There was something glaringly odd in today’s PPI print.

But first, some background: as we detailed in our PPI post-mortem earlier, one day after CPI came in red hot, today’s PPI unexpectedly missed expectations on the headline level, coming in at 2.1%, which despite being the hottest since April 2023..

… was below the 2.2% estimate. The miss – the smallest possible – proved to be so important to the market starved for any dovish news, that algos instantly ignored the fact that core CPI came in at 2.4%, hotter than the 2.3% expected.

Which bring us to the “odd” part.

Looking at the core number (excluding food and energy), we find that according to the BLS, the only reason PPI was even positive in March is because of services, where the biggest source of upside was the “index for securities brokerage, dealing, investment advice, and related services, which rose 3.1 percent.” In other words, everyone was rushing to open a brokerage account so they can trade Jeo Boden or some other shitcoin.

But what about what really increased in March, which as we have shown previously, was gas prices which rose just over 6% based on, well, how much the average gas price rose across the US in March!

Here things get hilarious, because according to the BLS in March, while PPI Services rose by 0.3%, prices for final demand goods was actually negative, dropping by 0.1% MoM.

And then, reading a little further into the BLS press release we find this surprise: “the decline is attributable to the index for final demand energy, which moved down 1.6 percent.”

Which then brings us to the absolute punchline, because in the very next sentence, Biden’s Bureau of Gaslighting Services writes that “leading the March decline in the index for final demand goods, prices for gasoline decreased 3.6 percent.”

Hold on a second, didn’t we just show that gas prices – actual, real gas prices, which everyone across the country has to pay – rose by 6% in March?

Yes we did, but what we didn’t anticipate is the amount of BS Biden’s henchmen are willing to shove down our throats. And indeed, to understand how gasoline could possibly drop by 3.6% in a month where it rose over 6% we have to look at the category description, where we find the little trick beloved by propaganda ministries everywhere: “seasonally adjusted.”

That’s right, as shown in the chart below, according to the BLS, the seasonally-adjusted gas price in March magically dropped by 3.6% even though the unadjusted, as in real, gas price rose by 6.3%, exactly what the AAA also reported in its daily summary of what gas prices across the US truly are.

Now, for those wondering “did I pay 3.6% less or 6.3% more for gas in March“, we have the answer and unfortunately it is the one that leaves less money in your pocket (it always is). But for the BLS, the seasonal adjustment in this one category which actually soared, meant all the difference in the world because – you see – if Biden’s propaganda ministers had used the real gas price, PPI would have been 0.4% higher and risen 2.4% YoY, both blowing away estimates, sending stocks tumbling, and making it impossible to manipulate the OER and shelter inflation data in next month’s CPI to come up with a big miss (the current plan).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is literally “gas-lighting.“

Finally, for those asking if you can pay seasonally adjusted taxes (lower of course) using your seasonally adjusted checking account balance (higher of course), we suggest you try it. Just make sure you first have a good plan how to survive Bubba’s nightly foreplay for all the years you will spend in prison right after.

Two weeks ago, Nvidia Corporation’s stock peaked and has since traded 9% lower from those highs, with shares around $867 on Wednesday afternoon. In what appears to be an artificial intelligence marketing piece, the Financial Times could be trying to stoke new hype in the AI bubble. 

FT reports that OpenAI and Meta are “on the brink” of releasing upgraded versions of their large language models “capable of reasoning and planning, critical steps towards achieving superhuman cognition in machines.”

At an event in London on Tuesday, Meta announced plans to release Llama 3 — the next generation of its LLM used to power AI chatbot assistants — within the next month. 

“Within the next month, actually less, hopefully in a very short period of time, we hope to start rolling out our new suite of next-generation foundation models, Llama 3,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs.

Clegg continued, “There will be a number of different models with different capabilities and different versatility [released] during the course of this year, starting really very soon.” 

