American-made F-16 fighters jets are currently on their way to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday during a NATO public forum of the alliance’s annual summit being hosted in Washington D.C. President Biden confirmed alongside European allies that “The transfer process for these F-16s is now under way.”

The program has been one year in the making, which has included training Ukrainian pilots at sites on US soil and in Europe. “Those jets will be flying in the skies of Ukraine this summer, to make sure that Ukraine can continue to effectively defend itself against the Russian aggression,” Blinken said further.

Additionally a joint statement from partner countries in the program, Denmark and The Netherlands, said specifics and details are being withheld for “operational security.”

“The first of more than 60 American-made F-16 jet fighters are on their way to Ukraine and will be flying later this summer,” the allies said.

It was only in May that the first batch of pilots graduated from a US training program. Earlier reports disclosed that they are being trained at Air Forces bases in San Antonio, TX – and in Arizona.

The announcement which comes on the second day of the NATO summit strongly signals the alliance is digging its heels in and looking for a fight.

Monday saw one of the biggest Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine in months. The assault involved at least 40 missiles and Russia has been widely accused of attacking Kiev’s largest children’s hospital. Monday’s strikes killed dozens and injured more than 170 across the country.

The Kremlin has claimed, however, that it was a Ukrainian anti-air missile which fell on the hospital, and highlighted that it’s being used as a “provocation” close in time to world leaders gathering for the NATO summit.

As for the F-16s, Russia has repeatedly vowed that it will not only shoot them out of the skies, but might attack any external base near Ukraine’s borders hosting them. 

For example, in March President Putin vowed while visiting a pilot training base, “We will destroy their warplanes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.”

A recent slip-up by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg…

Stoltenberg slips up and admits NATO pilots will be flying F-16s. This is so easy. pic.twitter.com/EqefO38OIJ

— Canadian Prepper (@PrepperCanadian) June 17, 2024

Significantly, Putin had upped the ante given he made clear that even bases in Western countries could be targeted if Ukraine flies sorties from them. “Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are located,” he had said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine plans to base at least some of the jets at allied bases outside its territory, on fears that the F-16s will be the first assets targeted by superior Russian aerial forces. Russia has effectively controlled the skies throughout the whole course of the conflict, and Kiev has a steep uphill battle if its hopes to regain control no matter how many Western-supplied jets it possesses.

Via SchiffGold.com,

In this episode, Peter recaps the latest batch of economic data, in which revisions to job numbers and a declining manufacturing sector bode poorly for the economy. He also analyzes gold and silver’s big week last week and offers some thoughts on President Biden’s recent post-debate interview on ABC.

Friday saw an apparently optimistic jobs report overshadowed by large downward revisions for May’s and April’s figures:

“They were expecting 189,000 jobs created, and we ended up exceeding that with 206,000 jobs. … In fact, Biden once again bragged that the jobs that were created were over 200,000 for the month. Of course, he took credit for those jobs. But as is normally the case, once you look beneath the surface— and you don’t have to look deep beneath the surface—you get another very weak jobs report. Let’s start with their downward revisions because there were quite a few downward revisions. Both of the prior months were revised down. So April was revised down by 57,000 jobs, and May was revised down by 54,000 jobs. That’s not insignificant.”

Weak manufacturing job growth is indicative of America’s economic woes:

“The government now says that it was zero, that no manufacturing jobs at all were created in May, and 8,000 were lost in June. Again, these are the productive jobs that we need people making stuff. We’re not making stuff. We’re consuming more bigger trade deficits. This is a weak report that is also inflationary.

So it’s stagflation, a weak economy, and more inflationary pressures.

The labor force participation rate stayed at 62.6, which is a very weak number. And significantly, the unemployment rate rose to 4.1%. It was 4% in the prior month unrevised, and it went up to 4.1%. That is significant.”

If anything, these statistics are still too optimistic.

