Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

U.S. health authorities have responded to the warning from Florida’s surgeon general about a spike in reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.

Drs. Rochelle Walensky and Robert Califf claimed in the response that Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general, was misleading the public by focusing on the increase in adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

“The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading, and could be harmful to the American public,” Walensky and Califf said in the missive.

Walensky heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Califf heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The CDC and FDA co-manage VAERS, which accepts reports from anybody but which is primarily used by healthcare workers.

The COVID-19 vaccines were given emergency authorization in late 2020. Under the emergency authorizations, vaccine companies and healthcare workers are required to report certain adverse events through VAERS, “so more reports should be expected,” Walensky and Califf said.

“Most reports do not represent adverse events caused by the vaccine and instead represent a preexisting condition that preceded vaccination or an underlying medical condition that precipitated the event,” they said.

They did not cite any studies or other research to support the claim.

While anyone can lodge reports with the system, authorities request medical records and other documentation in an effort to verify reports of certain events. Out of 1,826 reports of heart inflammation after Pfizer or Moderna vaccination in adults through May 26, 2022, for instance, the CDC verified 72 percent.

The CDC also identified hundreds of safety signals for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines through analyzing VAERS data in 2022, according to records obtained by The Epoch Times. A safety signal is a possible sign of a side effect. Only a handful of adverse events are definitely caused by the vaccines, according to the CDC, including myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and severe allergic shock.

Ladapo said in February that in Florida, the number of reports to VAERS after the COVID-19 vaccines were authorized spiked by 1,700 percent, while the increase in vaccine administration rose by just 400 percent.

“We have never seen this type of response following previous mass vaccination efforts pushed by the federal government,” Ladapo said in a letter to Walensky and Califf.

“These findings are unlikely to be related to changes in reporting given their magnitude, and more likely reflect a pattern of increased risk from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” he added, calling for “unbiased research … to better understand these vaccines’ short- and long-term effects.” The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Florida officials pointed to a study that found in the original clinical trials that the vaccinated were more at risk of serious adverse events, as well as other papers that found an increased risk of adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination.

Florida currently recommends against COVID-19 vaccination for young, healthy males who have been shown to be at the highest risk of myocarditis. Vaccinating the population “doesn’t make any sense” from a risk-benefit standpoint, Ladapo, appointed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told The Epoch Times. The heart inflammation causes serious problems and can even lead to death in some cases.

Read more here…

Auto dealerships are encountering a major problem where auction (wholesale) prices are increasing while real book values stagnate, squeezing profitability. 

To make sense of this, auto-guru CarDealershipGuy expanded on our tweet, pointing out that Manheim wholesale auto prices are re-accelerating while other indexes tracking prices were flat. 

Here’s what was revealed in the conversation as per the auto expert:

Manheim is tracking auctions. Dealers ARE paying more for cars. A LOT more. But the issue dealers are running into is SELLING those cars.

 JD Power – one of the industry’s main sources of Vehicle Book Values that auto lenders rely on to value collateral – hasn’t materially adjusted upwards. 

This has left dealers high-and-dry and without a profitable outlet for all the inventory they just acquired for OVER book value. 

And that is leading to lots of dealers selling cars to consumers at a front-end LOSS (meaning, lose money on actual cars) while hoping to make it up on the back-end (with value-added products like warranties). 

Speaking for myself, our vehicle purchase price has slightly RISEN but our ASP (average sale price) has barely budged. 

Separately, CarDealershipGuy went even more in-depth about underwater auto dealerships in a recent blog post:

Cars are appreciating again and this presents problems for both dealerships and consumers. Here’s why:

Ask any dealer and they will tell you that appreciating wholesale prices is a phenomenon we haven’t seen since the craziness of 2021. There hasn’t been a tax season where we’ve seen wholesale prices for mainstream, bread-and-butter cars at $3K above the “book value.” [Book values are current wholesale and retail market price estimates provided by various publishers, such as NADA, Kelly Blue Book, Black Book, JD Power, and other companies]

Look at this example from a recent sale at an auction:

A 2016 Honda Civic LX with 68K miles was listed with an auction value of $15,800 and sold for $16,100. The JD Power book value is listed at only $12,925 for clean and $12,050 for average conditions. This is a 7-year-old Honda Civic we are talking about. See what’s wrong here? While wholesale prices have been increasing for 3 months, book values haven’t caught up yet!

