Authored by Peter St. Onge and Jeffrey A. Tucker via the Brownstone Institute,

There was an oblique message buried in a New York Times story on the growing crisis in commercial real estate in cities. Yes, this is exactly the kind of article that people pass over because it seems like it doesn’t have broad application. In fact, it does. It affects the core of issues like our city skylines, how we think about urbanism and progress, where we vacation and work, and whether the big cities are drivers or drains on national productivity. 

The note mentions the “broader distress brewing in the commercial real estate market, which is hurting from the twin punches of high interest rates, which make it harder to refinance loans, and low occupancy rates for office buildings — an outcome of the pandemic.”

We are used to this kind of language blaming the pandemic for the results of lockdowns. Of course, it was a man-made decision to turn a respiratory virus into an excuse to shut down the world. The lockdowns blew up all economic data, generating seesawing graphs on every indicator never seen in industrial history. They also made before/after comparison extremely difficult.

The consequences will echo long into the future. The high interest rates are a result of trying to slow down the money spigot unleashed in March 2020, in which more than $6 trillion in new cash appeared out of nowhere and was distributed as if by helicopter. 

What did the money injection do? It generated inflation. How much? Sadly, we do not know. The Bureau of Labor Statistics simply cannot keep up, partially because the Consumer Price Index does not calculate the following: interest on anything, taxes, housing, health insurance (accurately), homeowners insurance, car insurance, government services like public schools, shrinkflation, quality declines, substitutions due to price, or additional service fees. 

That’s a major part of what has gone up, which is why data on particular industries shows a huge gap (groceries up 35% over four years) and why ShadowStats estimates inflation in double digits two years running, having peaked at 17%. Just adding in interest, a paper from NBER estimates, takes 2023 inflation to 19%.

Various studies have shown that since 2019 fast food prices — a gold standard in financial markets for measuring true inflation — have outpaced official CPI by between 25% and 50%.

Getting the inflation data wrong is only the start of the problem. We are lucky if any government data even adjusts for the wrong numbers. Consider retail sales as just one example. Let’s say you bought a hamburger last year for $10 and you bought one this week for $15. Would you say that your retail spending is up 50%? No, you just spent more on the same thing. Well, guess what? All retail sales are calculated this way. 

It’s the same with factory orders. You have to do the inflation adjustments yourself. Even using conventional data, which are wildly underestimated, wipes out all gains of the last several years. EJ Antoni is one of the few economists actually keeping up with this stuff, and he produces the following two charts. 

As EJ writes: “This is factory orders before and after adjusting for inflation: what looks like a 21.1% increase from Jan ’21 to Mar ’24 is only a 1.8% increase – the rest is just higher prices, not more physical stuff; worse yet, real orders are down 6.9% since their highwater mark in June ’22.”

Imagine the same charts but with more realistic adjustments. Are you getting the picture? The mainstream data being dished out daily by the business press is fake. And imagine the same charts above redone with inflation in the double digits as it should be. We’ve got a serious problem. 

The problems with the employment data are getting to be more well-known. Essentially, the establishment data that is normally reported is double-counting or just plain inaccurate, and there is a huge divergence with the other method of counting jobs via household surveys. EJ again offers this look. 

In addition, neither worker/population ratios nor the labor participation rate are back to pre-lockdown levels. 

Now consider GDP. In the old formula hammered out in the 1930s, government spending adds to the GDP while cuts subtract from it, just as exports add and imports subtract. Why? It’s an old theory rooted in a kind of Keynesian/mercantilism that no one seems ever to change. But the bias is profound these days with explosive government spending. 

To calculate whether and to what extent we are in recession, we look not at nominal GDP but real GDP; that is, adjusted for inflation. Two down quarters are considered recessionary. What if we adjust pathetic and seriously mis-estimated output numbers by a realistic understanding of inflation over the last few years? 

We don’t have the numbers but a back-of-the-envelope suggests that we never left the recession of March 2020 and that everything has been getting gradually worse. 

That appears to fit with every single consumer sentiment survey. It seems likely that people themselves are better observers of reality than government data collectors and statisticians. 

So far, we’ve dealt briefly with inflation, output, sales, and output, and find that none of the official data is reliable. One mistake bleeds to others, such as adjusting output for inflation or adjusting sales for increased prices. The jobs data is particularly problematic because of the problem of double-counting. 

