Australia is experiencing the third consecutive year of La Nina — an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that usually brings above-average rainfall to the country. Cooling of the western Indian Ocean is one of the drivers of La Nina and has transformed deserts into wetlands this year. 

“With a third consecutive La Nina period on the way for only the fourth time since records began, large parts of Australia have seen unrelenting rainfall with little chance for the ground to dry up,” according to the Australian website news.com.au.

Sydney has already exceeded rainfall records dating back more than a century. The recent deluge of wet weather has been a relief for a country battling extreme drought, which sparked intense wildfires in 2019-20. 

Rain has transformed deserts into areas overflowing with water in the country’s remote central region, especially in Channel Country, Queensland. 

 One cattle farmer about 300 miles West of Charleville told The Australian he was ‘blessed’ with rain. 

“We couldn’t ask for anything better. We’re getting good rains at the right time,” farmer Nathan Keogh said.

“The stars couldn’t have aligned more perfectly. The cattle are fat and the pastures couldn’t be better.

“It lifts everybody’s spirits. It can be hard out here in drought times, but this is a game-changer. It’s a lot easier when it’s green.”

Another area in Channel Country shows rivers coming to life after all the rainfall. 

“The region experiences flooding rains roughly once a decade, which spread across floodplains through Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory into Lake Eyre, bringing out some of the most unique wildflower scenery in the country,” news.com.au explained. 

And mainstream media outlets like WaPo cite researchers who blame “climate change” for Australia’s flooding. We will note the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, stating: “El Nino and La Nina are naturally occurring climate patterns and humans have no direct ability to influence their onset, intensity or duration.” 

And for those wondering what type of weather La Nina will bring to the Western Hemisphere … read “When Can You Expect El Niño And La Niña?” 

By Ye Xie and Amy Li, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and analysts

The meltdown that engulfed Chinese stocks Monday is a clear sign investors are worried that President Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on power will exact a heavy toll on free enterprise and economic growth. But some Wall Street banks haven’t given up on China just yet. JPMorgan’s strategist Marko Kolanovic, for one, is urging investors to buy the dip (ZH: as he always does with everything).

While the quant guru’s bullish call on the nation’s assets has misfired this year, history shows a market rebound after a rout of this scale is more than likely.

Monday’s selloff in Chinese assets was savage with few precedents outside economic crises.

Following the Party Congress where Xi stuff the Politburo Standing Committee with his allies, the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index of 65 Chinese stocks sank as much as 21%. The MSCI China Index fell more than 8%, the most since 2008. Foreign investors took out a record 18 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) from the mainland’s stock market via the connect programs — more than wiping out the inflows this year. 

Markets are clearly worried that Xi’s consolidation of power means a likely continuation of recent economically damaging policies, including Covid Zero and the campaign to rein in private-sector enterprises. “The market got the feeling of a continuous lack of focus on the state of the Chinese economy,” said Giuliano Gasparet, head of equity at Generali Insurance Asset Management.

For some investors, though, the selloff may be overdone. “We believe this is a good opportunity to add given an expected growth recovery, gradual COVID reopening, and monetary and fiscal stimulus,” JPMorgan’s Kolanovic wrote in a note Monday.

The widely followed strategist has been one of the most vocal China bulls throughout the year, even as his colleague at one point controversially labeled Chinese stocks as “uninvestable.” (The word was never meant to see the light of day, Bloomberg later reported.)

Kolanovic’s thesis has been that China’s economic stimulus would lead to a recovery. Yet the call has floundered as continued Covid restrictions severely hampered the economy.

Still, he may be on to something this time. Prior to Monday, there have been only 13 times when the MSCI China Index tumbled at least 8% over the past three decades. The index rebounded in 11 out of those 13 occasions in the the next five days, and advanced 10 times in the following 60 days. In fact, since 1998, the hit ratio for the next 60 days is 100%.

These historic stats looks encouraging. But for the markets to have a sustained recovery, Beijing needs to retool its Covid policies and rebuild investor confidence. As Yan Wang, China strategist at Alpine Macro, puts it, “market volatility will remain high until investors get better clarity on how Xi Jinping will manage the country going forward.”

The global semiconductor industry is entirely dominated by Taiwan. And that is a significant security risk for Western countries if China were to invade the island nation. 

“If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, it’s a scary scenario.