[ZH: US macro data has serially disappointed for the last year and the last three months have seen a dramatic negative swing…]

Changes in government statistical methods paper over underlying economic fault lines:

“That’s why when you look at these rigged unemployment numbers and you come to the conclusion that we have a strong economy with low unemployment and you don’t understand why Biden is so unpopular, it’s because the way we’re keeping track of these economic statistics is wrong.

The real statistics— if we measured the economy the way we did prior to 1994— you can see why so many people are so miserable.”

With gold hovering closer to $2400/oz, Peter thinks gold mining stocks will improve shortly:

“Gold is holding at a very high price. I expect a lot of these gold mining companies to report much better earnings than the street expects because the price of gold is staying at much higher prices for a much longer period of time than these analysts penciled into their earnings forecast.

So I still think that this is the best way right now to play the gold sector is through these mining stocks. I think they’re still dirt cheap. There’s incredible value there. People should be buying these stocks.”

Peter slams President Biden’s most recent ABC interview in which he tries to excuse his ghastly debate performance. In addition to the president’s still-apparent cognitive problems, Peter takes issue with Biden calling Donald Trump a liar:

“You know what I detest most is hypocrisy, right? … Biden tells a lot of outright lies. I mean, complete lies. He has no right to call anybody a liar. When you do something yourself, you can’t accuse somebody else. It’s not just, you know, living in glass houses and not throwing stones. Biden has been in politics all of his life. And you don’t stay in politics without being a liar. You’re not going to have a long political career unless you’re a good liar. You’ve got to lie a lot to get reelected that often.

And so he has no right to keep focusing on Trump lying, Trump lying. In fact, the reason he wants to talk about Trump’s lies so much is because that’s what he does. His whole presidency is a lie. Everything out of his mouth is a lie.”

For more technical analysis of last week’s metals price action, check out the SchiffGold Gold Wrap podcast.

As panicked Democrats continue wringing their hands over the general election perils associated with President Biden’s accelerating cognitive decline, Big Media has thus far spent the week largely focused on comments made in closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, and the steady drip of Democratic House reps stepping out to publicly urge Biden to quit race. 

Little attention has been paid to Biden’s next opportunity to confirm everyone’s worst judgements about his mental state. In a event that has the potential to inflict even more damage than his primetime, sit-down interview with George Stephanopolous last week, Biden will conduct a rare solo press conference on Thursday — facing a press corps that’s been re-programmed, switching from Biden-protection to Biden-scrutiny. 

Hear me out: for Biden’s Press conference on Thursday, all major outlets should replace their usual reporter with their Chief Medical reporter to ask questions.

— e-beth (@ebeth360) July 9, 2024

Though Team Biden unleashed a major, multi-faceted Monday offensive aimed at removing doubts about whether the 81-year-old will stay in the race, his campaign is still teetering as it receives a steady stream of shoves from both inside and outside government. For example, on Tuesday alone: 

• New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill became the eighth House Democrat to urge Biden to abandon his re-election campaign, saying, “I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee.” 
• Responding to a question thrown at him on a New York City street, ABC‘s Stephanopolous said “I don’t think he can serve four more years.” He later said he was wrong for “respond[ing] to a passerby.” 
• Appearing on CNN, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet said, “Trump is on track…to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide and take with him the Senate and the House.” 

Depending on the extent to which the White House can rig it in the president’s favor, Thursday’s press conference could be a game-changer that takes the Democrats’ anti-Biden rebellion to a new level of intensity — one that, for example, sees the first Democratic senators come forward to publicly oppose Biden’s continuation in the race. 

We’ve already witnessed many major leftist media figures — from Stephanopoulos to Jake Tapper to Joe Scarborough — suddenly willing to speak frankly about Biden’s manifest mental decline. With Biden on a precipice, Thursday’s press conference could be a contest among reporters striving to cement their place in history by being the one to give Biden the decisive shove over the cliff. 