This is just one example, but as other dealers can attest, it is an increasingly common occurrence.

So what are the consequences?

Dealers struggle to make a profit, and thus, sell a car: There’s no “water” (industry term for profit or ‘spread’) in the deal from the get-go. Lagging book values certainly hurts dealer margins, but there’s another issue:

Inaccurate book values hinder dealerships’ ability to secure financing for consumers because lenders use book values to underwrite loans(!)

Even if a lender is willing to accept the 120% loan-to-value ratio, it would still require a large down payment of ~$5K to secure a loan. Faced with increased delinquencies, lenders want to take less risk and charge dealers more for each loan, further squeezing dealer margins.

Consumers in the prime credit segment don’t need to worry, but those in subprime and deep subprime should expect it to become increasingly difficult to get into cars.

He presented an outlook similar to ours about the turmoil ahead:

We are in for a bumpy ride: the outlook for subprime shoppers is bleak, and dealers are facing additional headwinds from higher wholesale prices, lack of inventory, and inaccurate book values.

Aside from the issue of auto dealerships experiencing losses from selling vehicles, subprime borrowers are also having difficulties meeting their monthly payments that exceed $1,000.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Many people in Washington hoped for much better inflation numbers in February. Below zero would have released tears of joy following this rough weekend of bank failures and the first signs of financial instability in these three years of nonstop terrible. Alas, that did not happen. The report came in at a 0.4 percent increase for the month and 6 percent for the year, or three times the Fed’s target.

Drilling down, there are some really terrible hot spots. Food at home, energy services, and transportation all registered double-digit increases on an annualized basis. You know this intuitively by looking at your utility and grocery bills. Shopping used to be a pleasure. Now it is nothing but pain. We look at those steaks, eggs, and even veggies and think twice and three times. We stand at the cash register with dread. The bill comes and we shake our heads with sadness at what we are going through.

Remember the days when we would shop with smiles on our faces, see and greet friends, and leave with a spring in our step? Those days are gone, replaced with grumbling, sadness, and deep annoyance all around. Every aisle is filled with crabby people who have a sense that they are getting pillaged. We are alarmed not only at high prices but also the magically shrinking packages.

“Good time to be on a diet,” everyone thinks. The diet called “one meal a day” (OMAD) starts looking very attractive. And truly Americans of all classes would do well to examine their eating habits. But one might like to do that under less financial duress.

It’s fair to observe that inflation is not getting worse at the same pace it was last year. But a declining rate of worsening is not anything to cheer about. The Fed must still deal with a depreciation rate of the dollar in terms of goods and services that it cannot tolerate. Already, the dollar has lost 17 cents of value in two years. Something has to change.

Informed opinion over the weekend hoped that the Fed would stop the wild war on inflation with fewer rate increases over the coming months. My own read on Jerome Powell is that he is in no mood to do that. He made up his mind two years ago that he was wrong to accommodate Congress’s spending mania for a virus and reversed course.

He further knew that his rate increases would naturally devalue the portfolios of major banks that had stored its cash excess in fixed-rate government securities and other mortgage-backed products. They had plenty of time to sell those at a discount. So far as he is concerned, the balance-sheet problems of Silicon Valley Bank are not his problems. They are a matter for the risk-management team to solve.

It appears too that there is a real difference of opinion between the Fed and the Biden administration at this point. Over the week, the Biden administration via the Treasury and the deposit insurers went out on a limb to guarantee the deposits of failing banks—an absurd and dangerous promise that cannot be applied across the board. Powell didn’t make that decision but neither is he in a position to stop it. That’s for regulators to decide and he is not among them. His job is to land the economy away from inflationary excesses come hell or high water. Unless someone gets to him, my bet is for the rate increases to continue.