“It’s a deep and immediate recession. It’s an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment. We need to make this in America,” US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC this past summer. 

In August, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a controversial trip to Taiwan. In one of her meetings, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. founder Morris Chang told Pelosi very bluntly that Washington’s efforts to rebuild domestic chip manufacturing would fail. 

“He was pretty blunt, and the esteemed guests were a bit surprised,” one person familiar with the talks told Financial Times. 

As tensions between Taiwan and China mount, Washington plans to shift the global semiconductor supply chain out of the region to the US and elsewhere. And the reason for it is due to a scenario where China invades or blockades Taiwan, which would mean the global chip industry would grind to a halt overnight. 

“If China cuts off TSMC’s supply chain, it could cause a major crisis in the world economy,” said Paul Clifford, a non-resident fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. TSMC is moving toward shifting “some of their production out of Taiwan because of that concern.”

Jason Hsu, a former Taiwanese lawmaker and now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, said the US is playing a delicate balancing act by pressuring TSMC to move production lines to the US while it unleashes an economic war on China’s semiconductor industry. He said that puts Taiwan at risk.

The West’s concerns around Taiwan’s security and independence are why the Biden administration is pursuing the CHIPS Act to expand domestic semiconductor output. One problem for TSMC is that Washington is beginning to diversify chip manufacturing away from Taiwan. 

For example, the Pentagon’s dependency on Taiwan for chips that power leading-edge devices and weapons is central to the battle for tech supremacy between the US and China. Due to future disruption risks, the DoD has to source chips from more secure supply chains. 

Besides the US, there are efforts in Europe, Japan, Singapore, and India to increase semiconductor manufacturing. New manufacturing plants could take a couple of years to start producing chips. 

The West’s strategy to diversify semiconductor supply chains out of Taiwan is becoming more clear:

“Everyone realizes that there is a big watershed moment here for the whole industry,” said Peter Hanbury, a partner and expert in semiconductor and technology supply chains at Bain, the consultancy. “But it kind of snuck up on people.”

Credit Suisse analysts recently pointed out if Taiwan’s chip plants were disrupted for any reason. The production of automobiles to computers would be severely impacted. 

As of right now, the West’s goal is to break up Taiwan’s chip hub, though, as we noted earlier, TSMC’s Chang warned that any such move would fail. 

However, TSMC customers are already looking to diversify production out of the region, as explained by Sebastian Hou, managing director at Neuberger Berman, an investment management company:

“There have been some concerns among TSMC customers since two years ago … It was the time when in Taiwan we started to have more fighter jets from China hovering around the Taiwan Strait, and that has become a daily routine.”

So far, those customers include Qualcomm and Nvidia, who have recently stated that some chip production from TSMC’s facilities would be shifted elsewhere. 

Hanbury said the big question would be if Apple changes manufacturing partners due to the increasing risks in the Taiwan Strait. 

“Taiwan’s monopoly in semiconductor production creates instability,” Brad Martin, director of the National Security Supply Chain Institute at the Rand Corporation, said. “If the US is faced with a need to make a decision between protecting its economy and defending Taiwan, that starts to become a very stark decision.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the West wants TSMC and others in Taiwan to shift chip production elsewhere, so chip supplies aren’t drastically disrupted in the event of a China invasion. 

Back on March 30, when the downward move in the yen was only just starting, we explained why the “Yen Is At Risk Of “Explosive” Downward Spiral With Kuroda Trapped, And Why China May Soon Devalue.”

We won’t waste our readers’ time going into the details (they can click on the hyperlink above for the details), suffice to point out that since then, the yen has cratered by about 30 big figures…

… prompting the BOJ to intervene, in an act of futile desperation, in the FX market by blowing what now appears to be $50 billion (and rising fast) in open market yen purchases to contain the collapse of the currency. Of course, until and unless the BOJ ends YCC, all interventions will be completely pointless, and the USDJPY can easily hit 200 within the next 12 months unless Kuroda allows the 10Y yield to rise above 0.25%… which he won’t do as the alternative is an immediate bond market collapse.

But while the yen has been remarkable, it is the move in the yuan that has been the real stunner… just as we predicted. Behold the biggest stealth devaluation in modern Chinese history!