What to know about household finance? The flipping of savings rates and credit card debt tell the story. 

When you add it all up, you get a strange sense that nothing we are being told is real. According to official data, the dollar has lost about 23 cents in purchasing power over the last four years. Absolutely no one believes this. Depending on what you actually spend money on, the real answer is closer to 35 cents or 50 cents or even 75 cents…or more. We do not know what we cannot know. 

We are left to speculate. And this problem is combined with the reality that this is not just a US problem. The increase in inflation and the decline in output is truly global. We might call this an inflationary recession or high inflationary depression, all over the world.  

Consider that most economic models used through the 1970s, and still today, postulate that there is a forever tradeoff between output (with employment as a proxy) and inflation, such that when one is up, the other is down (Phillips curve). 

Now we face a situation where the jobs data are profoundly affected by bad surveys and labor dropouts, output data is distorted by history-making levels of government spending and debt, and no one is even trying anymore to provide a realistic accounting of inflation. 

What the heck is really going on? We live in data-obsessed times with seemingly magical abilities to know and calculate everything. And yet even now, we seem to be more blind than ever before. The difference is that nowadays, we are supposed to trust and rely on data that no one even believes is real. 

Going back to that commercial real estate crisis, for the New York Times story, the large banks would not even talk to the reporters doing the story. That should tell you something.

We live with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell economy. No one wants to say hyperinflation. No one wants to say economic depression. Above all else, never admit the truth: the turning point in our lives and the precipitating event to the whole calamity for the world were the lockdowns themselves. All else follows. 

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Federal judges in Missouri and Kansas issued separate rulings on June 24 blocking key sections of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which is designed to lower student loan payments and forgive debts.

A new version of the program that would reduce payments and shorten maximum repayment periods was set to take effect in July.

U.S. District Judge Michael Crabtree for the District of Kansas ruled that the Republican states were likely to succeed in their claim that the department lacked explicit congressional authority to enact this portion of the program.

“Defendants have offered colorable, plausible interpretations of the Higher Education Act that could authorize the SAVE Plan, but those interpretations fall short of clear congressional authorization,” Judge Crabtree, who was appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote on Monday.

However, he declined to block the program entirely, expressing concerns about the practicality of reversing parts of the plan that had already been implemented. He also said that Republicans’ delay in filing their lawsuits undermined their arguments that there was an immediate need to halt the entire program.

The ruling noted the judge’s reluctance to issue a nationwide injunction.

In a separate decision on the same day, U.S. District Judge Judge John Ross for the Eastern District of Missouri, also a President Obama appointee, blocked the department from forgiving “any further loan[s]” under SAVE until he decides the full case. His order said that such actions would likely strip state loan operators of revenue.

Judge Ross also suggested that the SAVE program might have exceeded the authority of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and that Missouri would likely be harmed by the program.

Attorneys General Welcome Rulings

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who spearheaded one of the legal challenges, issued a statement celebrating the ruling as a victory.

“As the court correctly held, whether to forgive billions of dollars of student debt is a major question that only Congress can answer,” he said. “This is not only unconstitutional, it’s unfair. Blue collar Kansas workers who didn’t go to college shouldn’t have to pay off the student loans of New Yorkers with gender studies degrees.”

The Kansas challenge was supported by 11 other Republican states. Of these 12 states, only four—Alaska, Texas, and South Carolina—were found to have standing.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey also hailed the ruling, calling it a “huge win for the rule of law and Americans who would have been forced ”to pay off someone else’s debt.”

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the President,” Mr. Bailey said in a statement on Monday.

SAVE Plan

The SAVE plan, a reworking of a previous plan, aims to halve the required payment on student loans from 10 percent to 5 percent of discretionary income and shorten the repayment period for those with lower initial loan balances. This means that borrowers with smaller loan balances could have their loans forgiven in just 10 years instead of 20.

Some parts of the plan have already been implemented, resulting in the forgiveness of loan balances for hundreds of thousands of individuals.

