After three months of divergence, hard data started to lag this week, catching down to the more sentiment-driven ‘soft’ survey data, and dashing hopes of a soft landing happening in the US economy…

Source: Bloomberg

The market has shifted hawkishly this week, with expectations for the terminal Fed rate rising and expectations of subsequent rate-cuts falling (both back up near pre-CPI levels)…

Source: Bloomberg

And that reality check weighed on the equity market broadly with Nasdaq hammered hardest (Nasdaq down three weeks in a row). The Dow managed to make gains on the week (best week since Thanksgiving)…

As they careen towards putting in the second worst December performance ever with Nasdaq -9% so far (Dow down 4.2%)…

Energy stocks outperformed on the week while Tech and Consumer Discretionary lagged…

Source: Bloomberg

TSLA is down 6 straight days (and 9 of the last 10 days) and 10 of the last 14 weeks.

Bonds (which closed early today) were also dumped this week, led by the long-end with the 10Y yield up 26bps – the biggest weekly yield surge since April…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y Yield is back up at one-month highs (erasing all the price gains since Powell’s dovish address in late November)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar slipped lower on the week, back to post-CPI lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos continued their low-vol range-bound trading with Bitcoin holding just below $17,000 for the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold ended the week unchanged (basically the 3rd week in a row where – despite intra-week volatility – the precious metal has ended flat around $1800)

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rallied for the 2nd straight week with WTI topping $80 on its best week since early October

Finally, while December looks set to be the second worst month for stocks ever, The Dow is set for its best year since 1933 relative to the S&P 500…

Source: Bloomberg

As Bloomberg notes, The Dow’s reliance on blue-chip companies has made it a place of relative safety as rising interest rates pushed investors away from technology stocks. Some bears are betting the outperformance won’t last: short interest in the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust is hovering at 3% of shares outstanding, the highest level since August 2020, IHS Markit data show.

Authored by Micah Meadowcroft via TheAmericanConservative.com,

Twitter was staffed by craven functionaries eager to please contacts and former colleagues in the national security state…

Readers will, I hope, forgive me for visiting a topic two weeks in a row. But perhaps they’ll agree that the so-called Twitter Files remain the most important news story out there. Not, as already mentioned, because we’ve learned something new from them, but rather because they confirm what you and I—dissidents, whether you wanted to be or not—already knew. We have been, so to speak, repeatedly asked, “Who are you going to trust, us bureaucrats, or your own lying eyes?” And it is not only nice, but fundamental to rational self-rule that we know it was them, the bureaucrats, and not our eyes that were lying. 

The latest two installments of the files, from Michael Shellenberger and Lee Fang, might be the most shocking so far, but let us differentiate between shock and surprise. It is indeed shocking, in a democratic republic, to have confirmed for us that our national secret police were working closely with a corporate entity to manipulate our de facto town square and affect the outcomes of an election; the FBI prompted Yoel Roth to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. It is indeed shocking, in a country committed to civilian rule, that our military would run influence campaigns on the de facto American soil of an American social media platform; the Pentagon ran psychological-warfare operations on Twitter with Twitter’s help. But it should not be a surprise, even as we are so proud of our representative federal system, to have any of this confirmed. On the one hand, the FBI has a well established track record of shady political interference, too long to detail here—the left used to talk about this, along with the paleoconservative and libertarian right. On the other hand, Twitter represents the intersection of technology and journalism, and there are few parts of American society more bound up with the national security state than those.

The media are, as the Fourth Estate, central players in the information sphere, which is the area of concern to our and others’ security services. Mass participatory politics is built on consensus formation of various kinds, and the First Amendment represents an attempt to create and protect a shared sphere for that meaning-making apart from the state itself. At this point in our moment of acceleration it is almost passé to interrogate the concept of a neutral public square, and I simply assert it has never existed. But we should realize that the mythology of the neutral public square, and in particular the mythology of a free and independent press that Americans remain acculturated in, is an artifact of the Cold War and the triumph of the American security state. 