And tonight, one day after the biggest drop in US-traded Chinese stocks following the absolute revulstion to what happened in China over the weekend, it went from bad to worse for the offshore yuan which cratered as low as 7.3686, a relentless drop in recent days and the lowest level on record for the offshore yuan…

… which was sparked by the official fixing of the onshore yuan at 7.1668, which while still stronger than the estimate of 7.2198 (if well of record spreads observed in the past few weeks), was still the weakest reference rate in 14 years. In kneejerk reaction, the USDCNY, which is limited how far away from the reference rate it can trade, immediately proceeded to dump by 0.6% to 7.3050, the highest (i.e., weakest) since Dec. 2007.

Commenting on the move, Mizuho Bank Asia FX strategist Ken Cheung said that the yuan fixing at 7.1668 is “a clear sign of the PBOC letting go of the currency as outflow pressure mounts” adding that “the weaker fixing means the policies are going back to normal after the 20th party congress.”

Cheung also wrote that “the previous CNY fixing guidance could be a temporary measure and the PBOC is now letting the CNY to be more driven by market forces.”

Which begs just two questions: how long until the current stealth devaluation which has seen the yuan drop the fastest 15% on record, is called for what it is, especially when compared to the dwarf of an official devlauation that took place back in August 2015.

The second question: the last time China devalued aggressively – and officially – bitcoin saw its first sizable move from the low-hundreds into four digits. Will this time Beijing be successful at blocking off the capital flight firewall, or will those $55 trillion in Chinese bank assets finally starting moving out again…

Authored by Thomas Buckley via ‘The Point’ Substack,

There is thinking inside the box.

Then there is living inside a bubble.

And then there is thinking inside a bubble which is in a box in a cage in the basement tucked behind the furnace with a giant sign “Beware of the Leopard!” draped across it (apologies to Douglas Adams.)

In politics – as in some many aspects of life – it’s always handy to know where your enemies are.  In this case the DC Democrats are right there, which is right where we want them.

From the utterly oblivious nonsense coming out of Nancy Pelosi – inflation and crime are not big issues this November – to the inability of any major Democrat to even hint about being open to any limits on abortion – well, they may get Cartman’s mom from “South Park” vote at least –

– to doubling down on “climate change” as people are facing utility rate hikes and power grid instability, the tone deafness is astonishing.

But why is this happening – why are the Democrats focusing on what, the polls clearly state, are not the major concerns of voters?

One possibility is that they are true believers and absolutely mean everything they say and are cretain they are making the world better and are just fighting an honest and truthful fight.

Mm-hmm.

Another possibility is that they are rock paper stupid, but there is a difference between intellectual dishonesty and intellectual deficiency and it would seem the former, not the latter, would make more sense (though one must also wonder if it is inconceivable to them that they may not represent the feelings and ideas of the general public –

Then there is the knowledge that they can win because the game is so rigged by the media, voting systems, and the power to shame away from polite society anyone or thing that would dare to ask for better explanations of the whys and wherefores of their policies, let alone disagree with them.  This confidence that they can run a hamster on a platform of giving each and every tweaker in the nation a bag of cash and a machete and still prevail definitely plays a role in the Democrat mindset.  Look at New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, etc. and it’s pretty much what they’ve been running on locally and winning so it seems to work.

Of course, a major difficulty with running on the issues voters care about is that the voters care about them because the Democrats made them care by causing the problems in the first place – inflation, crime, energy instability, etc. can all be appropriately laid at their feet

But it may be a combination of all those things plus one extra very important fact: they are only talking amongst themselves.

Imagine a conference room full of Democratic operatives strategizing campaign themes and one says “hey, maybe we should layoff the January 6 stuff and focus on issues that the vast majority of everyday Americans really care about?”

The first sound heard in response would be crickets.  The second sound would be of a pink slip hitting the table.  The third sound would be the revocation of a building security clearance.  The fourth sound would be the pinging of cell phones as the entire room simultaneously engages in ritualized contact info removal.

In other words, many Democratic candidates are engaged in campaigns that are not being run by people who are- first and foremost – interested in winning but by people who are deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing, being socially ostracized, and seeing their future careers instantaneously evaporate in a woke cloud of revenge. 

It’s one of the reasons why excuses for the upcoming mid-term bloodbath are already coming out – it wasn’t us or our ideas but it was the Saudis and the oil companies conspiring to raise gas prices – https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/gas-prices-biden-approval-rating-midterms-democrats.html– and Trump is a liar and people are stupid and evil – MSNBC’s execrable Joy Reid tweeted “It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse and the reversal of everything from Social Security & Medicare to student loan relief bc they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices” – and Trump is evil and people can’t vote – https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/democrats-bad-midterm-polls-bad-vibes.html – and on and on.

