Authored by Monica O’Shea via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Australian government has paid out $20.5 million (US$13.2 million) in COVID-19 vaccine injury claims to people who experienced harm from the jab.

Services Australia data provided to The Epoch Times reveals 6.82 percent of claims have been compensated so far, that is 286 out of 4,191.

“As at 31 March 2024, the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme has received 4,191 claims and paid 286 claims to the value of around $20.5 million,” a spokesperson said.

“Services Australia expects to receive new claims until the COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme’s end date of 30 September 2024.”

The updated figures up to the end of March, follow a submission to the government’s COVID-19 Inquiry, revealing it had paid $16.9 million worth of claims up to the end of November 2023.

The federal government is due to deliver a budget for 2024/2025 covering all government agencies in the evening on May 14.

How Does the Vaccine Claims Scheme Work?

Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine claims scheme allows individuals to claim losses above $1,000 in relation to “moderate to severe adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.”

It covers vaccines approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) including the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax jabs.

Services Australia administers the scheme on behalf of the Department of Health and Aged Care (DHAC). In April, the Department updated the policy to include more claimable conditions, based on advice from the TGA.

In order to make a compensation claim, individuals must meet the definition of harm, be admitted to hospital as an inpatient, or have a waiver if seen in outpatient care.

Further, those who suffered harm need to have experienced losses or expenses of more than $1,000 due to the vaccine.

The conditions included range from anaphylactic reaction to erythema multiforme (major), myocarditis, pericarditis and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome.

Also included, are shoulder injuries from the vaccine, or other moderate to significant physical injuries that caused permanent impairment or need an extended period of medical treatment.

“In both cases, the injuries must have been sustained during the physical act of being given the vaccine. You must also have been admitted to hospital as an in-patient,” Services Australia explains.

“Presenting to an emergency department is not recognised as being admitted to hospital.”

Lockdown Lead to Surge in Demand for Government Services

Services Australia revealed it had processed 1.3 million JobSeeker claims in 55 days in 2020, an amount that equates to the claim volume normally processed within two and a half years.

“At the peak, more than 53,000 claims were completed in a single day. Within the same 55 day period, the Agency also received and monitored approximately 3.7 million phone calls, 1.9 million service centre walk-ins, and 250,000 social media interactions,” the department said (pdf).

During Victoria’s lockdown in 2021, demand for COVID-related claims also surged.

“In less than 4 months, between 1 July and 26 October 2021, Services Australia processed over 5.1 million COVID-related claims alone—more than the full-year total of 3.5 million claims across all social security and welfare payments in the year prior to COVID (2018-19).”

Not Enough Focus on Mental Health, Psychologists

Meanwhile, the Australian Association of Psychologists Incorporated (AAPi) has raised concerns that there was not enough focus on mental health support during the pandemic.

“Particularly during times of crisis, such as snap lockdowns, crisis support lines should have been prominently displayed along with the urging of people to reach out for support and the continuation of psychological treatment,” they said.

The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) also raised concerns that alcohol companies and retailers taking advantage of the situation.

“Alcohol companies invested significantly in digital marketing and in expanding their capacity to deliver alcohol, outpacing privacy and marketing regulation,” FARE said.

Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

Yves here. It’s revealing that Serious Economist Jeffrey Frankel limits himself to third-world examples in his case studies below on post-election devaluations.

Perhaps it would be unseemly to look at, say, the US, UK, Japan, South Korea, or even Australia (admittedly the latter and Canada have their currency values substantially affected by commodity prices). Of course, Frankel might contend that any politically-related currency action in an advanced economy would not amount to a depreciation-level decline. After all, they have independent central banks.

As many, including your humble blogger, have noted, the US is running a very hot fiscal policy along side tight monetary policy. Hence America has persisted in having solid to very strong groaf figures, leading the Fed to persist in tight monetary policy. All of that has led the dollar to trade at very lofty levels.

One has to think the dollar will start to reverse near the election, say in October. But inflation has been very sticky, and it’s interest rates that are buoying the greenback, so it might stay comparatively strong even past the election. In addition, the US has, at least since the Clinton Administration, has had an explicit strong dollar policy. Weak currencies and financial centers do not co-exist happily. The Fed has historically not cared a whit about what moves in interest rates have done in terms of in and out flows to emerging economies, who are routinely whipsawed by hot money moves. One wonders if we will eventually see the Fed become more attentive to the value of the dollar.

Any readers who are currency-knowledgeable are encouraged to opine on which countries might look more attractive as King Dollar retreats from its current high.

By Jeffrey Frankel, Economist and Professor, Harvard Kennedy School. Originally published at VoxEU

An unprecedented number of voters will go to the polls globally in 2024. It has long been noted that incumbents tend to engage in expansive fiscal (and where possible monetary) policy in the run up to elections in order to buoy the economy and therefore their electoral prospects. This column extends this concept to look at exchange rates and finds that currencies frequently depreciate following an election as the incumbent’s efforts to overvalue the currency in the run up to the election are unwound and the new government comes to terms with depleted reserves and current account woes.

Lots of countries are voting, with 2024 an unprecedented year in terms of the number of people who will go to the polls.  Recent elections in a number of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) have demonstrated anew the proposition that major currency devaluations are more likely to come immediately after an election, rather than before one. Indeed, Nigeria, Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, and Indonesia are five countries that have experienced post-election devaluations within the last year.

The Election–Devaluation Cycle

Economists will recall a 50-year-old paper by Nobel Prize winning professor Bill Nordhaus as essentially initiating research on the political business cycle (PBC).  The PBC refers to governments’ general inclination towards fiscal and monetary expansion in the year leading up to an election, in hopes of the incumbent president, or at least the incumbent party, being re-elected.  The idea is that growth in output and employment will accelerate before the election, boosting the government’s popularity, whereas the major costs in terms of debt troubles and inflation will come after the election.