The big question: To what extent will the White House be able to choreograph the whole affair? Belying their claims of being duped about Biden’s withering abilities, the White House press corps has hitherto aided and abetted sham press conferences in which Biden has been caught holding cheat sheets that not only tell him which reporters to call on, but even give him the full text of the question each reporter will ask.  

ZeroHedge and a handful of other outlets tried their best to bring this scandalous deception to public notice, but  mainstream media colluded in concealing it. Now, however, it’s a new ball game, and the White House can’t expect such tactics to go unreported this time around.

Indeed, the Biden campaign just came under fire over the weekend when urban-talk-radio hosts at two stations said the campaign gave them a pre-selected list of questions when Biden appeared on their shows with hopes of bolstering his sagging support among black Americans. One host was fired for going along with the scheme. 

Biden was told to come out and give live press conferences and interviews and instead gave a prescripted interview to a radio station that resulted in getting a black woman fired and it’s somehow not national news everywhere.

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 9, 2024

Amid widespread demands for Biden to demonstrate his ability to manage unscripted conversations, the White House communications staff is between a rock and a hard place. Biden’s grown accustomed to stage-managed press conferences, and is likely to perform badly if he’s now forced to attempt a real one.

On the other hand, if the White House pre-selects reporters who’ve submitted questions in advance, it could be a scandal — the one that should have already erupted when we and others publicized the practice back in April 2023. Team Biden must also think twice about hosting a press conference that’s seen as as rushed or allowing too few questions. 

There’s another facet that will elevate the difficulty level: time of day. While a time hasn’t yet been published, the White House last week said it will take place in the afternoon — and only after an earlier-afternoon meeting associated with this week’s NATO summit in Washington. According to White House sources, Biden is at his best between 10am and 4pm. “Outside of that time range…Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued,” reported Axios. It sounds like the press conference could take place on the cusp of his danger zone. 

On top of all that, Biden’s embattled communication team has already demonstrated some jarring incompetence in regard to this critical press conference. Last week, Bloomberg reporter Justin Sink asked press secretary Karine Jean Pierre if it would be “a real, big-boy press conference,” apparently referring to a lengthy, robust solo session as opposed to shorter ones featuring both Biden and some other official. 

Both Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby called President Biden’s upcoming press conference a “Big Boy” conference today 😬 pic.twitter.com/tdWzs9pAhY

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) July 8, 2024

Showing an unfathomable lack of appreciation for how it would be perceived, both Jean Pierre and John Kirby this week used the inside-joke “big boy press conference” label as they referred to Thursday’s critical event. Lacking context, Americans naturally took this as the failing president’s handlers describing his activities much as they would a toddler’s — as Jill Biden did after Joe’s historically-catastrophic debate with Trump: 

This is elder abuse. Watch as Jill Biden speaks to Joe as if she’s praising a toddler. Did she give him a star sticker for his chart? 😂 pic.twitter.com/TcolTF5zrl

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) June 28, 2024

So stand by for what will likely be the most-watched press conference of Biden’s term in office…a prospect that surely has his caretakers filled with dread…

This is how much Biden is trusted. Watch the looks they give each other!!👇🏼

Now John Kirby says Biden will hold a “big boy press conference”…

How terrified do y’all think they are to let that senile moron back in front of a microphone? pic.twitter.com/ZQWVQT8C0P

— SaltyGoat (@SaltyGoat17) July 8, 2024

Bonus Biden press-conference flashback: 

Blinken’s face after Joe Biden calls Chinese President Xi a “dictator” 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/XqjQU9FmZd

— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) November 16, 2023

Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClearEnergy,

According to Electrly, the electric vehicle charging manufacturer, it takes an average of 90 kilowatt-hours of electricity to fully charge a Tesla Model Y long range all-wheel-drive vehicle, 83 kWh for the Model Y performance version, and 67 kWh for the standard range Model Y. 

