted to know that the US government is on auto-pilot, a colossal, menacing machine run by ghosts?

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The public is exhausted after a decade of chronic untruth from the left-wing and its media.

The 2016 presidential campaign will be long remembered for the false allegation that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to warp the election.

Citing the bogus “Steele dossier,” loser Hillary Clinton and other Democrat grandees claimed that the victorious Trump was an “illegitimate” president.

Almost immediately, the left and media then pushed for the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He assembled a ‘dream team’ of partisan prosecutors to prove Trump-Russian collusion.

Some 22 months later, Mueller found no evidence that Donald Trump improperly won the 2016 election with help from any colluding Russians.

More hysteria followed when Trump was impeached in December 2019.

The left claimed he had pressured the Ukrainian government to look into the family of Joe Biden (then a potential 2020 election opponent) for its corruption with Ukrainian oligarchs—as a condition for releasing military aid designated to Kyiv.

Yet Hunter Biden was paid nearly $1 million a year by a Ukrainian energy company to enlist his father, Vice President Joe Biden, for quid pro quo services.

In turn, Joe Biden himself later bragged he had pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor, Victor Shokin—who happened to be looking too closely into the various shady schemes of the Biden family.

The deceptions and lies continued.

On the eve of the first 2020 debate, Biden aide and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken helped to round up “51 former intelligence authorities” to claim falsely that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop—full of incriminating evidence of felonious Biden family behavior—was fabricated by the Russians.

Yet the FBI already had the laptop and had authenticated it as genuine.

The FBI was also actively enlisting Silicon Valley social media companies to suppress accurate news accounts of the laptop’s embarrassing contents—ostensibly to aid the Biden campaign.

The signees of the false letter included former intelligence kingpins such as Leon Panetta, James Clapper, and John Brennan. None has ever apologized for deliberating lying to the country in a (successful) attempt to help alter an election.

During the summer of 2021, top military officials, at least publicly, parroted the Biden administration’s lie that it was safe to abruptly withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.

The Biden plan was to take political credit for ending the two-decade-long war on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan.

Yet many intelligence officials in and outside the Pentagon had warned both Biden and the Pentagon top brass that any such reckless and total withdrawal would collapse Afghanistan.

They rightly also advised that sudden flight would give terrorists a windfall of equipment and infrastructure.

But they were ignored and during the subsequent Biden misadventure, thirteen American Marines were needlessly killed.

After the greatest military humiliation in a half-century, Biden and many in the media lied that the mission was nevertheless a successful withdrawal.

But that was not all. For the first time in history, a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was subjected to numerous criminal and civil suits in an election year.

Yet the federal prosecutor, Jack Smith, met with Biden officials. A high-ranking Biden Justice federal attorney joined the New York municipal prosecution. The Georgia prosecutor met stealthily with Biden’s legal counsel. And a major Biden donor funded the civil suit.

The once collusion-hungry media ignored all such lawfare and rank collusion.

During the 2020 Democratic primaries, the general election, and throughout the first three years of the Biden administration, it was evident that Joe Biden was physically and mentally incapable of serving as president.

Yet his aides and the media all misled the American people. They insisted that Biden was vigorous and sharp.

Then suddenly in June 2024, within a 24-hour period, Biden was declared by these same insiders as unfit to continue as the Democratic nominee.

Their new problem with Biden was not just his long-standing embarrassing dementia. Rather bad polls increasingly warned that voters no longer believed their lies and thus would likely not reelect Biden but would instead punish most Democrats in the upcoming 2024 election.

So, a new media narrative arose: the once-hale Biden was forced to resign as the Democrat nominee. His once widely caricatured vice president, Kamala Harris, just as abruptly was coronated as his replacement candidate by an equally suddenly gushing and colluding media.

In sum, for some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies.

They did so because they proclaimed Donald Trump too dangerous to be president and therefore any means they employed to stop him were to be justified. And they are doing so yet a third time in 2024.