But the seminal 1975 paper by Nordhaus also included the prediction of a foreign exchange cycle particularly relevant for EMDEs.  That is the proposition that countries generally seek to prop up the value of their currencies before an election, spending down their foreign exchange reserves, if necessary, only to undergo a devaluation after the election.

Nordhaus wrote: “It is predicted that the concern with loss of reserves and balance of payments deficits will be greater in the beginning of electoral regimes, and less toward the end.…The basic difficulty in making intertemporal choices in democratic systems is that the implicit weighting function on consumption has positive weight during the electoral period and zero (or small) weights in the future.”

The devaluation may be undertaken deliberately by an incoming government, choosing to get the unpleasant step – with its unpopular exacerbation of inflation – out of the way while it can still blame it on its predecessors.  Or the devaluation may take the form of an overwhelming balance-of-payments crisis soon after the election.  Either way, a government has an incentive to hoard international reserves during the early part of its term in office, and to spend them more freely to defend the currency toward the end of its term.

A political leader is almost twice as likely to lose office in the six months following a major devaluation as otherwise, especially among presidential democracies (Frankel 2005).  Why are devaluations so unpopular that governments fear to undertake them before elections?  In the traditional textbook model, a devaluation stimulates the economy by improving the trade balance.  But devaluations are always inflationary in countries which import at least a portion of the basket of goods consumed.  Furthermore, devaluations in EMDEs often are contractionary for economic activity, particularly via the adverse balance sheet effects on those domestic borrowers who had incurred debts denominated in dollars.

The theory of the political devaluation cycle was developed in a series of papers by Ernesto Stein and co-authors.  One might think that voters would wise up to these cycles and vote against a leader who sneakily postponed a needed exchange rate adjustment.  But given a lack of information about the true nature of the politicians, voters may in fact be acting rationally.  Figure 1, from Stein and Streb (2005) shows that devaluations are far more common in the immediate aftermath of changes in government. (The sample covers 118 episodes of changes, excluding coups, among 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1960 and 1994.)

Figure 1 Average devaluation pattern before and after elections

Source: Stein and Streb (2004).

Some Devaluations Over the Past Year

Many EMDEs have been under balance-of-payments pressure during the last two years.  One factor is that the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates sharply in 2022-23 and is now leaving them higher for longer than markets had been expecting.  Consequently, international investors find US treasury bills more attractive than EMDE loans and securities.

A good example of the political devaluation cycle is Nigeria.  Africa’s most populous country held a contentious presidential election on 25 February 2023.  The incumbent, who was term-limited, had long used foreign exchange intervention, capital controls, and multiple exchange rates to avoid devaluing the currency, the naira. The new Nigerian president, Bola Tinabu, was inaugurated on 29 May 2023. Two weeks later, on 14 June, the government devalued the naira by 49% (from 465 naira/$, to 760 naira/$, computed logarithmically). It soon turned out that this was not enough to restore equilibrium in the balance of payments.  At the end of January 2024, the government abandoned its effort to prop up the official value of the naira, devaluing another 45% (from 900 naira/$ to 1,418 naira/$, logarithmically).

A second example is Turkey’s election in May 2023. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had long pursued economic growth by obliging the central bank to keep interest rates low – a populist monetary policy that was widely ridiculed because of the president’s insistence that it would reduce soaring inflation – while simultaneously intervening to support the value of the lira.  The government guaranteed Turkish bank deposits against depreciation, an expensive and unsustainable way to prolong the currency overvaluation.  After the elections, the lira was immediately devalued, as the theory predicts.  The currency continued to depreciate during the remainder of the year.

Next, on 19 November 2023, Argentina elected a surprise candidate as president, Javier Milei.  Often described as a far-right libertarian, he comes from none of the established political parties. He campaigned on a platform of diminishing sharply the role of the government in the economy and abolishing the ability of the central bank to print money.  Milei was sworn in on December 10. Two days later, on 12 December he cut the official value of the peso by more than half (a 78% devaluation, computed logarithmically, from 367 pesos/$ to 800 pesos/$).  At the same time, he took a chain saw to government spending such as energy subsidies rapidly achieved a budget surplus, and initiated sweeping reforms.  Argentine inflation remains very high, but the central bank stopped losing foreign exchange reserves after the devaluation, again as predicted by the theory.

A fourth example is Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi just started a third term, on 2 April 2024. The economy has been in crisis for some time. Nevertheless, the government had ensured its overwhelming re-election on 10-12 December 2023 by postponing unpleasant economic measures, not to mention by preventing serious opponents from running.  The widely expected devaluation of the Egyptian pound, came on 6 March 2024 depreciating 45% (from 31 egyptian pounds/$ to 49 pounds/$, logarithmically).  It was part of an enhanced-access IMF programme, which also included the usual unpopular monetary and fiscal discipline.

Finally, in Indonesia the widely liked but term-limited President Jokowi is soon to be succeeded by the Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, who is less widely liked but was backed by the incumbent in the 14 February election. The rupiah has been depreciating ever since the 20 March announcement of the outcome of the contentious presidential vote.  It fell almost to an all-time record low against the dollar on 16 April.

What next?

Of course, the association between elections and the exchange rate is not inevitable.  India is undergoing elections now and Mexico will in June.  But neither seems especially in need of major currency adjustment.

Venezuela is scheduled to hold a presidential election in July.  As with some other countries, the election is expected to be a sham because no major opposition candidates are allowed to run. The economy is in a shambles due to long-time mismanagement featuring hyperinflation in the recent past and a chronically overvalued bolivar.  But the same government that essentially outlaws political opposition also essentially outlaws buying foreign exchange.  So, equilibrium may not be restored to the foreign exchange market for some time.