Each Tesla uses between 0.24 to 0.30 kWh per mile, or about 4,500 kWh over a year for 15,000 miles of driving. Other electric vehicles use more or less, but within a similar range. At 0.30 kWh per mile, that’s 90 kWh for 300 miles of driving for the typical week. 

The average American household without an in-home EV charging station consumes about 30 kWh per day, or about 10,720 kWh over a year’s time. With just one electric vehicle being charged at home, that total increases to about 15,220 kWh. For two-EV households, that total runs up to nearly 20,000 kWh per year (assuming both drivers commute to work). That’s nearly double current electricity usage for such families.

Without an EV in the garage, air conditioning uses nearly a fifth of household electricity, followed by space heating and water heating (a combined 25%). But adding just one home-charged EV changes that calculus dramatically. The EV takes up about 30% of the much higher total electricity use, dropping the share for all other uses significantly. 

Two home-charged EVs would eat up nearly half the household’s total electricity usage – and require thousands of dollars to upgrade the house’s electric panel. Today’s 50-kva transformers, which cost about $8,000 each, can power about 60 homes; that number drops closer to 40 if each of those homes houses one electric vehicle, closer to 30 with two EVs using home chargers.

For a city with 120,000 homes, which today may require about 2,000 transformers, the addition of 120,000 home-charged electric vehicles means adding 1,000 transformers, about $8 million. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because distributing 50 to 100% more household electricity requires generating 50 to 100% more electricity. 

All this costs money that most Americans today do not have, especially at the generation end. Especially with the push to eliminate electric generation from coal and natural gas and even nuclear energy. It also requires massive construction of electric infrastructure, from transmission lines to transformers to in-home charging stations accompanied by larger electric fuse boxes.

One might see all this as a great booster of the economy. One problem with this is that the U.S. is projected to have a shortfall of 550,000 electricians by 2027. Who will do all this work? Another problem is that most “studies” of the impact of electrifying the vehicle fleet and relying nearly entirely on wind and solar energy pay little attention to the impact on individual households and local communities. 

Who will benefit – and who will be harmed?  The “experts” either do not know or will not say. 

Do they play chess? Do they realize that wise policy making requires a chess-like approach of evaluating the impact of today’s moves six or seven moves down the road?

Then there are the side issues. 

Many of those who strongly advocate for an all-EV future live in cities governed by progressives whose public officials have been “soft” on property crimes. This may explain why thieves in the Seattle metro area have stolen the copper cables from over 100 EV charging stations in the past 12 months, leaving these stations totally useless until the cables are replaced (and then, often as not, stolen again). 

Belgian firefighters are lobbying to ban the parking of electric vehicles in underground garages, just as liquefied petroleum gas vehicles without safety valves cannot park in them. The reason? 

It takes up to 70 hours to extinguish an EV electric fire by immersing the vehicle in a skip filled with water – which can hardly be done in an underground car park. Worse, the water used to extinguish these fires reveals a chemical load up to 70 times higher than typical load limits for industrial wastewater.

Ars Technica reports one concern motorists have with buying EVs is the shortfall of public charging stations. The U.S. Department of Energy says that, of the nation’s 64,000 public charging stations, only 10,000 are direct current chargers that can replenish an EV battery is 30 minutes rather than several hours – and that’s if there is no line. 

What the EV-promoting journal misses in its excuse-me post is that those fueling up at the nation’s 120,000 gasoline and diesel stations can do so in far less than 30 minutes, usually waiting a maximum 60 seconds to access a free pump. 

As the old adage says, time is money. 

Speaking of money, remember that Biden Administration promise two years ago to spend $7.5 billion to install about 20,000 EV charging stations with up to 500,000 charging points in operation? As of March 2024, only seven of these stations had been built with Biden dollars. 

Maybe the reason is a lack of qualified personnel, maybe a lack of spare parts. Or is this money going down the same rabbit hole as the Solyndra and First Solar handouts?