President Biden created the SAVE program after the Supreme Court rejected his plan to forgive broader debts. Following that decision, the Education Department pursued another way to provide debt relief under the Higher Education Act.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in April that the plans would “fully eliminate” accrued interest for 23 million borrowers, cancel the full amount of debt for over 4 million borrowers, and give over 10 million borrowers around $5,000 in debt relief or more.

25 million borrowers owe more than the amount they originally borrowed due to accruing interest. Currently, nearly 8 million people are enrolled in the program, according to the White House.

The Biden administration, as of April, touted that it had provided around $146 billion in student debt relief via more than two dozen executive actions.

Normally, federal student loan borrowers must repay their debts for around 20 years to qualify for forgiveness under the Education Department’s income-driven repayment plans. The SAVE plan offered a shorter timeline for forgiveness, canceling debt after just 10 years for borrowers who initially took out less than $12,000.

Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,

A few weeks ago, gold sold off on news that the People’s Bank of China didn’t add any gold to its reserves in May.

At the time, I called it a “kneejerk reaction,” and said the news wasn’t “a particularly good reason to sell gold.”

“The fact the PBoC didn’t buy any gold in May is certainly interesting, but it hardly counts as earthshaking news. Standing pat for one month doesn’t mean “China has stopped buying gold” as some news outlets framed it.” 

Before the news, China had bought gold for 18 straight months. It ranked as the biggest central bank gold buyer in 2023. Officially, the People’s Bank of China added more than 300 tons of gold to its reserves during its buying spree.

“Officially” is the keyword. 

Many analysts have long thought that China has far more gold than it officially reports. 

Jim Rickards pointed out on Mises Daily back in 2015 that many analysts believe that China keeps several thousand tons of gold “off the books” in a separate entity called the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). 

The Official Chinese Gold Numbers Don’t Add Up 

Chen Long is the founder and lead economist for Plenum. He’s also a respected journalist who writes extensively about China’s economy, financial markets, and government policies. Long recently wrote a piece for ThinkChina, a Singapore-based news site, after he ran the numbers on China’s gold holdings.

He found the official numbers simply don’t line up.  

Long starts by pointing out that Chinese central bank gold purchases are a drop in the bucket compared to the country’s gold imports. The country imported over 1,400 tons of gold in 2023. This is despite the fact that China ranks as the world’s largest gold producer. Chinese mines dug up 375 tons of gold in 2023. 

In other words, there is a lot of gold flowing into China, and the country exports very little.

Only a handful of commercial banks hold licenses to import gold due to the PBoC’s tight regulation of the market. According to Long, 17 banks, including four state-owned institutions, reported gold holding of about 1,016 tons as of the end of 2023. 

Interestingly, gold holdings by these commercial banks have been falling since around 2016.

Meanwhile, many commercial banks in China no longer sell gold to the public due to a commodities scandal a few years ago.

When you dig into the numbers, total official gold holdings by the PBoC, retail buyers, and the big commercial banks only rose by 431 tons last year. Total gold imports and production came in at 1,775 tons. That’s a gap of more than 1,300 tons.

Over the last two years, there have been about 2,700 tons of gold that is unaccounted for.

So, where in the world did that gold go?

Long said, “It is common to see gaps between these figures, but they are usually within a few hundred tons at most. Such a huge gap is rare.”  

Where Is the Chinese Gold?

How do we account for this “missing” gold?

Long offered three possibilities.

Number one is that the People’s Bank of China bought more gold than it reported.

“If the PBoC has massively increased its gold position, it may want to withhold a full disclosure in order to avoid shocking the market.”

If all that missing gold is being held by the central bank, it would double its stated gold reserves to around 5,000 tons. 

Long notes that the Chinese central bank has delayed reporting before. In June 2015, the PBoC disclosed a one-off increase in gold reserves of 621 tons. It’s highly unlikely the central bank bought all that gold in a single month.

A second possibility is China’s sovereign wealth fund holds some of that missing gold.

A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that holds surplus government revenues.

“After all, the sovereign wealth fund may not want to put all its money in U.S. dollars either, but the China Investment Corporation does not disclose how much gold it owns,” Long said.

A third possibility is that other numbers have been fudged. Chinese commercial banks may have overstated the reduction in their gold holdings while household gold purchases were understated.