As they continue, they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public—and embarrassed their country before the world.

One month after the Aug 5 Kamala Karry Trade Krash, we got part 2…

… and boy was it an epic flush: everything – like literally everything – and certainly anything with a high beta or even a trace of momentum, imploded with a sheer violence that made Aug 5 look like amateur hour. And unlike Aug 5, the puke was only at the beginning with stocks spiking from the first moment of trading, this time it was the other way around, with stocks pushing higher to start the day before falling apart, and ending a catastrophic week in the worst way possible: on a downtick.

It all started with the August payrolls: as described earlier, the number wasn’t terrible: at 142K, it missed the estimate of 165K but rebounded sharply from last month’s (downward revised) 89K…

… and the unemployment rate actually dropped…

… as the number of employed workers jumped by the most since March (even if the composition was terrible, consisting entirely of part-time, illegal workers).

Yet, while on the surface the jobs number was strong enough to eliminate the odds of a 50bps rate cut, the market did not take it that way – perhaps as a result of the massive historical revisions – and odds of a 50bps cut in two weeks first spiked, before reversing… only to spike again after Fed gov Waller said he would “advocate” front-loading rate cuts if that is appropriate, wrong-footing markets again, and sending odds of a 50bps cut as high as 65%… before a tweet from the WSJ’s Fed leaker Nick Timiraos interpreted the Fed’s speech as much more hawkish than it appeared, saying that “Fed governor Chris Waller’s speech doesn’t explicitly say “25” or “50” but it leans into endorsing a 25 bps cut to start, explicitly reserving the option to go faster “as appropriate” if “new data” show more deterioration.”

He also said that “Waller pats the Fed on the back for not overreacting to the banking crisis, the lower inflation prints of 2H 23, the higher prints of Q1 24. Then he says, “Based on the evidence I see, I do not believe the economy is in a recession or necessarily headed for one.” So after all that, we saw what may have been a rate expectation reversal for the ages, with odds of 2 cuts first jumping from 40% to 60% before reversing back to 40%, only to surge to 65% before finally plunging to 25%, all in the span of a few minutes!

This epic, frenzied activity meant, in which nobody had any idea what is going on, meant Trading in fed funds futures surged to a record Friday. According to Bloomberg, volumes in the second generic fed funds future, typically the most active, reached 900,000 as of 1pm ET, the highest for any contract since their inception in 1988. Trading volume in the October contract surpasses previous record from March 2023, when collapse of Silicon Valley Bank reverberated through financial markets!

And while we don’t know for a fact if that’s what happened, it seems fair to guess that these unprecedented, wild swings in what is the market’s most important pricing indicator, sparked a relentless liquidation across all assets, which hit – in no particular order – stocks…

… oil

… bitcoin

… USDJPY

… and even gold was not immune, and after briefly reaching for new all time highs in the aftermath of the payrolls scare, it then proceeded to slide to session lows.

In fact, the only asset class that showed some semblance of rationality was bonds, where yields first dumped, then spiked, then dumped again, only to close near session highs, perhaps realizing that the faster the Fed cuts, the faster it will spark another inflationary conflagration.

Putting today – and this week’s – rout in context, one can argue that it was even worse than the Aug 5 debacle, because while that was just one day of acute pain, by the end of that particular week, stocks had largely rebounded. This time, however, the pain is just getting started, and what started off as an ugly week, ended up much uglier with widespread liquidations…

… and even more remarkably, a non-stop attempt by the 0DTE crowd to kickstart an intraday reversal in the form of a record delta flow divergence from the S&P, ended up achieving absolutely nothing.

And how could it when everyone’s favorite high beta momentum stock, NVDA, resumed its plunge and just barely managed to remain above $100, and now down more 30% from its all time high hit all the way back in June…

… and not just NVDA, but the entire Mag 7 sector is now back to levels last seen just after the Aug 5 freakout…

… which may largely be due to charts like this one from Goldman, suggesting that the AI bubble has burst with a bang.