Even in super-green Germany, whose zeal for environmental purity was such that it shut down its nuclear power industry (but reopened coal plants), half of EV owners regret their purchase or lease, many citing “rising electricity prices.” That same sentiment is growing in America and around the developed world despite the machinations of the globalist power elites.

The day of reckoning for the Biden (and other nations’) EV mandates may come soon, especially as defiant automakers have moved forward with hydrogen-fueled vehicles, cleaner internal combustion engines, and other alternatives to the electricity-sucking, highway-crushing (yes, the heavier EVs add wear and tear to public roadways) marvels, many of which rely on diesel generators or coal-fired power plants to operate.

But mostly, people just want to be free to make their own economic and transportation choices and not have some unelected bureaucrat making those decisions for them.

Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues. 

The German government is no longer a “Bitcoin billionaire”, as Arkham Intelligence reports that this morning saw them unload another 2000 BTC ($117mm) to exchanges, leaving just 13,360 BTC ($785mm) remaining – 26.8% of the original bitcoin seizure from movie-pirating site, Movie2k.

But while the US and German governments are simultaneously doing their best to instill FUD in the crypto community (helped by Mt.Gox), bitcoin ETF investors are piling back in at quite a pace.

🇺🇸 ETFs bought 3,760 #Bitcoin ($216.4m) on July 9 🚀🚀

Highlights:

IBIT +2,100 BTC
FBTC +1580 BTC
ARKB +750 BTC
GBTC -650 BTC pic.twitter.com/z5hLWXQorI

— Thomas | heyapollo.com (@thomas_fahrer) July 10, 2024

Total net inflows across all ETFs for July 9 came to $216.4 million, or 3,760 Bitcoin. The burst of inflows, which includes $294.8 million on Monday, July 8, and $143.1 million on Friday, July 5, totals $654 million over the past three trading days.

Source: Bloomberg

And so, despite the German Govt overhang, bitcoin rallied up to $59,000 this morning…

Source: Bloomberg

As @r0ckstardev posted on X:

“Germany selling all their Bitcoin will go down as one of the most retarded things their politicians ever did.”

While initial concerns had forecast ongoing sell pressure from Mt. Gox and Germany, experts Decrypt spoke to said those concerns are “overblown.”

The worst of Germany’s selling appears to be “in the rear-view mirror,” Ryan McMillin, chief investment officer at crypto fund manager Merkle Tree Capital, told Decrypt.

Finally, we note that bitcoin is trying to break above its key technical resistance level (200DMA) and this morning’s smack down stalled that…

Source: Bloomberg

…for now.

Discussing the market narrative and sentiment with CoinTelegraph, Ante said that the ongoing event “may be forgotten in a few months, and new events, such as the Mt. Gox payouts, may be the subject [of] debate.”

“Such sales likely lead to an even broader distribution of Bitcoin ownership, so the whole event may be positive for Bitcoin in the medium term.”

Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) on Tuesday became the first Democratic senator to publicly cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump in November.

“Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House,” Bennett told CNN‘s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday – after telling colleagues the same in private. “So for me, this isn’t a question about polling. It’s not a question about politics. It’s a moral question about the future of our country.”

“The White House, in the time since that disastrous debate, I think, has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election,” he continued.

Watch:

Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) got outed by the media for saying privately that Biden is on track to lose badly to Donald Trump. He went on CNN to own his comments publicly. Respect. This is an absolutely brutal clip if you’re inside the Biden White House right now. pic.twitter.com/oS7BWdkHJF

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 10, 2024

Bennet’s comments echo those of a growing number of congressional Democrats who say Biden’s reelection bid could hurt the entire party in down-ballot races this fall. As CNN reports, “Democrats, including those inside the administration, view this week as critical to Biden’s political survival, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill gathered privately for their weekly meetings on Tuesday.”

“The stakes could not be higher,” said Bennett, who says his voters have “deep concerns” over whether Biden can win.