This mythology was constructed, manufactured by an American establishment that at the time really was effective and in certain ways elite. The efforts of total war and the growth of technology, especially in communications, had centralized tools of command and control and consensus-manufacturing more than ever before. Mass mobilization and a war economy in the Second World War, Allied propaganda efforts and the new secular articulation of liberal Western values at Nuremberg, plus the sustained Cold War effort, all contributed to the formation of a genuine mass society with a strong cultural establishment. And, to put it really baldly, National Review and other respectable conservative publications of the time acted as controlled opposition within a shared liberal consensus, protecting its rightward edge. 

The internet was widely supposed to herald a new age of decentralization that would make the mythic neutral public square real. Indeed, some people still think this might happen. Digital communication is supposed to remove, to some degree, the points of centralization, the editors and publishers and thus the editorial lines. Of course, we have seen some of that, as everything from email chain letters to blogs to news sites have given what had been semi-successfully suppressed as fringe views a larger reach and much more prominent place in public discourse. But both in public and supposedly private spheres, the internet ecosystem is also centralized, necessarily. This is true structurally, if we think about servers and cables and increasingly monopolistic platforms. It is also true historically, considering the origins of the internet as we know it in the national security state, both in its initial development as a DARPA command-and-control technology that could survive a nuclear war, and in later major investments in Silicon Valley. 

All of this is to say that as shocking as they might be, the Twitter Files should not surprise us. Our media ecosystem is as much a product of America’s national security history as anything else in this country, and probably more so. The popular unreflective view of political media is that it is about politics; a reporter reports on what is happening in some special other public sphere called “politics” that sits apart from the public square we all occupy. But in a mass democratic society, no such independent political sphere exists, and at least since Watergate, if not the World Wars, the path to prestige in the media has been not to report on political conflict but to participate in it, wittingly or unwittingly. In being staffed by craven functionaries eager to please contacts and former colleagues in the national security state, Twitter before Elon Musk, it turns out, was not so different from the Washington Post, the New York Times, or CNN. 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A powerful winter storm of historic proportions that the National Weather Service (NWS) warned could bring life-threatening conditions has prompted multiple states to announce emergency measures, with over 240 million people under some kind of weather warnings or advisories.

The latest bulletin from the NWS’ Weather Prediction Center, issued at around 3 a.m. on Dec. 23, warned of a “historic winter storm” that was poised to produce widespread disruption to big portions of the country.

Over 240 million people within the United States, or around 73 percent of the population, are now under some kind of winter weather advisory or warning, according to the bulletin.

The Weather Prediction Center said this includes 181 million people under wind chill warnings or advisories, over 11 million for blizzard warning, 58 million for winter storm warnings, and over 500,000 for ice storm warnings.

The powerful Arctic front is predicted to continue to sweep across the eastern third of the country on Friday, with what the NWS described as an “immense” winter storm expected to have increasingly widespread impacts on travel and the potential for power outages.

The bitter cold snap has led temperatures to plummet by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a short period of time for a large part of the country. Besides very cold temperatures, high winds coming in the wake of the powerful front will lead to “dangerous” wind chill readings in nearly all of the central to eastern United States, the Weather Prediction Center said.

The NWS forecast is valid through Christmas Day.

Here are the states where governors have announced some form of emergency measures in response to the brutal cold snap.

Colorado

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has authorized the activation of the Colorado National Guard to assist with operations in response to the extreme weather.

“Colorado is about to face extreme weather and cold temperatures and the Guard is ready to assist local communities to help keep people safe during this extreme-cold weather snap,” he said in a press release.

The temperature at the Denver International Airport (DIA) fell by 37.1 degrees F in an hour on Wednesday night, setting a record for the biggest one-hour temperature drop at that location in recorded history.

Early Thursday, the temperature briefly dropped to minus 24 degrees F at DIA, just shy of the monthly record set in 1990, according to NWS Boulder.