To stave off devaluation, these countries do more than just spend their foreign exchange reserves.  They often use capital controls or multiple exchange rates, as opposed to allowing free financial markets.  That doesn’t invalidate the phenomenon of post-election devaluations; it just works to insulate the governments a bit longer from the need to adjust to the reality of macroeconomic fundamentals.  Unfortunately, many of these countries also fail to allow free and fair elections, which works to also insulate the government from the need to respond to the voters’ verdict.

Authored by Thomas Stevenson via Human Events (emphasis ours),

Head of the Mezha Anti-Corruption Center, Martyna Bohuslavets, has written a report in Pravda asking “Where are the fortifications?” She reports that millions of dollars that were intended for the construction of fortifications in Ukraine were instead “transferred to Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars.”

Bohuslavets said the Ukrainian Kharkiv Regional Military Administration (Kharkiv OVA) paid out funds to fictitious companies during the construction and fortification of the Kharkiv region. The report comes as Russian forces have broken into the northern region of Ukraine and the US continues funding the war.

According to Ukranian Pravda reports, the Russian military has begun to advance in the northern region of Ukraine where funding that was set for fortification was transferred to fake companies. The offensive from the Russian military launched on Monday with attacks on towns and villages, the Kyiv Post reports. A total of 7 billion hryvnias was spent there by Ukraine, according to the report.  

This comes as the BBC reports that a regional Ukrainian commander in Kharkiv has said that the first line of defense was missing in a massive “betrayal” in the northern region of the country.  Denys Yaroslavskyi, a commander in the region in charge of the Ukrainian Special Reconnaissance Unit, told the outlet, “There was no first line of defence. We saw it. The Russians just walked in. They just walked in, without any mined fields.” 

He told the BBC that government officials claimed to have built up the mines as the first line of defense at a huge cost. He told reporters, “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal.” He then added, “When we were fighting back for this territory in 2022, we lost thousands of people. We risked our lives.” 

“And now because someone didn’t build fortifications, we’re losing people again,” he stated.  

In March, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported on the lack of oversight on the funds going to Ukraine during the war. GAO found in its report from March that the Defense Department is lacking in its ability to provide oversight on the resources being sent to Ukraine in the war.  

The GAO reported, “DOD does not have quality data to track delivery of defense articles to Ukraine. DOD guidance on PDA does not clearly define at what point in the delivery process defense articles should be recorded as delivered or provide clear instructions for how DOD service branches are to confirm delivery.” 

It added that full documentation of the funding being sent to the military effort has been lacking.  

Ukraine has entered the “where is the money, Lebowski” phase https://t.co/llv6KOmUGb

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 14, 2024

Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearPolitics,

The House Oversight Committee is probing a controversial Biden administration executive order tasking the federal government with mobilizing voting groups it says are underrepresented.

In a letter obtained by RealClearPolitics, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has requested that Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young produce a slew of documents and information concerning the development and implementation of Biden’s sweeping “Executive Order on Promoting Accessing to Voting” no later than May 28, and a staff-level briefing by May 20.

The demand by the chairman of the House Oversight Committee signals an escalation in Republican lawmakers’ efforts to combat an effort they say may be unlawful, if not unconstitutional.

The administration characterizes its efforts as a remedy to “discriminatory policies and other obstacles … disproportionally affect[ing]” black, non-English-speaking, handicapped, and other minority voters. EO 14019 calls on all federal agencies to develop and execute corrective plans to “promote voter registration and voter participation.”

It instructs officials government-wide to consider “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations … to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

Seeing the order as potentially enabling “the executive branch to circumvent the legislative process,” Comer is asking Young to clarify the “constitutional or statutory authority the President relied on,” as well as all “White House and OMB documents and communications” pertaining to the drafting of it.

In past oversight letters, including ones delivered in June 2022 by then-ranking Republicans on various committees, including Comer, members have also raised concerns that officials could violate the Hatch Act prohibiting their engagement in political activities in carrying out the order.

Senate Republicans have also questioned whether the act violates the Antideficiency Act, which precludes federal agencies from using funds “for a purpose that Congress did not explicitly authorize” – namely “voter mobilization.”

“Overreach by the federal government often leads to confusion and inconsistencies,” Comer also stated. He cites a recent letter from Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson to Attorney General Merrick Garland to illustrate this issue.

The order mandates that relevant agencies seek to ensure “access to voter registration for eligible individuals in federal custody.”

To satisfy that charge, the Magnolia State official notes that the U.S. Marshals Service is modifying contracts and/or intergovernmental agreements with jails “to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail,” and likewise that the Justice Department is working to “facilitate voter registration and mail voting for individuals in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.”

He says these efforts create “numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi.” Illegal aliens, Secretary Watson warns, may be among those receiving information on how to register to vote.

The Biden administration issued EO 14019 in March 2021. Despite a raft of oversight requests from House Republicans of agencies within their respective committee jurisdictions, those agencies have largely withheld the strategic plans they were tasked with crafting and implementing, and information regarding the putatively non-partisan groups with which they have coordinated.

The White House has rebuffed RealClearInvestigations in its efforts to solicit details about an order that Republicans characterize as little more than a taxpayer-funded Democrat get-out-the-vote effort.

As RCI has previously reported, the Biden administration has sought to drive voter registration through agencies as diverse as the Departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development via job training centers, public housing authorities, and child nutrition programs. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued guidance calling for the agency to register voters at naturalization ceremonies.

The Department of Education has blessed the use of “federal work-study funds to pay students for “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration,” and other activities.

In January, over two dozen Pennsylvania legislators filed a federal lawsuit challenging the executive order. The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) – which has litigated with the Biden administration to pry loose documents concerning the order – submitted an amicus brief supportive of the suit, asserting that the agencies’ efforts have one thing in common: “They provide government welfare benefits and other services to groups of voters the vast majority of which have historically voted Democrat.”