Punchbowl News had a sobering take on the state of affairs for Democrats in their Wednesday AM newsletter, saying Biden has “made a mess of the Democratic party.“

Senate Democrats were far from united about whether Biden is the best person to defeat Trump. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told us that Biden needs to “continue to aggressively make his case” to his fellow Democratic senators in order to “earn full support.”

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill issued a statement Tuesday afternoon calling on Biden to step aside in favor of another Democratic candidate.

“[B]ecause I know President Biden cares deeply about the future of our country, I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee.”

Fellow New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim — who’s running for Senate — walked right up the line of whether Biden should get out.

“What steps can we actually take right now [to replace Biden.] That’s where some of the confusion is. Especially with all the talk of what are the actual deadlines. It’s hard to kind of make a decision without fully understanding that. We need to get a better grasp on it,” said Kim.

Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders met privately on Tuesday morning with some of their most vulnerable members, for a conversation that was “honest, brutal and intense,” and left some members crying, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting.

Stephanopoulos Opines

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, told TMZ that he doesn’t think Biden can serve another four years.

The 63-year-old Stephanopoulos sat down for a closely-watched interview with Biden last week following the president’s disastrous debate performance last month against Donald Trump.

“Do you think Biden should step down?” the TMZ journalist asked the “Good Morning America” co-host and moderator of “This Week.”

“I don’t think he can serve four more years,” replied Stephanopoulos after a pause.

#GeorgeStephanopoulos just made a STUNNING comment: he told someone on the streets of #NewYork that he doesn’t think President #JoeBiden can serve another term! https://t.co/cFMK2Uxx4z pic.twitter.com/pxKkolFcGt

— TMZ (@TMZ) July 9, 2024

Stephanopoulos walked back his comment hours later, telling Puck News “Earlier today I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have.”

ABC News told the outlet: “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News.“

During the interview between Stephanopoulos and Biden, the president failed to tamp down concerns over his cognitive fitness to continue as president – claiming that he was “exhausted” and “sick” with a “bad cold” heading into the June 27 debate against Trump in Atlanta.

At another point in the interview, Biden rejected calls to exit the race, saying “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race’, I’d get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”

For the past two years it seemed that the Fed’s rate hiking cycle has been flipped on its head and that Erdoganomics, as batshit insane as it is, was the rule of the land: instead of home prices dropping, as one would expect under tighter financial conditions, home prices kept rising and rising, because in a world where the marginal home buyer has been limited to an extremely narrow group of 1%ers, who needs mortgages?

But tighten long enough, and even the top wealth tiers begin to fray, and that’s precisely what we are now seeing in the US housing market, which – since it is the biggest asset of the US middle class, unlike the stock market which is the playground of the top 1% – is also the most tangible leading indicator for the broader economy. We saw that in the latest Case Shiller numbers where the Composite 20 city index posted its first YoY decline since early 2023…

…. and we are also now seeing it in the latest Redfin home price data, where among other things, we find that as average home sale prices hit new all time highs, the number of actual transactions has collapsed while the number of new listed homes is surging and last but not least, the number of price drops reported – which is what those who need the extract the money from their real estate yet can no longer afford to live in the mark-to-myth world created by record wide bid/ask spreads, just jumped to the highest on record.

Here are the details:

The median sale price hit $397,954, the highest on record, and a 4.9% YoY increase, the biggest since March.

The median asking price hit $409,975, which at a 6.1% increase YoY, was the biggest increase since October 2022

Yet asking prices are finally plateauing, because at $2,749, the number of remaining potential buyers who can afford to pay almost double the average monthly payment from 2021 can be counted on one hand.

And with sellers keeping prices artificially high (after all, most of them don’t really need the money right now, and are just dangling asks for desperate buyers to lift) the actual number of transactions has collapsed, as the number of price indescriminate buyers has cratered, leading to widespread market paralysis.