Meta has been trying to keep up with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which surprised other big tech companies like Apple and Google when it launched ChatGPT about a year and a half ago. 

Meanwhile, OpenAI is expected to release the next generation of GPT, called “GPT-5,” sometime this summer. This generation of GPT would be able to solve “hard problems” such as reasoning. 

OpenAI’s chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, told the FT, “We’re going to start to see AI that can take on more complex tasks in a more sophisticated way.” 

Lightcap continued, “I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface on the ability that these models have to reason.”

However, he admitted that today’s AI systems are “really good at one-off small tasks” but are still “pretty narrow” in their capabilities. 

FT’s note on Meta and OpenAI’s new models comes as The Market Ear pointed out, “Some signs of the AI sentiment “pendulum” subtly swinging from AI-mania to something less than that as of lately.” 

Shares of Nvidia peaked two weeks ago, while corporate media headlines featuring the ‘AI Bubble’ have surged to record highs. 

Even with big tech launching new and improved LLMs, the delay in the Federal Reserve’s pivot (due to a reacceleration in inflation) could be enough to overshadow any hype in the AI bubble

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Contrarians will love this column as it will show there is still no smoking gun for a recession in the US.

They might see that as proof then that one must be imminent and yields are going much lower. But contrarianism for its own sake is rarely a good investment strategy.

With low recession risk, there is no need to own Treasuries for those that don’t have to, and with increasingly entrenched inflation, there is little reason not to short them.

Investors have been hesitant to short bonds, but the diminishing risk of a near-term NBER-defined downturn and Wednesday’s stronger-than-expected CPI data, the fourth in a row, should squash any lingering doubts.

No imminent recession removes (for now) the need to own bonds for protection.

Yields look too low, especially as rising inflation risks mean investors will become increasingly reluctant to fund the US government without a bigger margin of safety.

Further, the yield curve should begin to steepen again. As the chart shows, in either a hard or soft/no-landing scenario, the curve has historically started to steepen at this stage after the last Fed hike. (More rate hikes will likely be on the table at some point, although not until after the election.)

No near-term recession also removes (again, for now) typically the single-biggest risk that stocks face. The current bull market, perhaps surprisingly, is only performing in line with the average historical bull market. That means (despite some near-term risks, e.g. from momentum) the bull trend should remain intact. As Wednesday’s CPI data showed us though, the path is now likely to be bumpier as the market adjusts to the potential of higher real yields.

An agnostic, data-led approach to markets is best. That showed in the fourth quarter of last year that an NBER recession was less likely than so over the next 3-6 months (reversing my call from earlier that year that a near-term recession was on the cards). Based on this framework, a recession remains unlikely over the coming 3-6 months.

NBER recession dating is not an exact science, but the research body identifies the four key variables it uses in its assessment:

• Industrial production

• Payrolls

• Real personal income expenditure (PCE)

• Real personal income net of transfer payments

In every post-1970 recession all four of these were contracting on an annual basis (apart from 2001 where three out of the four were contracting). Currently three of the four are still expanding at about the same rate they were six months ago, while industrial production is essentially flat, also unchanged from last year.

NBER recession-dating happens often long after the fact. On top of that, the four indicators above are all coincident-to-lagging. But leading indicators show that each one is projected to remain supported over the next six months. (One should never base a view on only one leading index, but for each case there is more than one supportive indicator. For brevity though, I’ve only shown one for each here.)

The US leading indicator expects industrial production to pick up.

The fall in claims anticipates more payroll growth.

Easing bank credit should help retail sales and personal consumption stay supported.

And Fed wage survey indicators expect steady wage growth, which is currently positive in real terms.

There are bones one could pick with this. The jobs market overall is showing some potential signs of weakening, such as the rise in part-time employment and the fall in the quits rate. Household employment is diverging negatively from payrolls, and the number of US states with a rising unemployment rate is increasing, But the effects of unaccounted for immigration are potentially biasing the household survey weaker, and the strength of the labor market probably lies somewhere in between it and the payroll survey.