“The combination of wind and low temperatures in winter can be deadly,” Polis said in a post on Twitter.

“Be aware of warning signs of hypothermia and frostbite,” he added, noting factors like confusion, shivering, difficulty speaking, sleepiness, and stiff muscles.

Connecticut

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, on Thursday put the state’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on an enhanced footing in preparation for the storm.

The enhanced monitoring status was to be in effect starting Friday at 7 a.m. and remaining in force through next Monday at noon.

“The latest forecast anticipates that Connecticut will receive a significant rain and wind storm beginning Thursday night and lasting through Saturday morning that has the potential to cause coastal flooding and a significant number of outages due to downed power lines,” Lamont said in a press release.

Staff from multiple agencies will assist the EOC with communications, while crews from the Connecticut Department of Transportation are on standby for removal of snow and debris from roads and sidewalks.

“Considering that temperatures will sharply drop on Friday night, I strongly urge everyone to make preparations in case you lose power as a result of the storm,” Lamont said, adding that shelters are open across the state and encouraging anyone who needs access to call 2-1-1 for assistance finding the nearest location.

Georgia

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, which will run through midnight on Monday.

“We want to urge all Georgians to be ready and certainly that goes for our teams,” Kemp said during a press conference on Wednesday.

The state of emergency declaration will enable essential supplies to be delivered for both commercial and residential needs.

A high wind warning is in effect for northeast Georgia through 10 p.m. Friday and a wind advisory has been issued for central and north Georgia, according to NWS Atlanta.

Drivers in Georgia were warned to be on alert for patchy black ice overnight Thursday and into Friday morning.

“Black ice is most likely on local roads, bridges, and overpasses. Please use extra caution if you have to travel,” NWS Atlanta warned.

Kansas

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Wednesday to enable assistance to get to parts of the state impacted by the winter storm more easily.

The order lifts certain motor carrier restrictions, including driving time limitations, in order “to allow needed fuels, relief supplies, and other items to move through Kansas as quickly as possible,” Kelly’s office said in a press release.

“I urge all Kansans to exercise caution over the coming days, to reconsider travel if possible, and to please stay safe and warm,” Kelly said in the release.

Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency (pdf) on Wednesday, warning of severe winter storm conditions that will “endanger public health and safety and/or public and private property.”

The declaration authorizes the mobilization of the National Guard and provides additional resources, including personnel and funding, to assist with response and recovery efforts associated with the severe weather.

Beshear said in a weather update on Thursday that wind chills in Kentucky are expected to drop below zero degrees F and go as low as minus 30 degrees F into Friday, with below-freezing temperatures expected to linger until Tuesday.

“Plan on slippery road conditions, especially tonight and moving into tomorrow. If you can stay off the roads, please do,” he said in the update.

In a post on Twitter on Friday, Beshear urged people to avoid travel, saying that conditions “are worsening quickly, with roadways becoming hazardous.”

“We’re hearing of multiple accidents across the commonwealth. If you are an essential worker, make sure to have a vehicle kit in place. Stay safe, Kentucky,” he said.

Maryland

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, activating emergency response operations and urging caution for holiday travel.

“Marylanders should be prepared for significant impacts to holiday travel, and adjust plans as necessary,” he said in a press release.

“As always, it is especially important to give room to crews and plows. We are coordinating our response with local jurisdictions, and will continue to keep Marylanders informed throughout the storm.”

Maryland drivers were urged to be vigilant on roadways as wet conditions turn to ice.

In an update Thursday, Hogan warned of a cold front on Friday that will bring high winds and rapidly dropping temperatures.

“Crews will treat roads within 1–2 hours of the expected temperature drop. Take precautions & plan accordingly,” he said.

Missouri

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, signed an executive order on Tuesday in preparation for the pending winter storm and extreme cold weather conditions.

The order activates the Missouri State Emergency Operations Plan and the Missouri National Guard for state and local response efforts.