With the market paralyzed, it’s no secret why the number of active listings of homes for sale has soared 18% year over year as inventory just keeps piling up…

… resulting in 3.3 months of supply which is a record for this time of the year.

The inventory glut also means that it takes longer and longer to sell the median home…

… into a market where demand is plunging 17% YoY.

Yet sellers are starting to get impatient, and after a record 55% of homes sold above listing price in 2022, the number has since tumbled to just 32.3%.

And perhaps the most important data point: while in the past sellers had the luxury of just waiting out the lack of buyers, the first true crack in the market has finally appeared because sellers are finally starting to chase bids (which are not rising) and the number of listing that had price drops surged to 6.9%, the highest on record.

That means that unless the Fed cuts rates significantly in the next few months, the housing market is on the verge of creating its own reflexive and self-reinforcing liquidation spiral, as more sellers cut prices, forcing even more sellers to cut prices until suddenly the specter of a full-blown housing crash returns… just in time for Trump’s presidency.

By Emma Arns of CampusReform

Harvard University’s summer reading list includes various books covering topics like transgenderism, feminism, and racism, including one book that states that educators should teach their students ideas related to Critical Race Theory.

We’ve got recommendations from the Harvard community, titles from Harvard authors, and a glimpse inside some new releases,” the school’s website reads.

A page titled “Need a good book?” under Harvard’s “Summer Reads” section advertises “We Want to Do More Than Survive,” a book that argues that “the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color.”

Harvard doctoral student, DeAnza Cook, says the book is a “powerful appeal to build transformative educational homeplaces rooted in abolitionist pedagogies for liberation,” and recommends it for “[diversity, inclusion, and belonging] educators and enthusiasts.”

The book urges that educators “must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements.”

The author of the book, Dr. Bettina Love, is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who previously said her work focuses on “help[ing] white people become less racist.” She also previously wrote that educators should “[r]emove all punitive or disciplinary practices that spirit murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous children.”

Another book on the reading list, “Detransition, Baby” by Torrey Peters, “follows the lives of three women, transgender and cisgender, and shows how their experiences intertwine around a pregnancy.”

“Living a Feminist Life” by Sara Ahmed is also mentioned on the Harvard summer list. Ahmed’s book explores, among other topics, “how feminists create inventive solutions . . . to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism.”

The book contains chapters titled: “Lesbian Feminism,” “Feminist Snap,” and “A Killjoy Survival Kit.”

Additional books on the Harvard summer reading list include “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science,” and “In Search of a Beautiful Freedom,” which is a collection of “writings on Black music, feminism, literature, and events.”

How do corruption perceptions in Latin America compare to other countries?

In this graphic, LVisual Capitalist’s Latinometrics uses data from Transparency International to provide visual context to corruption opinions across nations.

What is the Corruption Perceptions Index?

Every year, a German organization called Transparency International embarks on measuring corruption in each of the world’s countries. It does so through a metric they’ve branded as the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which, as the name implies, measures how corrupt a given country is perceived by the people living there.

As with any such index, the methodology leaves room for criticism. Many will notice that according to this list, Cuba is Latin America’s fourth least corrupt country. The correct way of interpreting the index is that Cubans consider their country less corrupt than, say, Colombians consider their own country. It’s a subjective measure.

Corruption Perceptions in Latin America and the World

Latin American countries range from Venezuela, which, as of 2023, ranks second to worst worldwide, to Uruguay, which is tied with Japan and perceived as less corrupt than some of the most developed nations like the U.S. and France.

Source: Transparency International.

Unlike most countries in Latin America, which have experienced turmoil and drastic changes over the years, Uruguay’s corruption score has remained stable. This indicates healthy power transitions and is a testament to Uruguay’s trusted democratic and judicial systems.

Other Notable Trends

Turning back the clock on this index exposes improvements and descents into tragedy. On the improvements side, the Dominican Republic has made strides to regain its people’s trust, bettering its score by over 20 percentage points in the past decade.