It’s also the reason for this –

For those unaware, Allan Fung is a Republican who may very well take – it’s a toss-up, maybe even leaning his way, right now – a congressional seat in deep blue Rhode Island.  This race has gained the attention of the House Majority PAC – which was created by Pelosi as part of her effort to indenture to herself every other Democrat in Congress by controlling huge amounts of campaign cash – that has just begun airing the above advertisement on the state.

A short breakdown of the ad (do watch if you have 30 seconds):  It begins by invoking Charlottesville (really?) kids in cages (again, really?) and January 6 (no surprise there), then has Trump inciting a riot “resulting in the death of five police officers (huh? are they counting Ashli Babbitt?) to overturn the election, and finishing with the obligatory “Fung is too loyal to Trump, too extreme” boilerplate.

The most fascinating part of the ad is the photo the Democrat creators chose to end the spot with – Fung happily standing with two people; their faces are pixelated but one is a woman wearing an American flag scarf and the other is a man dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier, complete with tri-corner hat and red, white, and blue uniform.  That means that someone specifically chose to represent evil Trumpian fascism with the flag and Independence Day.

Seriously.

Locally, Fung is running inflation and heating oil price increases and opposing tax hikes ads; Pelosi – and Fung’s opponent Seth Magaziner – are running things like the above and commercials about abortion and the standard “Kevin McCarthy will end Social Security” claptrap.

Yes, Rhode Island is “blue” but, more importantly, it’s pretty blue collar (outside of Brown University, East Greenwich, Jamestown, Barrington, and half of Newport, of course, and only one of which is in the district) so the disconnect between potential Democratic voters and existing Democratic politicians and strategists is all the more glaring.

That failed campaign managers – see Steve Schmidt, who went from Meg Whitman’s malpractice of a California gubernatorial campaign to the Lincoln Project grift and Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 poorly targeted effort and after still got a number of sweet gigs – can go on with their lives as long as they can blame something else for losing is a well-known fact in DC circles as long as you keep the consultanocracy and media establishment well and truly oiled. 

This fact is obvious to the folks behind Katie Hobbs’ desert disaster, Kathy Hochul’s “empire strikes back” campaign, and Nevada’s Sisolak betting on the hard way.

And, staying in Nevada, there is the issue of rank incompetence caused by the groupthink political blinders.  The House Majority PAC has run an abortion-related advertisement against April Becker, the Republican running in the 3rd congressional district.  The ad features Dr. Adam Levy, intoning against “botched, back-alley abortions…far too many women died…” etc.  The problem with the ad, beyond the obvious, is that Dr. Levy not only has himself caused the death of a patient during a botched abortion but was also charged with sexual assault of a minor under 16 years old and lewdness with a child under 14 years old, eventually entering an “Alford” plea to lesser charges of abuse and neglect.

Here is the ad – https://www.thehousemajoritypac.com/our-work/led-us-here – here is his easily available background information – https://abortiondocs.org/abortionists/adam-vincent-levy/ (see license/incident details under “documented deaths or serious injury”) – and here is story that broke the news – https://thenevadaglobe.com/articles/house-majority-pac-ad-features-doctor-criminally-charged-of-sexual-assault-lewd-acts-with-a-minor/ .

But if you don’t play along and actually try to win by ignoring the hivemind obsessed with identity politics and Trump and abortion and Trump and January 6 and Trump and suggest trying – somehow – to connect on issues that matter to typical voters?

Adios, sayonara, goodbye, and never darken our doors again.

And it’s very very cold outside the bubble. 

And the leopard might still be there, too…

*  *  *

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A challenge that mounted earlier this month in Hong Kong to invalidate Covid vaccine exemptions issued by certain doctors has lost in court.

In late September, Hong Kong sought to invalidate certain Covid exemptions issues by doctors who were suspected of malpractice.

Big brother really seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. As if enough people hadn’t already been forced into getting the jab, Hong Kong police “arrested six doctors last month for allegedly issuing vaccination exemption letters without conducting proper consultations,” SCMP wrote last week. 