There are two theories concerning why last week’s bank failures have not led to a broader contagion. One credits the Biden administration’s policy of universal deposit insurance. But it is more likely the case that these particular failures were not systemic but rather trace to poor management by the banks themselves. It would be nice to know. All the Biden administration had to do was let them fail and watch the results. Alas, that didn’t happen.

A major factor in why the Biden administration did the wrong thing owed to major players in industry and banking screaming that something had to happen. In a panic and watching financial opinion turn ever more south on a Sunday, the regulators jumped in to promise something that is simply impossible: universal guarantees. This was a huge error.

Another error was putting President Biden on stage to promise the American people that the banking system is sound. It’s like these people truly believe that they still have credibility. They do not. Viewers listen to them and naturally assume that the opposite is true. Free advice: never trot that geezer out to assure anyone in a crisis. He has zero credibility and his every word does damage to any message they want to deliver.

As a result of this mess, we now have two de facto monetary policies operating at cross purposes. We have the regulators captured by the Biden administration pushing looser money and credit, and indeed promising more floods to fix any problems that emerge in the future. On the other hand, we have Powell and the Fed sticking to their guns on tighter money to restrain the effects of excesses of 2020 and 2021.

This morning’s CPI numbers make the point that the Fed still has a lot of work to do. In addition, it is actually difficult to discern long-run and underlying trends from month to month numbers. After all, last summer we saw one month (July) when inflation actually registered as flat. Last month’s numbers seemed to indicate a re-acceleration, despite what the headlines said.

Remember that these numbers are always in the past. What is going on now? We are certainly seeing the rate at which food is going up beginning to relax a bit. February was certainly terrible but March is less so. On the other hand, have you seen gas prices lately? For the year, we are up by 40 cents a gallon. It does not look good. And we can fully anticipate that renewed demand with spring and summer coming is going to put more upward pressure on gas prices.

Overall over three years, there is no room for optimism about the price at the pump. This became obvious to me yesterday when the discount, members-only station had a line around several blocks. People are willing to wait 45 minutes just to save a few bucks on gas. That’s when you know that matters are becoming more intense.

The Fed has more than enough evidence on its side to continue the tightening campaign. This will put more pressure on heavily leveraged companies because the costs of servicing their debt are rising ever more and eating into their capacity to retain huge labor costs. For a sign, have a look at Meta/Facebook which just announced another huge round of layoffs. This indicates some hardcore balance-sheet pressure.

We are nowhere near done with this. The right side of the yield curve will continue to offload capital to the left and that means growing layoffs in information technology and professional services even as retail and hospitality are facing real shortages. The Fed’s determination to arrest the inflation problem means that this shift will continue.

As for the woke banks, they will all likely bite the dust before this is over. And herein we find the silver lining in all this upheaval. We are getting back to the realities of finance about which markets have been in denial for many years.

The US government may have made tens of millions of dollars in duplicate payments for virus research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, according to a review of government records by a former federal investigator, CBS News reports. 

“What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research,” said Diane Cutler, whose services were engaged by Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall. 

Cutler has more than 20 years of experience investigating healthcare fraud and white-collar crime, an her conclusions spring from her review of over 50,000 documents relating to US grants that financed coronavirus research in China. 

The apparent double-payments, made via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and US Agency for International Development (USAID), related to a variety of claimed costs, including salaries, travel, medical supplies and equipment.  

Anonymous sources told CBS the damage may amount to tens of millions of dollars. Marshall has turned over Cutler’s findings to USAID and the agency’s internal watchdog, which has launched an investigation of its own. It could take six months or more. 

On Feb. 28, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau had long ago concluded the Covid-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a leak from a Chinese lab. Days earlier, it was reported that the Department of Energy had — in 2020 — reached its own determination that a lab leak was most likely. 

This month, former NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci was accused of prompting a cadre of scientists to publish a paper disproving the lab-leak theory — just days after scientists warned Fauci, in February 2020, that Covid-19 may have indeed leaked from a lab.  