In the early 2010s, the Dominican Republic was struggling with bribery allegations and a weak and unwilling-to-prosecute judicial system. Just last year, 20 former officials were arrested in the largest anti-corruption probe in the country’s history, which uncovered widespread embezzlement in government contracts.

Conversely, Venezuela and Nicaragua have both continued to undermine institutions and concentrate power in the hands of undemocratic leaders.

By John Grady of USNI News

NATO’s leaders are set to approve a separate command at Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate training and equipment donations to Kyiv’s forces, a senior administration official told reporters last week.

The command will have about 700 personnel from NATO countries and partner nations assigned to the center, an alliance news release said. The administration officials, speaking to the press Friday, said the center would increase the interoperability among Ukrainian forces and NATO.

As an example of the drive to make Kyiv’s military more interoperable with NATO’s, the administration official said, “the U.S. for more than a year [have] been training Ukrainians on F-16 platforms,” as have other alliance members.

NATO will also facilitate equipment logistics and provide support through the center to the long-term development of Ukraine’s armed forces, the release added.

Last month, the alliance’s defense ministers approved the motion for consideration at the summit in Washington.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that creating the center does “not make NATO a party to the conflict, but they will enhance our support to Ukraine to uphold its right to self-defense.”

The administration official said, “the alliance stood up to President [Vladimir] Putin.” He added that 23 of the 32 nations in NATO are spending more than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, and some members are calling for a 3 percent threshold. Overall, the alliance has boosted its defense spending by more than $180 billion each year since 2020, he added.

At the defense ministers’ meeting last month, Stoltenberg said, “Over the next five years, NATO Allies across Europe and Canada plan to acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft – mostly 5th generation F-35s – and also a lot of other high-end capabilities.”

The center’s creation also could be seen as a means of “institutionalizing” the long-term commitment of Western and Indo-Pacific nations, such as Japan, Korea and Australia, to Ukraine. The support would continue despite changes in administrations as would occur in the United States if Donald Trump is elected and, and changes in governments, as happened in the United Kingdom with Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

“The long-term effort is to provide a bridge to membership” for Ukraine, the administration official said. He added, “there is a political overlay” to decisions like creating an alliance and multinational center “to help to build Ukrainian future forces.”

The administration official insisted the alliance was stronger than ever with the admission of Sweden to be formally marked in Washington this week. He also cited the North Atlantic Council’s selection of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as the next secretary general. He takes office in October.

The official dismissed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s meeting with Putin in Moscow as showing alliance weakness. “We’re convinced [the meeting] will not promote the course of peace.” Hungary now leads the Council of the European Union under its six-month presidential rotation policy. It is also a NATO member.

Orban has often broken with the E.U. and NATO on how the war should end. Orban also has repeatedly called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider conceding territory to the Kremlin as the best way to stop the fighting. In addition, he has barred the shipment of donated weapons through Hungary to neighboring Ukraine. He joined with Turkey in delaying Sweden’s admission to the alliance for almost two years.

Also high on the summit’s agenda will be what steps NATO should take regarding China’s underpinning of Russia’s military-industrial base as the war continues. The official noted Beijing is supplying 90 percent of the microelectronics Moscow’s defense industry needs. It also is supplying other dual use high technologies and precision tools for advanced manufacturing.

“This is creating a strong challenge to our European allies,” the official said. He added that the E.U., Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand will be attending the summit as observers. The E.U. and the four Indo-Pacific U.S. allies will participate in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council to discuss mutual security threats from Russia and China that include building resilience in its armed forces and industrial base, cyber, disinformation campaign and technology transfer.

The official said those nations’ attendance, along with the E.U., show the “variable geography” of U.S. global alliances.

The official said a major announcement of defense industry revitalization and expansion would be forthcoming at the meeting, but did not provide details. Nor did he provide details on new arms, beyond saying air defense systems,” would be sent to Ukraine in the coming months.