“While the domestic banks have reported a big reduction of gold assets, some investors may have turned to the foreign banks who also have gold import licenses. They may have increased their gold holdings without making disclosures, although we doubt that such increases could completely offset the decline of gold holdings at the Chinese banks.”

With the lack of transparency in China, we’ll probably never know exactly where the gold went.

As Chris Powell recently wrote, “Mainstream financial news organizations don’t yet seem to notice that official statements about gold reserves are, to put it politely, not reliable.”

That means we’ll never know for sure just how much gold the Chinese government and its central bank hold. But you don’t have to be a wild conspiracy theorist to think they probably have far more gold than they’re letting on.

Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for MoneyMetals.com with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.

Oakland, California Mayor Sheng Thao is well known for her woke activist policies; policies that have led to a severe spike in property crime (17%) and violent crime (21%) within the first year of her administration.  The problem has become so overwhelming that Thao and Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price are both facing potential recall.  One has to wonder if leftist politicians are so lax on criminal prosecution because they are engaging in the same kind of activities?

An FBI raid on Sheng Thao’s residence last week may help to answer this question.  Though she has not yet been arrested or charged, accusations indicate a corrupt web of illegal campaign finance and “pay to play” favors for special donors.  The investigation is allegedly focused on Thoa’s boyfriend, Andre Jones, as well as specific donors. 

Also targeted in the raids were two other houses in the Oakland Hills and a business office along the city’s waterfront. All three are tied to Andy Duong and his father, David, who owns the Oakland-based company California Waste Solutions, the city’s curbside recycling provider.

Authorities claimed the Duongs spent years illegally funneling thousands of dollars using third-party entities to disguise political contributions and flout campaign-donation limits to several City Council candidates, including Thao.  In one instance, the Fair Political Practices Commission cited an internal email for Thao’s campaign in 2018 that laid out exactly how important the Duongs’ donations could be for political newcomers, such as herself.

In it, a staff member asked, “Have you spoke with Andy Duong about $20,000 by June 30th? let me know when I should follow up with him, please,” a complaint alleges.  Within a week, Thao’s campaign received 14 contributions — seven of which were believed to have come from Duong himself through his network of “straw donors,” the complaint alleges.

Campaign finance corruption and donations for favors aside, Mayor Thao’s dismal management of Oakland could also be considered a crime.  The criminal investigation is simply a reflection of a much deeper problem.  However, as we all know, leftists never admit fault they only double down.  In a surreal press conference replete with tears, Thao declared her innocence while hinting at an insidious conspiracy of unnamed ‘radical right wing forces’ determined to sabotage her activist reforms and maintain their power within the greater Oakland area.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao cries, blames “radical right wing forces” for her political downfall.

Her house was raided last week over an investigation into her corruption.

40k signed a petition to recall her. pic.twitter.com/2yscbDEVXZ

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 24, 2024

So, now the radical right wing controls FBI investigations in Oakland, California?  Accusations of “lawfare” only make sense when the other side has control over the alphabet agency apparatus.  Thao seems to be confused about which party has the most influence over the FBI right now. 

Thao asserted that the FBI raid never would have happened ‘if she was rich’ and that the agency should have given her a warning.  The FBI is not required to give any mayor a heads up about potential raids on their home or office. Thao’s communications chief has resigned in the wake of the investigation. 

Her attorney, Tony Brass, has also parted ways with the mayor, noting that he was not informed of Thao’s press conference plans, nor did he advise her on interactions with the press.  Thao claims Brass did not leave and was instead “replaced.”  Brass stated that Thao is lying and that he received no communication from her about changing attorneys.  

Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics,

The government has become desperate for funding, seeking out money from their own citizens through taxation.

Not only have they raised taxes for every bracket, but the IRS managed to squeeze more money out of Americans through audits for fiscal year 2023 than any year on record. In fact, the IRS shook down Americans for an additional $7 billion in tax penalties alone – a 300% increase from FY22.

These funds are mere chump change as we send out far more than this to Ukraine on a regular basis. The people do not vote on how their taxes are frivolously spent, but they are responsible for the government’s spending. Biden claimed he would target the hated “rich” but reports have found that the majority of those targeted were gig economy workers and freelancers. Biden has done everything in his power to kill the gig economy. The IRS hates the gig economy because they believe those workers are stealing from Uncle Sam.