There are other data points that may give pause for concern, such as the rise in loan delinquencies due to unemployment, or some of the details in the latest NFIB small business survey. But picking and choosing data points to support a recession thesis without any systematic process that incorporates the strength of their relationship to recessions, by how much they lead them by, and how noisy they are, is not a robust one.

The data in totality is not currently supportive of a near-term NBER recession. Furthermore, rapid downward revisions in the four key data points are less likely (although not impossible) when leading data – chosen such that it is minimally revised and therefore itself not subject to future sizable changes – is turning up as it is today.

Bond positioning – based on the bond future proxy in the chart below – likely got a lot longer late last year when perceived recession risk was rising (even though, as discussed above, the risk was low). But if a recession continues to look off the cards for the next 3-6 months, there is less reason for multi-asset managers and their like to own bonds.

That’s even more the case now that it’s evident inflation is not going anywhere soon. Moreover, leading indicators, such as the easing in bank credit, show inflation should soon start rising again.

Owning bonds, unless you have to or in an extreme geopolitical-driven flight to safety situation, is an increasingly suboptimal proposition in this environment, while shorting them looks more and more attractive.

There will be dip buyers now that yields have hit 4.5% (although in a sign the wind may be changing, demand at Wednesday’s 10-year auction was terrible), but that level will likely prove to be low with nominal GDP rising at an annual pace of 5.9%. The contrarian trade is still for higher yields, but probably not for much longer.

We first put the secondary market for Rolex and Patek Philippe timepieces on bottom watch (read: here) in December 2023, after the Federal Reserve announced the interest rate hiking cycle was nearing an end. In mid-March, we asked the question: Did The Used Rolex Watch Market Finally Bottom?

After five months of stabilization, the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, continues to find a temporary floor between $33,800 and $33,500. The index fell .1% to $33,558 in March. It slid 8.7% in a year and plunged 42% in two years. 

Per Bloomberg:

Among a handful of outperformers in March, the Rolex GMT Master II with a ceramic blue and red bezel gained 3.2% to trade at $20,935, according to the index. Nicknamed the “Pepsi,” the watch has been among the top performers in the past year amid speculation it might be discontinued, although it remains in the collection.

The Rolex Submariner with a green bezel, black dial and date complication nicknamed the “Starbucks,” gained about 1% in March to trade at $15,259, the data shows.

Meanwhile, the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711 with a blue dial, a steel sports model with an integrated bracelet that was one of the so-called ‘hype’ watches during the peak of the market, gained about 1.1% last month to trade at about $98,753.

Demand for luxury has cooled over the last two years. Luxury has plunged into turmoil because of soaring borrowing rates, which are hammering demand for watches, purses, and jewelry.

Today’s news of hotter consumer prices in the US could complicate matters for the Fed and possibly postpone the first interest rate cut to the second half of the year. 

Implied interest rate swaps show less than two cuts are being priced in for the year, down from 7 in early January. 

With interest rate cuts likely being delayed this summer to fall, if not after, higher for longer could delay recovery in used luxury watch prices and or send prices even lower. 

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Drones from American startups are glitchy and expensive prompting Ukraine to turn to alternatives from China.

The Wall Street Journal comments American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine

The Silicon Valley company Skydio sent hundreds of its best drones to Ukraine to help fight the Russians. Things didn’t go well. Skydio’s drones flew off course and were lost, victims of Russia’s electronic warfare. The company has since gone back to the drawing board to build a new fleet.

Most small drones from U.S. startups have failed to perform in combat, dashing companies’ hopes that a badge of being battle-tested would bring the startups sales and attention. It is also bad news for the Pentagon, which needs a reliable supply of thousands of small, unmanned aircraft.

“The general reputation for every class of U.S. drone in Ukraine is that they don’t work as well as other systems,” Skydio Chief Executive Adam Bry said, calling his own drone “not a very successful platform on the front lines.”