“Extreme cold and hazardous weather conditions are expected to bring varying amounts of snow accumulation, but even more concerning is the bitter cold that is forecasted to impact the entire state,” he said in a press release.

“Missourians should be proactive in their preparations and so should state government, especially during this holiday travel season,” he said.

Parson’s office warned of temperatures dropping rapidly and wind chills as cold as minus 40 degrees F in parts of the state.

North Carolina

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, warning of “extremely low temperatures” expected to hit the state on Friday, as well as “very windy” conditions statewide.

The cold temperatures are expected to last through Christmas weekend, with Cooper’s office warning of strong wind gusts that could down trees and lead to power outages, as well as wind chill below zero degrees F in parts of the state.

Cooper’s order will “activate the state’s emergency operations plan, waive transportation regulations to help the transport of fuel and critical supplies, help first responders and protect consumers from price gouging.”

The emergency declaration will help companies keep up with demand for propane and other heating fuels, he said.

New York

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency on Thursday, with her office warning of flooding, flash freezing, power outages, and “extremely low wind chills.”

The emergency declaration, which is expected to last until next Monday, includes opening the state’s Emergency Operations Center on Friday morning.

It also involves banning all commercial vehicles on New York State Thruway (I-90) from exit 46 (Rochester I-390) to the Pennsylvania border, and the Niagara Thruway from I-90 to exit 22 (Route 62).

“With Mother Nature throwing everything she has at us this weekend, I encourage New Yorkers who are considering traveling for the holidays to do so before Friday or after Sunday to stay safe,” Hochul said in a statement.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, declared a state of emergency across the state on Wednesday, which will remain in effect for seven days.

Stitt’s order temporarily suspends “requirements for size and weights permits of oversized vehicles transporting materials and supplies used for emergency relief and power restoration,” according to his office.

The governor’s office warned of bad weather conditions that could lead to power outages, hazardous road conditions, and increased demand for heating fuels.

“Please do your part, stay inside, check on your neighbors and stay safe, Oklahoma!” Stitt said in a post on Twitter.

West Virginia

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, declared a statewide state of emergency on Thursday, warning of heavy snow, freezing rain, and dangerous wind chills.

The governor also issued a proclamation declaring Friday, Dec. 23, 2022, as a full-day state holiday for public employees. 

“All West Virginians need to absolutely be ready for the potential impact this winter storm may bring to our state,” Justice said in a press release, urging people to be prepared for possible power outages.

“West Virginians take care of one another, so on this holiday weekend, make sure you check on your neighbors and loved ones,” he said in the release.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Thursday, warning of limited deliveries of liquid fuels for heating homes.

The order, which provides a 10-day waiver for certain federal and state requirements for those providing energy emergency response supplies, allows for “the swift and efficient delivery of fuel products, as well as streamlined restoration efforts in the event of significant power outages throughout the state,” according to the governor’s office.

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, on Thursday met with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the NWS, while warning travelers to “leave now” or face canceled flights or other travel disruptions due to the cold snap.

As a historic cold front blankets the continental US – because global warming of course – locking down hundreds of millions, and paralyzing the economy and infrastructure…

Me going outside to get a package delivery. pic.twitter.com/fwauQMZupJ

— Michael Antonelli (@BullandBaird) December 23, 2022

… the only thing that is more frozen is US housing, where according to the latest housing report from RedFin, home sales in November fell 35.1% Y/Y — the largest decline in Redfin’s records that date back to 2012.

Home-price growth also lost momentum, although home prices have remained surprisingly high amid the broader housing carnage.  One can attribute that to the lack of liquidations so far; if however the housing malaise persists look for prices to go into freefall next. For now, the median U.S. home-sale price rose just 2.6% from a year earlier, the smallest gain since May 2020, when the onset of the coronavirus pandemic brought the housing market to a near halt.