The average penalty for underestimating taxes was around $150 in 2022. This year, the average penalty was around $500.

The IRS also ramped up its campaign to fine anyone who missed the tax deadline. Late payment fees increased to $485 or 100% of the tax owed if that amount is less. Then there is the question of “How much do I owe?” The tax system in the US is so complex that there are careers dedicated toward figuring out that predicament. Every citizen and business would prefer if the government simply told them how much they needed to pay. Instead, they deliberately make the tax code vague in order to penalize everyone and anyone.

The penalty for underpayment rose in the past year from 3% to 8%. There is no grace for those who cannot afford to pay their due amount as the IRS charges interest on all payments that are not made in full. Those who intentionally disregarded their payments faced a $630 penalty or 10% of the amount owed.

Yet, the Biden Administration wants you to believe they care deeply about the working man. Biden wanted to hire far more IRS agents this year to raise these penalties. Public confidence dissolves when the state begins to hunt their own citizens for taxes. The government becomes the clear enemy. We have seen it happen countless times throughout history when citizens flee and later protest or revolt over absurdly high taxes. The fact that the Biden Administration has been using US taxpayer funds for foreign causes only adds insult to injury.

Unbelievable new footage has emerged of the Sunday Ukrainian missile strike on a busy Sevastopol, Crimea beach as tourists were lounging in the sun. 

Russian authorities said that a missile launched from a US-supplied MGM-140 ATACMS system by Ukrainian forces exploded overhead and released bomblets across the area – in the water and on land – killing five and injuring 124 people, including children. The CCTV footage captures the moment when the missile’s submunitions rain down over the crowded beach, appearing to confirm Russia’s allegation that a cluster bomb warhead was used. Watch:

CCTV footage capturing the moment when M74 submunitions from the MIM-140 ATACMS missile with cluster warhead struck the water and beach in Sevastopol, Crimea, on June 23.

It is believed that the ATACMS missile was intercepted by Russian air defenses, which caused it to explode… pic.twitter.com/OrnJO1Rhbg

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) June 25, 2024

Hundreds of people can be seen fleeing for their lives, and some are still in the water, when the bomblets start to impact both the water and the beach. One bomblet is seen almost scoring a direct hit on the lifeguard stand.

“According to latest reports, as a result of the shelling attack on Sevastopol by Ukrainian nationalists, 124 people, including 27 children, received wounds or injuries,” Russian health minister Alexey Kuznetsov had announced.

Newsweek summarizes of Crimean official statements of the deadly attack:

The event was caused by Russian air defenses shooting down a series of cluster warhead missiles, one of which altered course as a result. The Russian ministry of defense said that four out of the five missiles launched were shot down, adding: “Another missile, as a result of the impact of air defense systems at the final stage, deviated from the flight path with the warhead exploding in the air over the city.”

“The detonation of the fragmentation warhead of the fifth American missile in the air led to numerous casualties among civilians in Sevastopol.”

A Kremlin spokesman subsequently laid blame squarely on Washington: “The involvement of the United States, the direct involvement, as a result of which Russian civilians are killed, cannot be without consequences.”

Mikhail Podoliak, a Ukrainian presidential spokesman downplayed the mass casualty event, saying that “civilian occupiers” should know better than to vacation on the Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine claims as its own.

Commenting on the incident, Ron Paul has pointed out of Moscow, “They can’t not respond” at this moment of ultra-dangerous escalation.

“What’s Russia going to do about this?” Paul asked in his latest Liberty Report. “Are they going to twiddle their thumbs and walk away? They might – for a day or two – ponder it, but there will be something that they’re going to do.”

US-supplied cluster bombs were used on beachgoers in Crimea yesterday, killing at least six and injuring more than 100.

Moscow has warned that “such actions will not go unanswered.”

Is this a NATO attempt to provoke a Russian reaction to justify further involvement? Next… pic.twitter.com/qMxxsloF9k

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) June 24, 2024

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

It’s been about nine years since Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records about a CIA asset and FBI informant who helped fund the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as for records about a neo-Nazi bank-robbery gang also involved in the attack.

Tired of waiting, Trentaudue sued the FBI over the matter in February, demanding the bureau to produce the 69,375 pages of documents that it’s holding. But now, the FBI wants to take another nearly 12 years to fork over those documents to him, which means that it would take at least 20 years for the bureau to comply with his initial FOIA request.