Republicans’ concerns over the order extend to the involvement of the third-party groups with which agencies were to consider coordinating. The order itself was built on a blueprint from progressive think-tank Democrats. In a since-deleted but still archived analysis, the outfit estimates that if fully implemented, the order could generate 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually – a significant figure given that recent presidential elections have been determined by thousands of votes across a few states.

Dems as well as the American Civil Liberties Union have reportedly worked to implement the directive. Documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and released earlier this month show that at a July 2021 listening session convened by the Biden administration, left-leaning activist groups encouraged some of the practices federal agencies would ultimately implement to carry out the directive, for example in targeting prospective voters in prisons and at naturalization ceremonies.

“Every participant whose party affiliation or political donation history could be identified by the Oversight Project was identified as a Democrat except for one Green Party member,” the report noted.

While the participants suggested efforts to target constituencies including criminals, immigrants, low-income families including those in public housing, and Native Americans, the Oversight Project observed that “There is no corresponding evidence of efforts [to] increase voter access and education in likely Republican constituencies.”

As RCI has also recently reported, Democrats have made purportedly non-partisan voter registration targeting groups that vote disproportionately Democrat a linchpin of their plans to prevail in recent election cycles.

“If the Biden Administration wants to use taxpayer-funded buildings to allow ‘nonpartisan third-party organizations’ to engage in voter registration,” Comer writes, “then the American people deserve to know who these organizations are.”

The Oversight Committee’s pursuit of information regarding the order comes in the wake of the House Small Business Committee’s recent escalation of its own probe of the order.

It recently subpoenaed two members of the Small Business Administration who refused to sit for transcribed interviews regarding an unprecedented partnership the agency inked with the Michigan Department of State. Under the relevant memorandum of understanding, among other things, state officials may conduct in-person voter registration at administration small business outreach events.

Fox News reported that the Small Business Committee found that nearly all – “22 out of 25 such outreach events have taken place in counties with the highest population of Democratic National Committee target demographics.”

In March, a federal judge dismissed the Pennsylvania legislators’ case challenging the executive order on grounds of standing.

In late April, the legislators took their case to the Supreme Court, filing a petition for writ of certiorari and motioning for expedited consideration of their request in hopes the nation’s highest court will rule favorably on the matter of standing prior to the 2024 election.

Ben Weingarten is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, senior contributor at The Federalist, and 2019 recipient of The Fund for American Studies’ Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship, under which he is currently working on a book on U.S.-China policy.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the super PAC backing him have filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., for election interference after it allegedly shadow banned the documentary “Who is Bobby Kennedy?” on Facebook and Instagram.

American Values 2024 (AV24) announced in a May 13 press release that they have filed the lawsuit in a California district court for violating the First Amendment and “the American people’s fundamental right to a presidential election decided by voters, not by trillion-dollar corporations.”

The complaint alleges that Meta “brazenly” censored speech supportive of Mr. Kennedy, then lied about its actions.

According to the complaint, Meta “sent users messages threatening to suspend their accounts or otherwise punish them if they sought to watch, share or even post a link to the film. And they made good on these threats, disabling and suspending users who did so.”

In addition, the complaint says that Meta stated that the film contained improper sexual or violent content.

When users attempted to comment, those comments were removed, the complaint alleges.

“Under the Support and Advocacy Clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, private companies and their officers and employees cannot in concert seek to prevent by force, threat or intimidation any citizen from engaging lawful speech supporting or advocating the election of a presidential candidate,” the complaint says.

After AV24 released the documentary, it began trending on X. However, Facebook and Instagram—both Meta-owned—allegedly suppressed “the organic reach of content they don’t want to spread,” the PAC said in a May 6 press release.

The film was also labeled with a COVID-19 vaccine disclaimer that referred users to other sources such as the Center for Disease Control’s website, the complaint said.

In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the allegation last week, a spokesperson for Meta stated, “The link was mistakenly blocked and was quickly restored once the issue was discovered.”

In response to a request for an updated comment on the allegation of election interference in the lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson repeated the above statement.

‘Implausible’

AV24 said in its lawsuit that Meta’s claim of accidental censorship is “implausible on its face” and contradicts “the numerous messages users received from Meta offering other, equally implausible explanations.”

The documentary film, released May 3, is narrated by actor Woody Harrelson. The film is a biography of Mr. Kennedy aimed at providing a look into who he is as opposed to how mainstream media portray him.

It begins with Mr. Kennedy quoting from various media reports that paint him as a “mentally disturbed” conspiracy theorist instead of an environmental attorney who took on corporate malfeasance.

It discusses how he went after the pharmaceutical industry after meeting with mothers who believed vaccines injured their children.

“Right now big oil funds the Republicans, Big Tech funds the Democrats, Big Pharma and the military contractors make sure to donate to both,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“Who is liberal now and who is conservative? Who’s left and who’s right? These labels make less and less sense. I’ve been fighting corporate corruption for 40 years. I know how they work. I know how to clean them up. And that’s why I’m running for president.”

The lawsuit referenced what it calls Meta’s “different agenda, tilting the playing field in favor of, at the behest of, and in collusion with the current Administration.” The alleged collusion between Meta and the Biden administration is documented in the Murthy v. Missouri case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The legal complaint also referenced a recent Congressional report entitled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex: How top Biden White House officials coerced Big Tech to censor Americans, true information, and critics of the Biden Administration.”

“With extensive quotation from internal Facebook emails and other documents, the report describes in detail ‘collusion’ between Facebook and the White House eventually resulting in an agreement by Facebook pursuant to which the platform would and did implement censorship policies suppressing critics of the Administration, particularly critics of its COVID policies, specifically including Mr. Kennedy,” the complaint says.