To be sure, if and when sellers are forced to start hitting bids – as their liquidity buffers evaporate – we will see a historic buying frenzy driven by Wall Street money. Not surprisingly, a few days ago Redfin also reported that with most mortgage-funded buyers sidelined indefinitely and unable to access the market, roughly one-third (31.9%) of U.S. home purchases were paid for with all cash in October, up from 29.9% a year earlier and the highest share since 2014!

The housing market paralysis in November intensified as elevated housing costs kept buyers and sellers on the sidelines, while the record surge in mortgage rates in early November caused sales and prices to slow. New listings slumped 28.4% year over year, the biggest drop on record aside from April 2020. Despite the decrease in listings, overall supply rose 4.6% from a year earlier—a sign that homes lingered on the market as demand ebbed: the typical for-sale home took 37 days to go under contract, up from 23 days a year earlier.

The silver lining is that amid growing fears of an imminent Fed-induced recession which has sent rates sharply lower in the past month, there are early signs that demand may be starting to creep back as mortgage rates fall (which ironically is precisely what the Fed wants to avoid as it would further ease financial conditions). There was a slight downtick in the portion of home-purchase agreements that were canceled in November, and mortgage applications and Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index have both been on the rise. Still, these early indicators haven’t translated into more home sales.

As a reminder, in late November, mortgage rates reversed course dropping below 6.5% after soaring to the highest level in roughly two decades (7.08%) earlier in the month; that said they’re still twice as high as they were a year ago. The Fed has since signaled that it has more work to do to quell inflation and isn’t yet finished raising rates.

“The worst of inflation is likely in the rearview mirror,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “We do anticipate that mortgage rates will decline slightly further in 2023 as the Fed’s actions continue to bring inflation down, which should ultimately bring more homebuyers back to the market. Still, we have a ways to go until we reach recovery mode, and we may see sales continue to ebb in the short term.”

Zhao continued: “Prospective buyers in places like San Francisco and Austin, where prices have already fallen from a year ago, should pay close attention to a potential turnaround; it could be the time to take action as demand and competitive offers could pick up in the coming months.”

Authored by ‘NAMCIOS’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Russia’s Congressional finance committee chairman, Anatoly Aksakov, said the country is moving to greenlight international trade in cryptocurrency within the next month, according to a report by national news agency TASS.

“In January, we want to legalize cryptocurrencies to ensure foreign trade activities,” Aksakov said, per a translated version of the report.

The chairman highlighted that although Russia is taking steps to allow bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments for imports, there are no plans to encourage similar usage of the burgeoning assets within the boundaries of the nation’s territory.

“The circulation of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment on the territory of Russia will be prohibited, and liability will be prescribed in this regard,” he reportedly stated.

“But to pay for foreign trade transactions, we still assume the possibility of using cryptocurrencies, for example, for parallel imports.”

Russian officials have teased at this possibility for almost a year, following an intense package of Western sanctions deployed in the wake of the nation’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia laid out a roadmap for bitcoin regulation in January 2022, and the Ministry of Finance submitted a proposal in the following month. Around the same time, U.S. President Biden announced the first tranche of Russian sanctions, blocking five of the biggest Russian banks and freezing all the assets they held in America. One month later, Russia said it was open to selling natural gas for bitcoin.

“There can be a variety of currencies, and that’s a standard practice. If they want bitcoin, we will trade in bitcoin,” the chairman of the country’s Congressional energy committee, Pavel Zavalny, said in a press conference at the time.

Soon, the idea gained steam and different areas of Russia’s government began endorsing it. In April, the country’s tax authority proposed a change to the local cryptocurrency bill to let entities accept cryptocurrency as payment in foreign trade. By May, the matter was being “actively discussed” in Russia.

The Bank of Russia, which was hardest government body to be convinced given its previous calls for a complete ban on bitcoin and cryptocurrency, first nodded to the possibility of allowing bitcoin payments for international settlement in June. In September, Russia’s central bank agreed with the Ministry of Finance that it would be “impossible to do without cross-border settlements in cryptocurrency.”