Two authors of that same paper — who initially expressed concerns over a lab-leak but then changed their tune — went on to receive millions in NIH grants under Fauci.

Fauci earned at least $480,654 a year in his NIH-NIAID role, making him the highest-paid employee in the federal government. Now, the increasingly disgraced graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts is raking in a pension estimated at $414,000 — more than the US presidential salary.   

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump is set to release 150 private letters sent to him from an array of high-profile political figures and celebrities including former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and Oprah Winfrey.

The letters will be published in Trump’s new book, titled “Letters to Trump,” which will be released on April 25, according to the book’s publisher, Winning Team Publishing.

The publisher describes it as “a colorful photo book” that captures the “incredible, and oftentimes private correspondence, between President Donald J. Trump and some of the biggest names in history throughout the past 40 years.”

“From President Richard Nixon to Princess Diana, and from Hillary Clinton, to Chairman Kim Jong Un, no book offers a glimpse into history quite like Letters to Trump,” the publisher stated on its official website.

Axios reported that the book also includes letters from Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Arnold Palmer, Jay Leno, Liza Minnelli, Regis Philbin, and more.

Among them is a letter from television host Winfrey dating back to 2000 in which she says: “Too bad we’re not running for office. What a team!” according to the report.

Trump on ‘Cunning’ Kim Jong Un

Every letter published within the book has been personally handpicked by Trump and is accompanied by his original commentary as well as transcripts when handwriting is not completely clear, according to the publisher.

The latest book marks the second official book to be released by the 45th president of the United States with Winning Team after the release of “Our Journey Together“—his first book since leaving office—in December 2021.

Trump is the co-founder of Winning Team Publishing and his first book, which featured captioned photographs of his time in the White House, made $20 million in sales in the first two months, according to Axios.

Speaking of the new book in a phone call with reporters from the Daily Mail and other publications on March 9, Trump explained, “We had lots of great letters from lots of great people and not so great people, to be honest with you.”

“But they’re very famous people. And probably there’s never been such diversity as this in terms of people where the letters come from and who they come from,” Trump said.

During the phone call, the former president also spoke of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose correspondence with Trump is featured in the new book, describing him as “very smart, very cunning, very streetwise.”

“We spoke a lot, actually, we spoke a lot and I think we had really, you know, a great relationship,” Trump said of the North Korean leader. “But I thought Kim Jong Un is a very, very interesting guy, and we had a good relationship. And I think he’s not a happy person right now with respect to the Biden administration.”

Read more here…

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration is revoking the Hyatt Regency Miami’s alcohol license after it hosted “A Drag Queen Christmas” with children present in the audience.

In a 17-page complaint filed Tuesday by the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the state claims that the Hyatt’s James L. Knight Center violated several laws, including a prohibition of “lascivious exhibition” in front of people younger than 16, according to Florida’s Voice.

According to the complaint the “acts of simulated sexual activity, and lewd, vulgar, and indecent displays” included:

• Performers forcibly penetrating or rubbing exposed prosthetic female breasts against faces of audience members

• Intentionally exposing performers’ prosthetic female breasts and genitalia to the audience

• Intentionally exposing performers’ buttocks to the audience

• Simulating masturbation through performers’ digitally penetrating prosthetic female genital

• Graphic depictions of childbirth and/or abortion

Libs of TikTok first reported on the investigation. The show named “A Drag Queen Christmas” was held in Fort Lauderdale on Dec. 26. Other shows are scheduled for Miami, Orlando, and Clearwater.#TransAgenda #Trans #Agenda21 #Agenda2030 pic.twitter.com/5EsnDtZ0fU

— SmlPplAgstBigGov (@SPABG2) December 27, 2022

DeSantis supported the move.

“Sexually explicit content is not appropriate to display to children and doing so violates Florida law,” his press secretary Bryan Griffin told Insider. “Governor DeSantis stands up for the innocence of children in the classroom and throughout Florida.”