AV24’s co-founder Tony Lyons said that polls show 20 percent of Americans aren’t aware that Mr. Kennedy is running for president, while another 30 percent have been fed misinformation about him and his policies.

“Reaching those voters could change the outcome of the 2024 election,” Mr. Lyons said. “How are people supposed to find out that they have a viable alternative candidate—that they don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils—when Meta is colluding with the Biden administration to block key channels for communicating with the American public?”

‘It Works’

Jay Carson, former advisor to President Bill Clinton and now to Mr. Kennedy, produced the film.

He stated in the documentary that during campaigns, big corporations hire writers in media like him to attack those who challenge their power.

“Here is the way the playbook works: First they attack you broadly and they question your facts,” he said.

“They say you’re lying and it’s ferocious. But if you keep on moving after that, they move on to character assassination. They take on who you are as a person. They dig up everything bad in your past and leak it to the press.”

If this doesn’t work, Mr. Carson said, “they say you’re a liar.”

If liar doesn’t work, they call their target an anti-semite and a racist.

“No two slurs in America are worse than those,” Mr. Carson said. “No slur, except crazy. Crazy, or kook, or crank, or nutjob are their mainstays. That’s their nuclear option.

“If they can get everyone to dismiss you as a wacko nutjob, everything you say is suspect and then they can get back to selling whatever thing it is you said might not be safe. And here’s the thing: It works.”

All eyes are on the powering-up America theme as the surge in artificial intelligence sparks a nationwide boom in data center building. The urgent need to overhaul the nation’s power grid to meet the skyrocketing demand for electricity is now front and center. We pointed out earlier this month that data centers hiding in ‘spy country’ Northern Virginia will need a ‘reactor’s worth of power.’ 

Continuing the focus on Virginia, a team of Goldman analysts led by Hongcen Wei revealed that commercial power demand across the state has exponentially surged, unlike anywhere else in the country. 

Wei explained to clients, citing data from GS’ equity analysts, that “US power consumption growth will accelerate sharply to an annual average 2.4% pace in 2022-2030, boosted by data centers, AI, and EVs.” 

As we noted in “The Next AI Trade,” “Everyone Is Piling Into The Next AI Trade,” and “The Next AI Trade Just Hit An All-Time High,” power demand across the US is set to rise dramatically through 2030 because of the proliferation of data centers, electrification trends, and reshoring efforts. 

The analyst pointed out that an acceleration in power demand growth is set to eclipse GDP through the second half of the decade—this hasn’t happened in three decades.

Wei’s analysis then focuses on commercial power consumption in Virginia, which has skyrocketed in the last several years as new data centers are hooked up to the local grid. Meanwhile, commercial power demand in ex-Virginia (or the rest of the US) remains laggard but is expected to rise in the coming years. 

He noted, “The impact of data center developments is more difficult to observe directly within larger states, where more factors simultaneously impact power demand.” 

In relation to all other forms of power demand in the state, commercial outstrips residential and industrial. 

Using the statistical “doppelganger” method, Wei’s team found that data centers boosted Virginia’s power consumption by 2.2 gigawatts in 2023. This number will only increase, resulting in the need for increased nuclear power in the state or the adoption of small reactors near data centers. 

The analyst concludes:

“First, AI and data centers are boosting US power demand as market participants expect, especially in regions like Virginia. But the overall magnitude of the boost remains modest, compared to both the current level of US total power demand and the expected level of data center power demand in later years of the decade.” 

In a separate note, Goldman’s Julia Masch shows the GS US Power Up America index (GSENEPOW) and GS Electrifcaion index (GSXEACDC) are powering higher but points out the GS Power Up Europe index (GSPIPOWR) has lagged behind. 

Why is so much power needed? Well…

For more clarity on where power demand surges are expected, Visual Capitalist’s Julie Peasley uses data from Cushman & Wakefield to visualize the top data center markets worldwide. 

The ‘Powering Up America’ theme is red hot. 

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

One in eight American adults have used popular weight loss and diabetes drugs known as GLP-1 agonists, according to the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll.

The survey, which involved nearly 1,500 adult participants and was carried out in late April, found that two-thirds of those currently using the drugs are doing so to manage diabetes or heart disease, while roughly four out of 10 are taking the medication primarily for weight loss.

Approximately 6 percent of U.S. adults, equating to over 15 million people, are currently taking a prescribed medication from the GLP-1 agonist class of drugs, according to the poll.

Other Key Findings

Other key findings reveal that, among those who have ever taken GLP-1 agonists, 43 percent were diagnosed with diabetes by a doctor, 25 percent were diagnosed with heart disease, and 22 percent were told by a doctor within the last five years that they were overweight or obese.

The reasons for using these drugs are nearly evenly split: 39 percent of Americans turn to GLP-1 agonists to treat a chronic condition, while 38 percent use them for weight loss. The remaining 23 percent rely on the drugs to address both chronic conditions and weight management.

The poll also confirms media reports that the popularity of these drugs has surged over the past couple of years. According to the survey, 32 percent of adults now say they have heard “a lot” about GLP-1 agonists, an increase of 19 percent from July 2023.

Despite their growing popularity, the poll noted that 54 percent of all adults who have taken GLP-1 drugs find it difficult to afford the cost. One in five adults who took the drugs said it was “very difficult” to afford them. While insurance sometimes covers part of the cost, even insured adults found the expenses challenging, with 53 percent reporting difficulties in bearing the costs.

Ozempic, produced by Novo Nordisk, is listed at $935.77 for a monthly injection, while Wegovy is priced at $1,349.02 for a 28-day supply—both without health insurance.