Such a slow production rate is unacceptable, Trentadue said in a Tuesday court filing.

“The FBI proposes to process these records/documents for release to Plaintiff in monthly increments of 500 pages over a period of 11.5 years!” he said.

“If the Court accepts the FBI’s proposed snail-pace processing of these materials, Plaintiff will be close to 90-years of age when he finally receives all of them,” he said.

“He has already waited almost a decade for these documents/records, with the FBI having made no effort during the interim to produce them, and should not have to wait another 11.5 years to receive them.”

Trentadue has been suing the U.S. government for OKC bomb-related records for nearly 30 years, ever since his brother was murdered in a federal penitentiary. The complex story of how the death of Trentadue’s brother relates to the OKC bombing can be read in this Mother Jones article.

Trentadue’s latest lawsuit seeks records on FBI informant and CIA asset Roger Moore (not the James Bond actor), and the bank-robbery gang, the Aryan Republican Army, which he says was an FBI front group.

According to Trentadue’s lawsuit, Moore was an FBI informant as part of the bureau’s 1980s- and early 90s-era Operation Punchout, which was designed to identify and apprehend surplus dealers that bought and sold government property stolen from Department of Defense facilities in Utah.

Furthermore, Moore build patrol boats for use by the US Navy in the Vietnam War, as well as speedboats for the CIA, according to Aberration in the Heartland of the Real—historian Wendy Painting’s PhD thesis-turned-book about OKC bomber Tim McVeigh.

As for the Aryan Republican Army, Trentadue believes that was an FBI front group that also helped fund the bombing.

Trentadue’s Tuesday filing elaborated further on the ARA’s connection to McVeigh.

“During 1993, 1994 and 1995, a gang known as the Aryan Republican Army or “ARA” robbed banks and armored cars in the mid-west. Timothy McVeigh participated in some of those robberies and is reported to have used money obtained from these crimes to help fund the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995,” he said.

“According to Peter Langan, several members of the ARA assisted McVeigh in carrying out the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.”

No hearings have been set yet in Trentadue’s lawsuit.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Crude prices slipped back lower today from two-month highs, testing back into the range of the last couple of days after rallying hard on increasing geopolitical tensions.

A series of drone attacks last week on Russian oil infrastructure by Ukraine, combined with escalating tensions between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel have buoyed crude prices, Claudio Galimberti, director of global market analysis at Rystad Energy, said in a note.

“Against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions, including conflicts in the Middle East and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Brent surpassing $85 per barrel could be the start of more upward pressure on prices,” he said.

Today’s decline (perhaps driven by weaker sentiment and confidence data) did not appear to change the trend, but tomorrow’s official inventory data (which we get a hint at tonight from, API) may change things…

API

• Crude +914k (-200k exp)

• Cushing -350k

• Gasoline +3.84mm (-900k exp) – biggest build since Jan 2024

• Distillates -1.18mm

Crude stocks rose modestly last week, against expectations of a small draw but gasoline stocks surged according to API…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI was trading around be $80.80 ahead of the API data and dipped on the crude build before coming back…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, despite the decline and the builds, there are signs of strong summer demand in the Northern Hemisphere (after earlier jitters over a shaky start to the U.S. summer driving season, which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day).

Galimberti said expectations for a summer surge in fuel demand have been aided by strong growth in aviation. Jet fuel is expected to see an increase in demand of 550,000 barrels a day, according to Rystad, after a 1.2 million barrel-a-day jump last year.

“For the time being, this strength in aviation activity signals a positive trend for oil demand, particularly in the context of summer travel, economic recovery and consumer optimism,” he wrote.

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Tuesday maintained a forecast that Brent would average $84 a barrel in the third quarter and hit $90 by August or September, “underpinned by our expectations that global demand will outpace supply in the summer quarter.”

Meanwhile, analysts at Macquarie revised their Brent third-quarter forecast up to $86 per barrel, from $83, on projections of rising demand.

Authored by Adam Sabes via Campus Reform,

The University of Southern California dropped an investigation spurred by student complaints against a Jewish professor who said “Hamas are murderers” during class.