Now, as the year draws to a close, the legal basis to allow such payments is about to become a reality, per the TASS report.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was directly involved in the Capitol security plan – in which officials said they had been “denied again and again” when asking for resources  necessary to protect the building complex during the the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

Did Pelosi’s office set Capitol Police up to fail?

According to a trove of text and email messages made public Wednesday by House Republicans, the Capitol was left vulnerable on Jan. 6 as a result of failures by Democratic leadership in the House as well as law enforcement officials in the Capitol Police, who let concerns over the “optics” of armed officers and National Guardsmen take precedent over an appropriate level of staffing given the obvious protests which were about to occur.

The report, compiled by GOP Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan and Kelly Armstrong, covers the results of months of investigation surrounding the events of Jan. 6, which the Democrat-led J6 Committee failed to conduct, Just the News reports.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day,” concludes the GOP report, which also highlighted that Capitol Police began receiving specific warnings in December over potentially significant violence planned against the Capitol and lawmakers by angry protesters who planned to contest the certification of the 2020 election results.

“Prior to that day, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence that occurred,” reads the report. “On January 6, 2021, criminal rioters assaulted police officers, broke into the U.S. Capitol, damaged property, and temporarily interfered with the certification of states’ presidential and vice presidential electors at the Joint Session of Congress—a typically pro forma event.”

But its most explosive revelations involved text and email messages showing that two key staffers in Pelosi’s office attended regular meetings to discuss the security plan for Jan. 6 dating back to early December 2020 and that Pelosi’s top aide even edited some of the plans. Most of those discussions and meetings excluded Republican lawmakers in the House, the report noted.

“Then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving—who served on the Capitol Police Board by virtue of his position—succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership leading up to January 6, 2021,” the report said. “He coordinated closely with the Speaker and her staff and left Republicans out of important discussions related to security.” -Just the News

“Our report exposes the partisanship, incompetence and indifference that led to the disaster on January 6 and the leading role Speaker Pelosi and her office played in the security failure at the Capitol,” said Rep. Jim Banks. “Unlike  the sham January 6th Committee, House Republicans produced a useful report that will keep Capitol and USCP officers safe with no subpoena power and no budget.”

Following the events of Jan. 6, Pelosi forced House Sergeant at Arms Irving to resign, after which a staffer in Irving’s old office sent a blistering email suggesting that Democratic leadership had thrown Irving and Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund under the bus to cover up their own failures to provide adequate security.

“For the Speaker’s knee-jerk reaction to yesterday’s unprecedented event (and God knows how Congress lives for its knee-jerk reactions and to hell with future consequences . . . ). to immediately call for your resignation . . . after you have been denied again and again by Appropriations for proper security outfitting of the Capitol (and I WROTE several of those testimonies, dangit) . . . and to blame you personally because our department was doing the best they could with what they had and our comparatively small department size and limited officer resources . . . and because other agencies stepped in to assist just a fraction too late . . . again, for Congress to demand your resignation is spectacularly unjust, unfair, and unwarranted,” wrote the staffer.

“This is not your fault. Or Sund’s fault. If anything, Appropriations should be hung out to dry.”

Read the rest here…

This morning’s mixed data highlight the divergence between still-climbing costs for services, like housing (although it now appears that the Fed is now realizing that the CPI index is 1 year delayed), and falling goods – both durable and non-durable – prices.

As BBG’s Felize Maranz observes this morning, cheaper gasoline has clearly been cheering consumer sentiment, but the overall direction of inflation remains troubling (at least as long as the Fed is guided by the 12-month lagging CPI/OER data). That complicates the Fed’s dilemma as it seeks to cool, but not crush, the economy — and poses risk for assets like equities.

A look at PCE month-over-month drivers shows drops for autos and energy along with higher recreation and food:

As Maranz notes, these trends are reflected in recent company earnings, like CarMax’s miss and Nike’s bid to offload bloated inventories, as well (our warning from this May about collapsing goods prices due to the reverse Bullwhip effect turned out to be spot on). Durable goods orders also surprised to the downside and capex is losing steam.