One in five adults aged 50-64 report having taken GLP-1 drugs at some point, a higher proportion compared to other age groups. Among this 50-64 age bracket, 15 percent indicate using these medications to treat chronic conditions, while 5 percent took them solely for weight loss purposes. Relatively few adults under 50 have taken GLP-1 drugs for managing chronic illnesses, but similar shares of 18-29 year olds (7 percent) and 30-49 year olds (6 percent) reveal using them for weight loss goals.

Most Americans Want Medicare Coverage

While some insurance providers offer coverage for GLP-1 agonist drugs, Medicare does not cover these medications if they are prescribed for weight loss purposes. The poll reveals that only 8 percent of adults aged 65 and older took a GLP-1 drug for a chronic condition, and 1 percent used it solely for weight loss. This is despite 37 percent of poll respondents aged 65 and above reporting that a doctor had informed them they were overweight or obese.

Most poll respondents believe that Medicare should begin covering prescription drugs for weight loss (though the program is currently prohibited by law from doing so). In fact, 60 percent of adults who responded to the poll support Medicare providing coverage for such prescription medications.

Several GLP-1 agonists are available on the U.S. market for people  with diabetes or who are obese, including Ozempic, Trulicity, Byetta, Victoza, Rybelsus, Adlyxin, and Bydureon. A similar class of medication called a GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist, such as Mounjaro, is also prescribed. Wegovy is a relatively newer GLP-1 agonist marketed specifically for those seeking to manage their weight.

GLP-1 agonists work by mimicking the GLP-1 hormone naturally produced by the body. This hormone is secreted from the small intestine and is responsible for triggering insulin release, blocking glucagon secretion, and slowing stomach emptying. It also helps create a feeling of fullness after eating by affecting areas of the brain that process hunger and satiety signals.

While the market remains focused on tomorrow’s CPI print, and to a lesser extent the April retail sales reports due at the same time, which will both be released at 8:30am on May 15. we should to flag another important report that doesn’t typically get a lot of attention: the New York Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report for 1Q 2024 which was just published, and where the latest data on credit card debt and delinquencies has recently been the most important part of the report.

While we already know that in the latest monthly consumer credit report published by the Fed last week and covering the month of March, total consumer debt hit a record high (despite a sharp slowdown in credit card growth) even as the personal savings rate plunged to an all-time low, hardly a ringing endorsement for the strength of the US consumer…

… today’s report provided more granular details which however did not change the conclusion: the US consumer is getting weaker, and while not in a crisis just yet, will get there soon enough.

As the chart from the NY Fed shows, at the end of the first quarter, US household debt reached a record and more borrowers are struggling to keep up: overall US household debt rose to $17.69 trillion, the NYFed’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit revealed (link here). That’s an increase of $184 billion, or 1.1%, from the fourth quarter.  

Consumers have added $3.4 trillion in debt since the pandemic, and that increased debt bears much higher interest rates.

And with both credit card rates and total credit at all time highs, the data corroborate the mounting financial pressures on American families in an age of elevated inflation. The persistent rise in the prices of essentials such as food and rent have strained household budgets, pushing people to borrow against their credit cards to pay for necessities.

Total credit card debt stood at $1.12 trillion in the first quarter of 2024, according to the report (the number diverges from the monthly print reported last week by the NY Fed and which was much higher), but an increasing number of borrowers are behind on credit card payments. While down slightly sequentially according to this data set (if not the NY Fed’s other data set), the number in line with seasonal patterns of consumers paying debt incurred over the holidays. But as Bloomberg notes, credit card balances are up almost 25% from the first quarter of 2020.

“Credit card balances usually rise in the second and third quarters and then they really tend to spike around the holidays in Q4,” Ted Rossman, a senior analyst at Bankrate, wrote in a note to clients. “With inflation and interest rates likely to remain elevated, there’s a very good chance credit card balances will surge to new highs later in 2024.”

Meanwhile, in a blog post by NY Fed economists, they cautioned that “consumers facing a financial squeeze may be maxing out their credit cards and falling behind on payments” and added that “one observable factor that is strongly correlated with future delinquencies is a high credit card utilization rate.”

“In the first quarter of 2024, credit card and auto loan transition rates into serious delinquency continued to rise across all age groups,” said Joelle Scally, Regional Economic Principal within the Household and Public Policy Research Division at the New York Fed. “An increasing number of borrowers missed credit card payments, revealing worsening financial distress among some households.”

As of March, 3.2% of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency. That remains still 1.5% points lower than the fourth quarter of 2019, but delinquency transition rates increased for all product types, according to the Fed. And also interest rates before covid were about 5% lower.

In a separate post, economists at the St. Louis Fed pointed out that credit card delinquency rates are returning to historically more normal levels after pandemic-related government assistance programs pushed them to unusually low numbers. They added, however, that “present levels of credit card delinquency are greater than pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that a trend which began prior to the pandemic has accelerated.”

About 121,000 consumers had a bankruptcy notation added to their credit reports last quarter, and approximately 4.8% of consumers held some debt in third-party collections. What is remarkable is that those consumers currently in collection have the highest number on record in collection amounts. Which means that once the delinquency train finally leaves the station, and creditors start collecting in earnings, the amount of debt in 3rd party collections will be literally off the chart!

And the clearest hint that we are getting there, is that borrowers using more than 60% of their credit are falling into delinquency at a faster pace than before the pandemic, making up most of the increase in credit card delinquency rates. About a third of balances associated with borrowers using more than 90% of their credit became delinquent in the past year, compared to about 25% before the pandemic.

What is most remarkable here is that despite a so-called end to the student loan repayment moratorium, it appears that not only is nobody repaying their student loans, but that debt issuers aren’t even bothering to make the delinquent debt as such (then again, it is difficult to determine how much of that debt is delinquent as missed federal student loan payments will not be reported to credit bureaus until the fourth quarter).