From there, the government made a legal challenge to 20,000 vaccination exemption certificates linked to doctors over suspected malpractice in the country’s High Court. But the court then ruled that the government has no power to invalidate the exemptions and a temporary ban on a plan to revoke the exemptions will now likely become permanent. 

The country’s health secretary couldn’t identify the source of his authority, Mr Justice Russell Coleman ruled: “A government minister gets his or her legal powers from legislation – and not from an announcement made in a press release.”

“It does not seem to me to be correct to leap from the desirability of enabling the secretary to ‘do something’ when some [medical exemption certificates] are called into question to the conclusion that [the law] must be read as conferring such a power,” his ruling continued. 

“The question does not identify a choice between being ‘pro-government’ or ‘anti-government’; it identifies a distinction between what is lawful and what is unlawful,” the ruling continued. 

Litigant Kwok Cheuk-kin was granted an application to restrain authorities from invalidating the certificates. According to reporting by SCMP, he then called the ruling a “miserable loss” for the government and a “disgrace” to city leader John Lee Ka-chiu.

Executive councillor and barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah said that the government was considering an appeal. “Amending the laws is not moving the goalposts. The goalposts are in the wrong position so, of course, we have to put them in the right place,” he said. 

“The citizens of Hong Kong are the biggest winners of the present judicial challenge,” Kwok concluded. You can read the full SCMP writeup here. 

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Josef Stalin’s top henchman famously said, “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” What it meant was that Soviet justice was about politics, not the rule of law. First decide who, for political reasons, is to be punished, and then the state will provide the crimes for which he will be charged.

This dark era of politicized “justice” has returned with former Trump campaign advisor Steve Bannon’s recent sentence to four months in jail for “contempt of Congress” over his refusal to appear before the House January 6th Committee.

How is it politicized justice for Bannon to be punished for ignoring a subpoena from the US Congress? Because many before him have been charged with contempt of Congress – including Democratic Party luminaries such as Eric Holder, Janet Reno, and Lois Lerner – and were never sentenced to jail time.

Bannon’s sentence is meant to convey a political message to America: if you support Trump you are a criminal and you may find yourself in a cell next to Steve Bannon.

And you do not have to support Trump to understand the danger in this. Everyone should be afraid of political justice. It cuts both ways and there is no guarantee that Republicans if they capture Congress will not also follow this precedent.

Sending your political opponents to jail is what happens in a banana republic. It is un-American. But here we are.

The goal of the January 6th Committee is not to seek justice for the “crime” of trespassing and putting feet on Pelosi’s sacred desk, but to make sure that Donald Trump is never allowed to run for President again. That is the reason hundreds have been unjustly arrested and held in terrible conditions for non-crimes. As they say, if you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.

Speaking of contempt of Congress, the real contempt is the existence of the January 6th Committee in the first place.

It has been a partisan show trial from the beginning, where the only two “Republican” Members were not chosen by Republicans but by Nancy Pelosi. The purpose of the Committee has been to prop up the false narrative that somehow a few rowdy protesters who broke into the Capitol Building were the equivalent of the storming of the Bastille.

The US Administration is also involved in narrative control in other areas.

The media reported last week that Tesla and Space-X chief Elon Musk has come under a “national security review” over, it seems, his on-again-off-again purchase of Twitter and perhaps even his proposing a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine that does not include a nuclear strike on Moscow.

Musk has also come under fire from the “cancel culture” Left over his repeated vows to return Twitter to a free speech platform once he is in charge. As we have seen in so many cases, including with former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson, Twitter has been working closely with the Biden Administration to silence and ban any users who dare challenge the “accepted wisdom” on Covid, Ukraine, and a number of other things.

When justice becomes tangled in politics, freedom and liberty go out the window. We are not so naïve to think this is something that just arrived with the Biden Administration, but there seems little doubt it is spreading like a cancer. We must reject political justice if the Republic is to survive.

With midterm elections weeks away, desperation among Democrats is palpable.

After horrendous polling which shows that Americans not only care most about inflation and the economy (‘Change the subject!‘), and a mass exodus of independent voters, Democrats have even resorted to shuffling a clearly-impaired President Biden around to stump for candidates and reassure the base how wonderful things are.

Here he is discussing ‘ramrod-spined’ VP Kamala Harris – who apparently has “enormous integrity.”