WATCH! @AGAshleyMoody asked about Drag Queen Christmas on Fox News. Moody is heading the investigation into minors being exposed to sexual material at the shows in Ft Lauderdale, Miami and Orlando. pic.twitter.com/wFJiYtNCRs

— Chris Nelson 🇺🇸 🏝 (@ReOpenChris) December 30, 2022

Hyatt Regency Miami will be allowed to continue selling alcoholic beverages until the department makes a final decision, and it has 21 days to request a hearing, according to department spokeswoman Beth Pannell in a statement to Insider.

Regulators had warned the facility to change how it marketed the show before it went live, according to a copy of the letter included in the complaint. The letter accused the marketers of putting on a performance that constitutes “public nuisances, lewd activity, and disorderly conduct” when minors are present.

The impetus of the letter was a screenshot where tickets were being sold that read “all ages welcome.” The department warned the venue not to admit minors or otherwise face penalties, including an alcohol license revocal. -Insider

Last year DeSantis signed a bill into law prohibiting schools from including gender and sexual orientation from being taught in classrooms up to the third grade. 

Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Wire,

Conventional wisdom, along with boatloads of scientific evidence, point to obesity being universally unhealthy, leading to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and many more problems. But in recent years, that conventional wisdom has been challenged by a “U.”

The obesity paradox

That “U” appeared on graphs charting the link between body-mass index — a common but imperfect gauge of whether or not someone’s weight is healthy, calculated simply by dividing their mass by the square of their body height in meters — and their risk of death. Numerous epidemiological studies have found that people in the “overweight” category (BMI 25-30) surprisingly have the lowest mortality risk, while those categorized as “obese” (30-35) have little or no increased risk over the “healthy” (18.5-25). At the extreme ends of the BMI spectrum, both the “underweight” (less than 18.5) and the extremely obese (35+) have a greatly increased risk of death. Furthermore, numerous studies also have suggested that obesity might lower the risk of death for older people and patients with various chronic diseases.

Considering what we know about the health pitfalls of increased body fat, one would expect a mostly straight line of rising mortality risk as one goes from a BMI of healthy to obese. That’s why the “U-shaped” mortality curve has been dubbed the “obesity paradox.”

But in recent years, that paradox, and the studies that created it, have come under fire. Critics chiefly contend that BMI is a flawed way to determine whether someone has obesity. That’s because it does not measure the composition of one’s body mass — that is, how much is fat and how much is muscle. Nor does BMI measure where fat is located, which can make a big difference. Visceral fat jammed among internal organs is much worse than subcutaneous fat stored just beneath the skin. For example, an extremely fit and muscular individual could easily make it into the obese BMI category. At the same time, a “skinny” individual with a lot of body fat nestled dangerously around their mid-section could be categorized as “healthy.”

Why has BMI been so frequently used in epidemiological studies? Because it’s convenient, readily calculated based on self report. On the other hand, measuring body fat requires subjects to take a trip to a lab or to conduct the measurement on themselves, which can be quite difficult for a layperson to do accurately.

Replace BMI with body fat

In a review article published in 2020, researchers from Sapienza University in Italy noted that excess body fat should be used to measure obesity instead of BMI.

When a team of researchers adjusted BMI to take muscle mass into account back in 2018, then associated this corrected measure with mortality risk, they found that the “U” mostly transformed into a straight line. Extremely obese individuals went from having only a marginally increased risk of death compared to healthy individuals to about a 70% increased risk.

More recently, Ryan Masters, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, tried to resolve the obesity paradox by taking more confounding variables into account. He examined nearly 40 years of data from almost 18,000 subjects, and he not only considered subjects’ distribution of body fat, he also tallied the amount of time that they spent at a high or low BMI.

“I would argue that we have been artificially inflating the mortality risk in the low-BMI category by including those who had been high BMI and had just lost weight recently,” he explained in a statement. “The health and mortality consequences of high BMI are not like a light switch,” he added. “There’s an expanding body of work suggesting that the consequences are duration-dependent.”