Lower demand ahead – as per Micron’s warning – will lead to slower growth, which will help tame inflation. But that’s a careful-what-you-wish-for situation as well, and looks set to hurt equities in the short term, especially as the narrative turns from inflation to lack of growth and recession while the Fed looks on and does nothing.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Adults buying toys for themselves are now responsible for a whopping one quarter of toy sales in the United States, emphasizing how permanent adolescence is becoming increasingly common.

Yes, really.

Countless adults, mostly men, who are collecting things like Lego sets, Star Wars action dolls and Funko Pops, are almost single-handedly keeping the toy industry afloat as actual children become more fixated on video games.

Toy companies are now creating “product lines just for these consumers” to meet growing demand because ‘kidults’ (mostly men in their late 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s) want to be constantly reminded of their childhood.

“These kids at heart are responsible for one-fourth of all toy sales annually, around $9 billion worth, and are the biggest driver of growth throughout the industry,” reports CNBC.

“The definition of adulthood has definitely evolved,” said Jeremy Padawer, chief brand officer at toy company Jazwares. “What it used to mean, to be an adult, was to be a very upstanding, serious member of society. And to do that you had to demonstrate it intellectually, emotionally, in every other single way.”

“Now we feel a lot more free to express our fandom as a part of our adulthood,” he added.

pic.twitter.com/6D39InsxRF

— Consoomer Moments (@ConsoomerLs) December 22, 2022

In other words, ‘kidults’ can seemingly no longer handle the pressure of behaving like adults and have chosen instead to regress to a juvenile state of consumerist nostalgia.

A society that trains men to pursue hook-up culture, refuse to settle down and get married is undoubtedly one of the reasons why man-babies are becoming increasingly prevalent.

The chemical bombardment from our environment, primarily through plastics and other pollutants impacting testosterone, is also feminizing men and keeping them trapped in a mentally pre-pubescent, emasculated mindset.

Meanwhile, as Michael Snyder highlights, figures show that around half of young adults aged 18-29 are still living at home with at least one parent.

This number represents a 6 per cent increase since 2014 and a 12 per cent increase since 2000.

While crippling student debt loans and unaffordable housing are the two primary factors driving the phenomenon, the fact that more and more adults appear to not want to grow up is also playing a major role.

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

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Russia’s ambassador to the United States issued a statement Friday assessing the state of Moscow-Washington relations as having entered an “ice age” – according to state-owned TASS.

Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said that currently the risk of a direct clash between the US and Russia remains “high” – after the foreign ministry on Thursday again charged that the Biden administration is fueling a “proxy war” in Ukraine.

Antonov acknowledged that strategic dialogue between the two sides is on pause, and that it’s hard to know when they’ll resume, but cited as a rare positive the recent prisoner swaps. 

As The Independent reviews of his words in reference to the swaps: 

However, Mr Antonov said that talks on prisoner swaps had been “effective” and would continue. Two prisoner swaps, in which US Marine veteran Trevor Reed and basketball star Brittney Griner have been freed by Russia since April in return for convicted drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko and arms dealer Viktor Bout.

A key major development which could fuel escalation is the White House decision to send Patriot anti-air missile defense systems. 

President Vladimir Putin was quick to condemn the development but still downplayed the Patriots as “quite old” – saying that his forces would counter it.

Putin also hinted at a future negotiated settlement, saying: “Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war.”

In the fresh remarks coming at the end of the week, he said further: “We will strive for an end to this and the sooner the better, of course,” and that “All armed conflicts end one way or another with some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track.”

“Sooner or later, any parties in a state of conflict sit down and make an agreement. The sooner this realization comes to those who oppose us, the better. We have never given up on this.”