60 seconds to prove Joe Biden has dementia pic.twitter.com/RQF3IHTeGC

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 24, 2022

“Enormous integrity.”

Yesterday, Kamala Harris said it’s “misinformation” to say she urged people to donate to a bail fund that has bailed violent criminals out of jail.

She’s lying. Her tweet is still up: pic.twitter.com/EKBuM7uT9O

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 24, 2022

Anyway… 

As The Hill makes abundantly clear, Democrats are freaking out right now as momentum into midterms is clearly with the GOP.

As recently as a few weeks ago, Democrats were bullish about their chances of defying harsh historical and political headwinds, believing that voter anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and lingering GOP concerns about the quality of Republican candidates might allow them to not only hold, but expand their paper-thin Senate majority.

But the political winds appear to be shifting once again in the GOP’s favor. Recent polling has found Republicans regaining an edge on the so-called generic ballot, a survey question that asks voters which party they plan to vote for in November. Meanwhile, the data website FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast shows Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate dropping by 11 percent over the past month. -The Hill

“A month ago, it looked like not only were the Democrats poised to hold the Senate, the question was: were they going to be able to get, you know, two extra seats?” said former Democratic pollster, Fernand Amandi, who worked on former President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “Now I think the hope is just to hang on.“

“Perhaps Democratic messaging hasn’t been as strong as it could be,” he continued. “But we’re talking about things tightening when the choice is between chaos and competency. The Democrats have governed with a competent, steady hand in a very volatile environment. What we’ve seen from the Republican Party over the last six years has been wholesale unhinged chaos. And what they’re offering is more chaos.“

Really?

Marie Yovanovitch — the former US Ambassador to Ukraine under Trump who testified against him in the 2019 impeachment, and was lauded as a hero — suggests that if Trump were in office, he’d have averted the war diplomatically. But she thinks this would’ve been a terrible thing pic.twitter.com/1Q4qp5cNOA

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 23, 2022

According to Democratic strategist and former Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) aide Jon Reinish, “If you look at the Dobbs decision — that seems to have come a little too early for the Democrats,” referring to the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe vs Wade.

“And I think there [are] other currents — inflation is probably the biggest one — that have kind of interfered with the singularity of that argument.”

So – the timing of the USSC overturning Roe wasn’t ideal for maximum outrage, and inflation is highly inconvenient.

Maybe Democrats can simply campaign on the economy being “strong as hell”?

Joe Biden saying, “Our economy is strong as hell,” while eating an ice cream cone is so tone deaf and out of touch to what Americans actually see in their lives that it feels like the Democrats are intentionally tanking the election. pic.twitter.com/blkc4omdhd

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 16, 2022

According to the most recnt NYT-Siena College poll, the economy and inflation top the list of problems facing the country, while just 5% of voter said abortion is the most pressing issue. January 6th came in at 7%. Nobody cares about the hill Democrats have chosen to die on.

In one of the poll’s more alarming findings for Democrats, women who identified as independents said they preferred Republicans by an 18-point margin, a stark reversal from September, when those voters favored Democrats by a 14-point margin. Democrats have sought relentlessly to sway those voters by warning of threats to abortion rights. -The Hill

“The voters who would be most susceptible to the Democrats’ messaging on abortion are shifting,” said former GOP strategist and congressional candidate, Ford O’Connell.

“As long as the Republicans stay focused on two things — my money, my family — then they’ll win in 2022,” he added. “They’ll win in 2024. Because the Democrats aren’t showing any sign of changing their approach.”

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in a recent Bloomberg interview that fiscal debates need to be put “back on the table” as surging borrowing costs risk a potential deficit “doom loop.”

Summers made the remarks during Friday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” in which he said that the Biden administration’s big spending initiatives, including the student-loan forgiveness that caused the monthly deficit to jump 562 percent, could shake investor confidence.

“If your deficit projection starts to get out of control and your real interest rates start to rise rapidly, you can get into a kind of doom loop,” Summers told the outlet.

“We’re going to need to be watching our own fiscal projections in the United States very carefully.”

While the federal budget deficit is down to $1.38 trillion this year from $2.78 trillion in fiscal 2021, it was 562 percent higher on a monthly basis compared with September 2021. The monthly jump mostly reflects Biden’s student debt forgiveness as several years’ worth of costs were compressed into a single month.