Economics Professor John Strauss on Nov. 9 told pro-Palestinian activists while walking past them that “Hamas are murderers…That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, video of the exchange went viral on social media and over 10 students filed complaints against Strauss, who’s Jewish.

They accused him of harassment, discrimination, and fostering an unsafe environment.

Strauss was quickly placed under an investigation, which ended on Tuesday when administrators told the professor that the investigation is being dismissed with no discipline.

“I’m relieved,” Strauss told the Los Angeles Times. 

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been fully exonerated and they’re not doing anything to punish me, and it’s over.”

Samantha Harris, his attorney, said she’s “frustrated that it took seven months to reach an obvious conclusion.”

Amr Shabaik, legal director of CAIR-LA, who assisted some of the students with their complaints, told the outlet that he’s disappointed that the complaints were dismissed.

“We are disappointed that USC has found no wrongdoing despite the professor being captured on camera going out of his way to harass and intimidate USC students honoring the lives of innocent Palestinians killed by Israel,” Shabaik said.

On Nov. 20, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter to USC, calling for the investigation to be dropped.

”FIRE is concerned by USC’s decision to require that Professor John Strauss teach remotely for the rest of the semester in response to his comments to pro-Palestinian protesters last week. While his remarks may have been deeply offensive to some or even many listeners, they are protected by USC policy and thus cannot serve as the basis of discipline,” the organization wrote.

FIRE Program Officer Jessie Appleby said Strauss’s speech was “clearly protected.”

”We’re thrilled that the complaints against Professor Strauss were finally dismissed and he has been cleared of any misconduct. But USC’s actions—barring a professor from campus and subjecting him to a 7-month investigation for clearly protected political speech—clearly violated its express commitment to protect faculty speech,” Appleby said.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Most Americans believe it is unhinged to deliberately destroy the border and allow 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country without background audits, means of support, any claims to legal residency, and definable skills.

And worse still, why would federal authorities be ordered to release repeat violent felons who have gone on to commit horrendous crimes against American citizens?

Equally perplexing to most Americans is borrowing $1 trillion every 90 days and paying 5-5.5% interest on the near $36 trillion in ballooning national debt.

Servicing that debt at current interest exceeds the size of the annual defense budget and may soon top $1 trillion in interest costs, or more than 13% of the budget.

Why would the United States suspend military aid to Israel as it tries to destroy the Hamas architects of the October 7 massacres? Why would it lift sanctions on a terrorist Iran? Why would it suppress Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish homeland? Why would it prevent Israel from stockpiling key munitions as it prepares to deal with the existential threats posed by Hezbollah?

Why would the Biden administration cancel key pipeline projects and put vast swaths of federal lands rich in oil and gas off limits to production, even as it further drains the strategic petroleum reserve? Why not pump rather than drain our own oil from strategic stockpiles?

Why would the Biden White House’s counsel’s office meet with Nathan Wade, the former paramour chief prosecutor in the Fani Willis Fulton County prosecution of Donald Trump? Why would the third-ranking prosecutor in the Biden Justice Department step down to lead Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan prosecution of Donald Trump? Why would the Biden Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland select Jack Smith as a special prosecutor of Donald Trump—given his past failures as a special counsel and known political biases?

Nihilism only explains so much. A better explanation is that the Biden administration and its handlers knew that there was a good chance that most of their policies would prove unpopular and might even jeopardize Biden’s reelection.

But they also were confident the changes were of such magnitude that the United States would either become—in the infamous phrase of Barack Obama—“fundamentally transformed” or force the next Republican administration to adopt such tough medicine that it would prove untenable politically and the malady would still prove mostly impossible to undo.

After all, how would a Trump administration deal with 10 million illegal aliens who entered the US without audit or legality? Where are they? How would they be found and deported? How many court suits in blue-jurisdictions before blue judges would have to be overcome?

The country has become accultured to a nonexistent border.

And so, the left assumes, it would be expensive and difficult to finish the wall, to stop catch and release, to insist refugee status must be obtained before entry, and to deport what is likely now 20-30 million illegal aliens in toto.

In other words, the Biden administration may sigh, “Our work is done. Whatever you think about our illegal methods, we forever changed the idea of immigration and the demographics of the country.”

All presidents—Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—have run deficits and vastly increased the debt since the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich compromises that resulted in a temporary period of balanced budgets.