The data also show a wide range in credit card utilization rates. About one in six credit card users are using at least 90% of their available credit. And an additional 11% are using between 60% and 90% of their available credit.

The Fed researchers found younger borrowers and those with lower incomes are more apt to be financially stressed than older borrowers and those with higher incomes, who may have more credit available. “Millennials were the only group whose delinquencies exceeded their pre-pandemic rate,” New York Fed researchers wrote in a blog post.  

The Fed’s report showed 6.9% of credit card debt transitioned to serious delinquency last quarter, up from 4.6% a year ago. And for credit card holders aged 18–29, 9.9% of balances were in serious delinquency.  

Auto loan delinquencies are also higher as the average monthly car payment jumped to $738 in 2023. Close to 2.8% of auto loans are now 90 or more days delinquent — that equates to more than 3 million cars. Auto loans are the second-largest debt category following mortgage debt, with $1.62 trillion outstanding.

The biggest household debt holding is for housing. It accounts for more that 70% of the total. That debt is performing well, but homeowners are increasingly tapping their accumulated home equity in the form of a home equity loans, meanwhile new mortgage originations have tumbled near record low levels as a result of the soaring rates…

… which also means that foreclosures are starting to tick up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, some $16 billion in additional home equity loans was originated — the biggest increase since 2008 — and $37 billion was added over the past year. Homeowners have about $580 billion in outstanding home equity credit available, the most in about 15 years.

So what to make of this information, especially when even the Fed is warning that the US consumer is in increasingly weak shape.

Well, credit card debt has increased sharply in recent quarters. When it surpassed $1.0tn for the first time in history in 2Q 2023, alarm bells went off in some circles, although according to Bank of America’s (especially sanguine) economists, the surge in credit card debt is partly just a normalization, after consumers used their fiscal stimulus windfalls to pay down their balances in 2020-21. Moreover, they note that even setting aside the structural drift away from cash, credit card debt should scale up with the nominal economy. As a share of disposable income, total credit card debt in 4Q 2023 was still below its pre-pandemic level.

Instead of the total credit number, BofA urges clients to pay more attention to credit card delinquencies: the total amount of delinquent credit card debt stood at $110bn as of 4Q 2023, up 42%; that number grew even higher in Q1 2024.

To put these numbers in context, BofA offers two approaches: first, why you shouldn’t worry too much

• How much will surging delinquencies weigh on consumer spending? The good news is that credit cards make up only 6.5% of total consumer debt. Despite the recent increase, delinquent credit card debt accounts for only 0.5% of total disposable income.
• Meanwhile, mortgages make up 70% of consumer debt and are by far the biggest swing factor for total delinquencies. A large share of households is locked into low fixed-rate 30-year mortgages. This has kept mortgage delinquencies, and total delinquent debt, very low by historical standards, and made consumer spending more resilient to Fed hikes than in the past. Even when student loan delinquencies finally do normalize, that would not move the needle a great deal assuming mortgage debt remains stable.

And then, here is why you should worry:

• So far so good, but the picture gets a little more concerning at the lower end of the income distribution. Lower-income households are less likely to be homeowners, so they are benefiting less from low fixed mortgage rates. Meanwhile, they are more likely to also be delinquent on their credit cards. From this fact, one can conclude that credit card delinquencies appear to be higher among younger consumers (who would, on average, have lower income.

• Further, delinquencies might understate the issues consumers are facing due to credit card debt. There is likely a large group of consumers who are paying their minimum balances, and so are not delinquent, but are unable to pay the full balance, and so are paying high APRs (annual percentage rates) on the overdue amounts. APRs have risen significantly due to Fed hikes, increasing the strain on such consumers.

More in the full BofA note available to pro subscribers.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Joe Biden’s personal approval rating is at historic lows; almost all his policies do not poll fifty percent. He is behind Trump in almost all the swing states. And now he lies serially even to sympathetic interviewers. In short, finally Biden has been exposed for what he always was and represented.

Senator and Vice President Joe Biden was always sort of a buffoon. He is by nature a grandstander who handsomely profited from his office while posing as good ole Joe from Scranton.

He is a blowhard meddler, one who proverbially has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades (Robert Gates),” from dissenting on the Bin Laden raid to his trisection of Iraq scheme.

He is a fabulist who believes that the more animated he misleads and slurs (“semi-fascists” “fat”, “lying dog-faced pony soldier”, “chumps”, “dregs of society”, etc), the more likely he is to get away with it. He is a confessed plagiarist. And he has also invented much of his biography, from would be star, college-scholarship athlete and brilliant law student to semi-truck driver and jailed civil rights activist. His uncle, we are instructed, was eaten by cannibals. Joe assures us that he was the first in his family to go to college.

And he is a racist with a repertory of racial taunts and smears unrivaled among modern politicians (“junkie”, “boy”, “you ain’t black”, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”, “put y’all back in chains”, the Corn Pop and golden-leg hairs sagas, the “racial jungle” memes, the strange brag about Delaware as a “slave state” (e.g., “You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state.”), and his encomia for the old Democratic racists of the Senate from former Klansman Robert Byrd (Biden’s self-described “mentor” and “guide”) to segregationist James Eastland (“never called me boy”).

Biden has always had a mean streak that explains why for years he lied about the tragic, fatal auto accident of his first wife and child, using it to libel the truck driver, who was neither drunk nor culpable but smeared publicly for years by Biden as intoxicated and guilty. For years he ignored the pleas of the trucker’s family to please stop libeling an innocent driver.

Biden just told his greatest whopper that inflation was at 9 percent (actually 1.4 percent) when he took office and yet soon spiked to 9 percent due to his reckless deficit spending and money printing spree.