And while it is easy to speculate and assign a narrative to what happened based on prices, it is just as likely that today’s – and this week’s – price action is precisely what was expected to happen: as the following chart from Goldman makes clear, in presidential election years, stocks peak just before Labor day, before dumping all the way until the election, before blasting off higher once more. Well, you are here!

Following Wednesday’s announcement by Attorney General Merrick Garland of new sanctions targeting Russian state media entities, particularly media network RT, which stands charged with conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Moscow is promising to hit back against US journalists and media.

Garland had said, “The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda.”

But Russia on Friday announced it is imposing new restrictions targeting American media. “A like response is not possible. There is no state news agency in the US, and there is no state TV channel in the U.S.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited in RIA Novosti news agency as saying. But he said new measures targeting American media will follow.

Moscow has long acknowledged that Washington directly sponsors foreign propaganda channels abroad, such as state-run Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The latter network up until the 1970s was literally run by the CIA, after which the State Department oversaw it.

These US-funded entities were labeled foreign agents in Russia in 2017, and it was only in 2022 that they were banned from Russia altogether. These are Cold War era US stations which disseminated the American view of events abroad as part of soft power. But Moscow is set to now keep going after private media entities operating in Russia.

As for Friday’s fresh announcement, Peskov continued, “But there will certainly be measures here that will restrict their media disseminating their information.”

On the US government’s new target list for sanctions includes RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia.

Earlier this week as part of his trip to Russia’s regional ally Mongolia, President Putin told the newspaper Onoodor, “In order to hide from inconvenient facts, from truthful information, the West, which considers itself the standard of freedom, has launched an open persecution against Russian correspondents.”

Despite Russia recently adding almost one hundred more journalists and entities to a growing blacklist, including members of The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post,  Putin has said Western reporters who conform to Russian law have nothing to worry about.

“The only requirement for them is compliance with Russian legislation,” he said. “Foreign correspondents accredited in our country should understand this,” Putin continued, as also cited in US state-run VOA.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

It certainly seems that technological advances make our lives better. Instead of writing a letter, stamping it, and mailing it (which was vastly more personal), we now send emails. Rather than driving to a local retailer or manufacturer, we order it online. Of course, we mustn’t dismiss the rise of social media, which connects us to everyone and everything more than ever.

Economists and experts have long argued that technological advances drive U.S. economic growth and productivity. As innovations emerge, they play a crucial role in shaping the economy, improving efficiency, and enhancing productivity across various sectors. From artificial intelligence to automation, the benefits of technological progress are widespread and profound.

For example, automation and artificial intelligence have streamlined manufacturing processes, reducing the need for manual labor and minimizing human error. This efficiency boost leads to faster production times and reduced costs, lowering prices while improving profit margins. Higher productivity levels contribute to overall economic growth, as businesses can produce more goods and services with the same resources.

Another significant benefit is the creation of new industries and job opportunities. As technology evolves, it creates demand for new skills and expertise, leading to the development of entirely new sectors. For example, the rise of the technology industry gave birth to jobs in software, data analysis, and cybersecurity, among others. These high-paying jobs contribute to economic growth by increasing consumer spending and driving innovation.

Ray Kurzweil’s 1999 book, “The Age of Spiritual Machines,” introduced the concept of “The Law of Accelerating Returns.“ Ray predicted that the rate of technological advances is exponential rather than linear. That means that technology builds on itself in a positive feedback loop, allowing each generation to advance at an increasing rate.

Kurzweil’s predictions related to this theory have proven remarkably accurate. He predicted technologies such as the internet and the growth in mobile computing power years before they emerged. Out of 147 predictions he made in the 1990s about the future up to 2009, 115 (78%) were correct.

However, were economists’ predictions about the benefit of technology as accurate as Kurzweil’s?

The Dark Side Of Technological Advancement

While technological advances seem to produce an enormous benefit, a dark side gets hidden from public discourse.