But the Biden administration has said Moscow has shown “zero” interest in pursuing peace negotiations, also as it’s being reported that the Ukrainian government is preparing a serious offer for ceasefire.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Would you like to pay a carbon tax every time that you turn your heater on?  What about every time that you fill up your vehicle with gasoline?  Incredibly, this will soon be what life is like in Europe.  When I first heard that the EU plans to impose direct carbon taxes on individuals, I thought that it must be just another false Internet rumor.  But it isn’t a false rumor.  News sources in Europe are reporting on it, and you can find information about this plan on the official website of the European Parliament.  I don’t know why the corporate media in the United States is not talking about this, because this is an enormous story.

As I write this article, I am still in shock.  This is actually happening, and if this plan is successfully implemented in Europe it will be just a matter of time before a similar plan is pushed through in the United States.  The following comes from a Dutch article that has been translated into English…

Last night, after long negotiations, the bullet went through the church: residents of the European Union must pay for the greenhouse gases they emit. This means that every time you refuel and if the heating is switched on, you have to pay because of the harmful substances that are released as a result.

Of course they are starting small in an attempt to minimize opposition.

Once this plan goes into effect, the cost of a liter of gasoline will only go up by about 10 cents…

The new scheme will entail higher prices at the pump: up to 10.5 cents for a litre of petrol and 12 cents for diesel, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.

But as we have seen so many other times, once people become accustomed to new taxes rates tend to go up significantly.

According to one prominent member of the European Parliament, the new direct carbon taxes on individuals are part of “the largest climate legislation package in the EU ever”…

“I am pleased that a balanced agreement has been reached on the largest climate legislation package in the EU ever,” says Esther de Lange (CDA) MEP. She was one of the negotiators and responsible for the coordination of the Green Deal and chief negotiator on the Social Climate Fund.

We are being told that there is broad support for this climate legislation package across the political spectrum.

Europe is scheduled to reduce carbon emissions dramatically by the year 2030, and this new legislation will be a central pillar of that effort…

The measures are part of a package of climate laws. Before 2030, CO2 emissions must be reduced by 55 percent. European industry, which already partly has to do this, will have to deal with higher emission costs, and companies from outside Europe will pay for their emissions at the border. The money raised with this can be spent on climate plans.

If you do not like this new legislation, now is the time to make your voice heard.

Personally, I pledge to make efforts to increase my carbon emissions in protest to this plan.

In fact, I am thinking about firing up my wood stove even now.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the new carbon taxes are not scheduled to be implemented until 2027.

So there is still time for the EU to reverse course.

Unfortunately, other draconian measures that are designed to reduce carbon emissions are going full speed ahead right now.

For example, countless farms are currently being permanently shut down all over Europe.

In the Netherlands alone, thousands of farmers are facing forced buyouts whether they like it or not…

The government in the Netherlands is planning to conduct forced buyouts of 3,000 Dutch farms with the intention of closing them down to cut nitrogen emissions in half to meet the country’s climate goals. As many as 11,200 farms will have to close, and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly downsize their livestock operations to meet these draconian targets.

The plan could not come at a worse time because grocery prices are skyrocketing, and world leaders are warning about an oncoming food crisis caused by supply disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine and rising input costs resulting from the energy crisis.

This is literally insane.

For years, I have been warning that a global food crisis would be coming, and now it is here.

2022 was the worst year for global hunger in decades, and now the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that we will see “an enormous level of suffering” in 2023…

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Wednesday “an enormous level of suffering” awaits the world in 2023 with famine spreading.

Mirjana Spoljaric, who took over at the ICRC in October, told a Geneva press conference: “We expect an enormous level of suffering.

“As the world is trending at the moment we don’t see any easing of the humanitarian pressures, they will be immense potentially,” she said.

“There is a possibility that we will see very high levels of hunger in many parts of the world and insecurity in general.”

Shutting down farms and paying farmers not to grow food in such an environment is absolutely crazy.

But our politicians are doing it anyway.

The global food crisis is going to get substantially worse in 2023, and our leaders seem intent on imposing measures that will greatly accelerate that process.

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It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.