But in the case of Biden, there was no need to keep up the multitrillion-dollar deficits, especially as interest rates on the national debt tripled and the service costs now approach $1 trillion per year.

Biden, after all, inherited a recovering economy, flush with post-COVID-19 lockdown stimulatory dollars, pent-up consumer demand, and ossified supply chains. And then he stupidly poured gasoline on the explosive mix by dousing the country with even more federal spending.

Now we have the worst of both worlds: high interest rates and nearly $36 trillion to service.

But in the leftist mind, it was worth it, given that left-wing constituencies received vast expansions of entitlements that will be hard to prune back. And unprecedentedly vast debt at levels like our current burden of 123% of annual GDP prove unsustainable.

And the historic correctives are brutal:

1) major cuts in entitlements and redistributive spending programs;

2) tax hikes at a time when state, local, federal, and gas, sales, and property taxes—and other “fees”—already take over half the income of most middle-class Americans;

3) hyper-inflation to pay back what is owed with cheap funny money, with the added leftist fillip that those who have dollars lose wealth and those who don’t gain greater access to them;

4) renunciation of debt. We already saw in the Obama era that liberal bureaucrats and courts often reversed the orders of creditors in bankruptcy hearings.When debt becomes unsustainable, historically arise cries of “Why should the poor suffer more when the rich already have enough money and don’t really need to be paid back?”;

and 5) efforts to “confiscate” private wealth by giving, in exchange, government “credits.” For example, there have already been floated ideas that 401Ks could be absorbed into the insolvent Social Security system for credit in government benefits.

Most Americans poll strong support for Israel. They oppose the Biden effort to triangulate by revisiting the old Obama nihilist agendas of emboldening the Iranian/Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthis axis to play off against our traditional allies of Israel and the more moderate Arab regimes.

By failing to prosecute nine months of domestic violence committed by pro-Hamas lawbreakers, by allowing leftist campuses to normalize anti-Semitism and pro-terrorist advocacy, and by destroying the once close alliance of Israel and the United States, the left feels it will be almost impossible to go back to the pre-Obama/Biden years. Their legacy, they hope, is a mendicant Israel utterly dependent on U.S. largess—a condition itself predicated on essentially destroying the idea of a secure Jewish state within its present borders.

The Biden administration sought to curb oil and gas production—save for brief periods before the midterm and reelection campaigns, when it drained the strategic petroleum reserve. The point was to acculturate the public to high gasoline prices, to make inefficient solar/wind/EVs projects competitive against artificially costly fossil fuels, and to institutionalize policies that will make it difficult to reopen closed fields, to reboot federal oilfield leasing, and to dismantle costly subsidies for inefficient green fuels.

That Americans paid hundreds of billions of dollars more for their fuels under Biden, that the auto industry is stuck with vast inventories of money-losing electric vehicles that the public does not want, and that the entire economy has been shackled by counterproductive green mandates were considered worth the cost of alienating the public.

The left knows that neither Alvin Bragg, E. Jean Carroll, Letitia James, Jack Smith, nor Fani Willis would have gone to court against Donald Trump if he was either a leftist or had bowed out of the 2024 presidential race.

They know no one has been tried on such pseudo-charges, and no one will again be so charged after Trump. And they accept that no republic can long survive if the opposition party seeks to remove the names of its political opponents from the ballot.

But they also know that the left has now established a valuable precedent: oppose woke progressivism, and one will either become bankrupted by indictments or land before a blue-city jury eager to nullify evidence to ensure the accused is jailed and broke.

So the left believes that its new lawfare was well worth the destruction of the entire tradition of equality under the law:

1) Donald Trump has lost a half-billion dollars in fines and legal fees;

2) a court-bound Donald Trump was robbed of weeks of valuable campaign time;

3) Donald Trump can be forever now libeled as a “convicted felon”;

and 4) the left has played chicken with the American Constitution and believes it has won, given conservatives would never enter into a destructive cycle of tit-for-tat.

The Biden years did the country great damage and rendered Biden himself one of the most unpopular incumbent presidents in American history.

But his agendas may have fundamentally changed the country for decades, if not longer—and will require tough remedies that may be almost as unpopular as the wreckage they wrought.