Obesity paradox debunked

After accounting for the potential biases in the data, Masters found that obesity boosts one’s risk of death by as much as 91%, vastly more than previous studies suggested. The U-shaped curve disappeared, and the paradox along with it. He further estimated that about 1 in 6 U.S. deaths are related to excess weight.

“Paradoxes should be met with skepticism,” a pair of public health experts wrote in a 2017 op-ed in the International Journal of Obesity. “Counterintuitive results should be discussed with colleagues and collaborators with different areas of expertise. The only ‘paradox’ we can see here is why researchers continue to claim to have evidence of a paradox without careful consideration of potential methodological explanations.”

This article was first published at Big Think.

“I am certain that this is complete nonsense,” President Vladimir Putin said in fresh statements to Russian media on Tuesday, making rare detailed remarks concerning the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. He was referencing the latest narrative out of the West which claims a mysterious “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the pipeline bombings.

Last Tuesday The New York Times published a story making the claim, and quickly an avalanche of follow-up stories have appeared across Western media asserting a similar narrative. Putin says that these stories are intended to run cover in order to hide a “state” actor. He stressed that only specialists backed by a government which possesses “certain technologies” could be capable of such a complex, deep underwater operation.

Putin’s full statement given while on a visit to an aircraft plant in Russia’s Buryatia republic region is as follows, per state media translation: “I’m sure this is complete nonsense. An explosion of this kind – of such power, at such depth, can only be carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state, possessing certain technologies.”

The Western media narrative of a rogue “pro-Ukrainian” unit being behind the sabotage op began emerging almost a month after Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report which said President Biden ordered the attack on the natural gas pipelines. It detailed the CIA’s role in conjunction with an elite US Navy deep sea diving team as well, and with the help of Norwegian intelligence.

Putin in his new remarks also pointed the finger at the United States, but stopped short of a direct accusation. According to a translated summary of his words in Sputnik: 

He also suggested that one should probably consider who would be interested in the destruction of Nord Stream, noting that, theoretically, the United States could have been one such entity as such act of sabotage would help them cut the flow of Russian gas to the European market so that the US could supply greater amount of its own, much more expensive liquefied natural gas there.

The Russian president added that, while repairing the damaged Nord Stream pipelines would be no mean feat, it probably could be done, though such undertaking would require time, money and new technologies.

The Russian leader also weighed on on the possibility of a repair and the question of future operability:

He noted, however, that the Nord Stream project would have a future only if Russia’s European partners were to remember about their own national interest, as it would seem that, currently, they are doing whatever it is they are told “from across the ocean.”

Putin said that claims that the attack on Nord Stream was organized by some Ukrainian activists were nonsense. pic.twitter.com/KnFRrVBorj

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 14, 2023

Following Hersh’s report, US officials and establishment media sought to portray the famed reporter as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ who is far past the prime of his career. This despite Hersh’s track record of blockbuster investigative journalism and his breaking major stories spanning decades speaking. It remains that he’s among the most celebrated journalists in American history who was proven right time and again. 

Authored by Kane McGukin via The Mesh Point,

The relationship between Silicon Valley Bank, our attention spans, and our money.

Investing requires the ability to manage funds such that you are able to cover both your short-term needs and your long-term wants + needs. The tricky part is there’s no one perfect way to do it.

The case of Silicon Valley Bank and its failure/takeover is a great example of what happens when there is a mismatch between your short and long interests; you go bust!

• What’s the real issue at hand?

• What’s the root cause?

• What’s the signal in all the noise of why and how it happens?

To me, the Silvergate unwind, Silicon Valley, and Signature Bank takeovers this past week and weekend are a microcosm of what’s wrong with society at the moment. It’s a signal that something is off.

It’s a warning sign that there is a greater need to pay attention. To seek the facts and not take the easy route. Pursue depth over quickness. Long-form over short and sweet.

It’s a tell-tale sign that what’s really wrong is a lack of truth throughout the entire system. There’s a need for proof of reserves.