‘Stagflationary Debt Crisis’

Another prominent economist who has warned about the risks of high debt as borrowing costs rise is Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business who got the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his accurate prediction of the market meltdown of 2008–09.

Roubini said in an opinion piece for Time magazine that under conditions of much higher private and public debt levels now than in the past, central bank rate hikes to tame soaring inflation carry a major downside risk.

“Rapid normalization of monetary policy and rising interest rates will drive highly leveraged households, companies, financial institutions, and governments into bankruptcy and default,” he wrote.

Roubini expects the next crisis to be some combination of 1970s stagflation and the 2008–09 debt crisis, predicting a toxic mix where “the decade ahead may well be a Stagflationary Debt Crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

It comes as Republicans have criticized the Biden administration’s big-ticket spending and have been flagging the need for spending cuts.

“You can’t just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a recent interview on Punchbowl News.

The GOP lawmaker said that if Republicans win control of the House, they should consider using debt-limit negotiations to pressure Democrats to cut spending.

“And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, OK, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior.”

“We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit,” he added. “And we should seriously sit together and [figure out] where can we eliminate some waste? Where can we make the economy grow stronger?”

‘Force as Much Spending Reduction’ as Possible

In a recent interview for The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD, Stephen Moore, former senior economic adviser to former President Donald Trump, blamed soaring inflation on the Biden administration’s massive spending packages and said the only thing that will cool price pressures is a GOP win in the midterm elections so they can pressure Democrats to “stop the spending.”

Moore acknowledged that there are limits to what a Republican-controlled Congress could do to rein in spending, as some of it is on “automatic pilot” and can’t be stopped by a vote.

“Republicans should not over-promise,” he said. “They can stop new spending, they can—in a fight over the debt ceiling—pull back some spending, as we did with [former President Barack] Obama.”

He said a GOP win would likely mean more political friction in Washington.

“Neither side is going to be very happy,” he said.

“But the more the Republicans can bring spending and regulations and taxes down, the stronger the economy.”

In order to tame soaring inflation, Republicans should “force as much spending reduction” as possible, Moore argued.

Authored by Lorenz Duscamps via The Epoch Times,

Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday that she will do everything possible, including a potential 2024 presidential run, to prevent former President Donald Trump from entering the Oval Office again.

Cheney, who has become one of the most vocal voices in the Republican Party against Trump, made the comment in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” arguing the Republican Party “will shatter” if Trump becomes the GOP presidential nominee.

“I think the party has either to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous and toxic place, or the party will splinter and there will be a new conservative party that rises,” Cheney told anchor Chuck Todd, adding that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee, “the party will shatter and there will be a conservative party that rises in its place.”

Todd continued by telling Cheney that some Americans believe that if she “would be a third-party candidate” in the 2024 presidential elections, it would potentially “be enough to stop Trump” from becoming president again.

“Well, we’ll do whatever it takes as I said,” she responded.

“He will not be president again.”

Trump has not made any definitive statements on whether he would run for the nation’s highest office, but he has strongly suggested that he would in numerous speeches and interviews after departing office in January 2021.

Todd also asked Cheney, who said in mid-August that she was considering running for president but hasn’t yet made a decision on the matter, what it would take for her to run for president and face Trump.

“Look, I’m going to be very focused on all the things we’ve been talking about and I care deeply, as I know you do, as millions of people do, about this nation and about the blessing that we have as a constitutional republic,” Cheney said.

“I am focused on what we’ve got to do to save the country from this very dangerous moment we’re in,” she added, “not right now on whether I’m going to be a candidate or not.”

Cheney, who has been called a “Republican in name only” by others in her party and lost the Republican primary to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in August, said in September that she will not remain a Republican if Trump is the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in Tuscon, Ariz., on Oct. 2, 2022. (Otabius Williams/The Epoch Times)

Cheney also said that she would be willing to campaign for Democrats to stop GOP nominee Kari Lake from being elected in the Arizona gubernatorial race.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected,” Cheney said.

When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith whether doing everything she can to ensure Lake is not elected includes campaigning for Democrats, Cheney simply stated, “Yes.”

Former television anchor Lake, who is endorsed by Trump, won the Republican nomination in the Arizona primary election in August. Lake has been vocal in alleging fraud in the 2020 election and has pledged to improve election security if she wins the gubernatorial race.

Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. She is also one of two Republican members sitting on the Democrat-led House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.