But recently Biden has reached a nadir and even the Left is resigned to him as a mere construct. After bragging after October 7 that his support for Israel was rock-solid he is now cutting off military aid as it attempts finally to end the Hamas murderous threat—a reversion to old Joe Biden who in his long past has previously threatened to cut off Israel while boasting later that anyone who did so was reprehensible. (Leveraging congressional mandated aid for political advantage is precisely the (false) allegation of politicking that the Democrats demagogued to impeach Trump—to the then cheers of Biden himself).

But his sell out of Israel is but a small tessera in his election pandering mosaic. He will again begin drawing down the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices during the campaign. He has badgered Ukraine not to hit Russian oil facilities. He has illegally forgiven billions in student loan aid to regain the elite youth vote. And as the campaign season begins, so too Biden suddenly poses as a border enforcer—after letting in nearly 10-million illegal aliens.

Biden has always put the agendas of his own and his family above the national interest. We witnessed that when he bragged that he fired the Ukrainian prosecutor looking into his son’s Burisma skullduggery. The Biden consortium is corrupt and was enriched with over $25 million through foreign interests’ assurance that Senator and Vice President Joe Biden would deliver on their quid pro quo investments in him.

Any other major politician who habitually invaded the private space of women and preteens to blow on their hair, gobble their necks, squeeze and hug far too long, and be accused of sexual assault would have long since been cancelled by the left.

Add the old disturbing narrative of a naked Vice President Joe Biden exiting his pool in front of female secret service agents, the showering with his pre-teen daughter, the Frank Biden and Hunter naked selfies, and there seems something eerie among the Biden family.

Despite fierce denials, the entire lawfare scheme directed at Trump originated with the White House. Biden was always said to have been exasperated with Merrick Garland for not hastily enough going after Trump.

The misadventurous Georgia prosecutor Nathan Wade met with and was tutored by the White House counsel’s office. One of the top Biden DOJ prosecutors was dispatched to rescue the bungling Alvin Bragg farce.

Jack Smith, appointed by the Biden DOJ to go after Biden’s 2024 presidential rival, timed his indictments to coincide with the campaign season, even as Smith’s office mishandled classified files taken at Mar-a-Lago to bolster its prosecution—and then lied about it.

Hard-won American deterrence was destroyed by the humiliation in Afghanistan and the lies surrounding the disaster, the Chinese balloon flight and the misinformation about it, the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and on the Red Sea, and the accompanying disinformation from the White House.

Such recklessness abroad is the bookend to the home front where massive borrowing, the destruction of the border, crippling inflation, spiraling crime, and the epidemic of “progressive” anti-Semitism on campuses have made American almost unrecognizable.

Again, at the heart of this Biden catastrophe is the Faustian bargain of 2020 when unelectable leftist candidates dropped out in unison to use a fumbling Biden as their more presentable veneer. So he was foisted upon the nation to serve as “moderate” cover to advance a radical, veritable Obama third-term. In that sense, his duties were ceremonial—as the hard-left channeled through him the most radical agenda in U.S. history, and found his debility and dementia advantageous—the country be damned.

If Biden makes it to and through the convention, he and his record remain indefensible. And so expect his campaign largely to be waged through lawfare against Trump, and massive infusions of leftist cash to ensure record mail-in and early voting. In the campaign Biden will become an afterthought, a ghost, vapor, as his party seeks to construct the entire election one of leftwing, blue-city prosecutors, judges, and juries versus serial defendant Trump.

But will Nemesis first catch up to Biden’s long record of hubris and dishonesty?

Hot PPI initially spooked markets (yields and dollar up, stocks down) but that faded fast (on lower revisions) – but the stag-flation trend continues this week…

Source: Bloomberg

Powell did briefly spook stocks around 1030ET with the following comment:

“it’s a possibility – but I dont think it will be the case – that the next action we take will be a rate hike… most likely we will stay the course….”

Between that comment (basically jawboning away any rate hikes) and the CPI-related components within PPI actually looking positive (well actually not positive and thus implying CPI may come softer), we actually saw rate-cut expectations rise today. 2024 now pricing in almost two cuts and 2025 now pricing in just over three cuts…

Source: Bloomberg

Goldman’s John Flood noted that trading volumes finally tracking higher +31% vs the 20dma, with ETF’s capturing 25% of the overall tape.

Floor skews +106bps better to buy with HFs +100bps better to buy (squeezes in consumer discretionary + ETF buying driving this) while LOs -300bps better for sale (selling tech + industrials), but overall flows here feel muted.

Another big day for the ‘meme stocks’…

Source: Bloomberg

…with AMC and SunPower (among others) joining GameStop

Source: Bloomberg

All of which means that ‘indicative’ hedge funds were clubbed like a baby seal for the second straight day – down a stunning 15% at the lows of the day…

And that meant several crowded longs (ABDE, V, SHOP) were hit as the squeeze in shorts forced de-grossing overall…

Source: Bloomberg

Small Caps were the winners today (and Dow was the laggard) but all the majors ended higher on the day. The Nasdaq closed at a record high…

The basket of MAG7 stocks broke out to new record highs today…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields kneejerked higher on the PPI print then swiftly reversed to all end lower on the day by 3-4bps…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar drifted back to the week’s lows – after a brief spike higher on PPI…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar’s loss was gold’s gain…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin erased yesterday’s gains which erased Friday’s losses…

Source: Bloomberg

The roller-coaster in crude prices continues – today was back down again, with WTI finding support at $78…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, spot the odd one out – Nasdaq at record highs while US macro data at its weakest in two years…

Source: Bloomberg

Financial Conditions are as easy as they’ve been in years…and Fed Funds are at 23 year highs…

Source: Bloomberg

…will you be the greater fool?