Societally we suffer the same fate as Silicon Valley. There’s a mismatch between our interests. We’re watching a heavy pursuit of short-term pleasures (Tiktok) over our long-term interest (productivity) while seeking the easiest way to get things as instant as possible. There’s entirely too much focus on the short term without any real thought as to the ramifications of our decisions over the long run.

That’s the portfolio mistake that SIVB made. That’s the life mistake it appears most are making. If you invest in bonds with low yields for immediate gratification and ignore that when rates rise you won’t be able to satisfy investor demands. Then deposits leave. If you invest in instant gratification because it feels good, you won’t be able to fund the future you *expect* to have if things *unexpectedly* change.

The case of SIVB is a great example. One we’ve seen many times over. In an integrated world, money moves fast. So, if your interest is out of line and focused too far in the near term or too far in the long term, then you very likely won’t be ready for the challenges that are sure to arise.

Especially, if you don’t have a plan.

*  *  *

Subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list to get these posts as they come out, and follow Kane McGukin via his Substack and Twitter.

The Treasury Department is finally complying with a request to release suspicious activity reports (SARs) generated in connection with the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions.

US banks have filed over 150 SARs from Hunter and President Joe Biden’s brother, James, which included “large” amounts of money tagged for further review by the Treasury. According to a 2020 report, SARs “often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud.”

In December, the Treasury denied Congressional investigators access to the SARs.

“Most Americans have never heard the term ‘Suspicious Activity Reports.’ These are actual reports that financial institutions file with the Treasury Department when they see suspicious activity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told Epoch TV’s Joshua Phillip in an interview for the “Newsmakers” program at the time.

“Typically, it’s money laundering type of activity, so most Americans don’t get these. Or if they do, there is a good reason for it. But there are 150 of them on Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the President’s brother, and that to me is a big concern,” Jordan said.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Hunter & the Biden family have peddled access to enrich themselves, racking up 150 SARs for shady deals.

Even worse, we know Joe was involved in selling U.S. natural gas to China.

We’ll keep pushing for transparency & accountability. https://t.co/pSc00qUMso

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 6, 2022

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) demanded the records from the Treasury on January 11, however the Treasury denied the request – citing “improper disclosure” of relevant information which could hinder the Biden administration’s ability to “conduct of law enforcement, intelligence, and national security activities,” Breitbart reports.

The Treasury’s compliance comes after the committee’s probe has so far met resistance from Hunter Biden and from some of his associates, such as Serbian politician Vuk Jeremić and Hunter’s art dealer.

While the probe has met resistance, the committee has found a few key individuals willing to comply. The Biden family’s former top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin is expected to “soon” provide requested documents to the committee. Schwerin, who shared bank accounts with Joe Biden and was dubbed the family’s “moneyman,” was also the president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a fund created by Hunter Biden and several​ associates that spawned business deals in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Romania.

In addition, Joe Biden’s former executive assistant Kathy Chung is scheduled on April 4 to sit for a requested transcribed interview with the committee’s investigation into the Biden family business and Joe Biden’s classified document scandal. Chung was hired as Joe Biden’s assistant when he was vice president after a recommendation from Hunter Biden. Chung appears in numerous email threads on Hunter’s “laptop from hell.” -Breitbart

“It’s As Bad As We Thought”

On Sunday, Comer told Fox News‘ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that money from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) flowed to the Biden family.

“It’s as bad as we thought… Since we’ve last spoken we have bank records in hand.  We have individuals who are working with our committee,” said Comer.

“In the last two weeks we’ve met with either these individuals personally or with their attorneys.  And that would be four individuals who had ties in with the Biden family in their various schemes around the world. So now we have in hand documents  We have in hand documents in hand that show just how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party.“

Watch:

Biden family members attempted to sell access & influence around the world.@GOPoversight has communicated with multiple witnesses & continues to follow the Biden money trail.

We will be transparent & provide the facts for the American people. @MariaBartiromo @SundayFutures pic.twitter.com/EYfQn8WEXB

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) March 12, 2023

Suspicious activities indeed…