One primary concern is job displacement. Automation and artificial intelligence, while improving efficiency, often replace jobs traditionally performed by humans. This displacement mainly affects low-skilled workers in industries like manufacturing and retail, leading to unemployment and underemployment. As machines take over routine tasks, the workforce faces the challenge of reskilling to meet the demands of a more technologically advanced economy. That transition period can lead to economic slowdowns and increased inequality, as not all workers have the means or opportunity to adapt quickly.

The chart below shows the trend of employment versus actual employment. Since 1947, employment has grown with the economy, as expected. However, employment changed in the late 90s as employment fell below the previous growth trend, coinciding with the Internet adoption. The need for employees eroded as the internet fostered technological advances in everything from manufacturing automation to online sales, social media, advertising, and business management. Today, the deviation in employment from the long-term growth trend is the largest in history outside of the pandemic-driven economic shutdown.

Another issue is the increasing concentration of wealth and market power in the hands of a few technology giants. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple dominate their respective markets, creating barriers to entry for smaller firms. As shown, as technological advances increased, there has been a clear shift in corporate earnings and concentration. Again, starting in the late 90s, increased technological advances reduced the number of employees required to produce goods and services. At the same time, the market became increasingly concentrated in a smaller group of companies.

Monopolistic behavior stifles competition, reduces innovation, and limits consumer choice. Furthermore, corporate profitability soared by reducing labor, which is the most costly expense for any business.

The vast wealth accumulation by these companies contributes to economic inequality. That inequality can hamper overall economic growth by reducing the average consumer’s purchasing power. Since 1990, wealth inequality has soared, with those in the top 10% owning a vast majority of economic wealth. The bottom 50%, which comprises a significant portion of employee labor in the manufacturing and services industries, have barely benefitted.

Lastly, the rapid pace of technological change can lead to productivity paradoxes, where the expected gains in productivity from new technologies do not materialize as anticipated. That happens due to the significant time and investment required to integrate new technologies effectively into existing business processes. Additionally, cybersecurity threats, data privacy concerns, and technology-driven stress can undermine productivity and lead to economic inefficiencies.

But there is even a darker side that no one is talking about.

Social Loneliness

While social media and the internet have revolutionized the way we connect and communicate, they have also contributed to several severe societal issues, including increased loneliness, social and political division, and a troubling rise in teenage suicides. Understanding these negative impacts is crucial for addressing the challenges of the digital age.

One significant consequence of social media is the rise in loneliness. Despite the promise of connecting people, social media often leads to superficial interactions, which lack the depth and intimacy of face-to-face communication. As users compare their lives to the seemingly perfect lives of others online, feelings of inadequacy and isolation can increase. That can be particularly damaging for teenagers, as they are at a critical stage of developing their self-identity and sense of belonging. The constant need for validation through likes and comments can lead to feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

Social media also contributes to social and political division. The algorithms that power these platforms often promote content aligning with users’ beliefs, creating echo chambers reinforcing biases. This polarization can deepen societal divisions, making constructive dialogue and mutual understanding more difficult. The spread of misinformation and fake news further exacerbates these divisions, exposing people to misleading content that can shape their perceptions and opinions. With a growing inability to logically and rationally discuss our differences, passing laws and policies that benefit everyone has become impossible.

Lastly, and most unfortunately, the impact of social media on teenage mental health is alarming. Studies have shown a link between heavy social media use and increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts among teenagers. The pressure to fit in, the prevalence of cyberbullying, and the exposure to unrealistic standards of beauty and success can create a toxic environment that negatively affects teens’ mental well-being. Tragically, this can lead to an increase in teenage suicides (as shown by the CDC) as vulnerable individuals struggle to cope with the pressures of the digital world.

In conclusion, while technology is a powerful driver of economic growth, it also presents challenges that can negatively impact productivity, equality, mental health, and societal cohesion. Addressing these issues ensures that technological advancements promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

After all, that was the promise of technology, to begin with.