Ukrainian officials have found U.S.-made drones fragile and unable to overcome Russian jamming and GPS blackout technology. At times, they couldn’t take off, complete missions or return home. American drones often fail to fly at the distances advertised or carry substantial payloads.

Ukraine has found ways to get tens of thousands of drones as well as drone parts from China. The military is using off-the-shelf Chinese drones, primarily from SZ DJI Technology.

The U.S. has called DJI a Chinese military company and a surveillance tool for Beijing, which DJI denies. The Pentagon banned DJI drones in the U.S. military, and congressional legislation would ban new DJI products in the U.S. 

Skydio employees went back to Ukraine 17 times to get feedback, Bry said. Its new drone is built around Ukraine’s military needs and feedback from public-safety agencies and other customers, he said, rather than U.S. Defense Department requirements that are sometimes divorced from battlefield realities.

I suspect China is selling drones and drone parts to both Ukraine and Russia. What a racket.

Meanwhile, US drones made to US Defense Department specs are garbage.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

The European Parliament has approved the controversial EU Asylum and Migration Pact, which will see countries forced to accept their fair share of new arrivals into the bloc or pay a fine for every migrant they reject.

The new asylum and migration package was passed largely with votes from lawmakers affiliated with the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe, with MEPs being urged to swallow their criticisms of the scheme and vote for the compromise legislation.

“History made,” tweeted European Parliament President Roberta Metsola as she praised what she described as a “robust legislative framework on how to deal with migration and asylum,” noting it had been “10 years in the making” but the EU had kept its word.

Some MEPs on both the left and the center-right revealed they voted through the pact despite its many flaws.

“The new legislation is not perfect but we can only make migration manageable and humane with one European solution,” said Hilde Vautmans, foreign affairs coordinator for Renew Europe.

Nationalist politicians across Europe expressed their anger at the passing of the pact, which they claim cedes sovereignty to an ever-centralized European Union.

“The Migration Pact organizes the tutelage and control of nations, the legal impunity of NGOs complicit with smugglers,” tweeted Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally.

She further vowed to “put an end to the accelerated pursuit of policies to encourage and organize mass immigration,” on June 9 at the EU elections in which her party is expected to win the most French seats.

Le Pacte des migrations organise la mise sous tutelle et sous contrôle des nations, l’impunité juridique des ONG complices des passeurs. Le 9 juin, nous mettrons fin à la poursuite accélérée des politiques d’incitation et d’organisation de l’immigration massive.

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 10, 2024

In the parliamentary debate that preceded the vote, Le Pen’s party leader Jordan Bardella confirmed that those within the Identity and Democracy (ID) parliamentary group would be voting down the legislation.

🇫🇷🇪🇺🔥 “Countries will be forced to welcome thousands of migrants into their towns and villages or pay dearly to be spared!”

France’s National Rally President @J_Bardella slams the EU’s proposed #MigrationPact and says European people do not want to be “replaced or submerged.” pic.twitter.com/yEzDGwUkHP

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 10, 2024

“Countries will be forced to welcome thousands of migrants into their towns and villages or pay dearly to be spared!” Bardella told the chamber, warning that Brussels wants to redistribute new arrivals while nationalist politicians want to “send them back.”

After the vote, Bardella took to social media to denounce the “terrible European Migration Pact” that seeks to “impose the distribution of migrants in our municipalities under penalty of financial sanctions.”

Voting was briefly suspended on Wednesday evening due to a protest from inside the chamber from left-wing activists who urged those of their political persuasion to vote down the bill on humanitarian grounds.

“This Pact kills, vote ‘No!’” they chanted from the observation rooms as they threw paper airplanes down into the auditorium.

🇪🇺‼️ BREAKING: “This Pact kills, vote ‘No!'”

Protesters disrupt the European Parliament chamber during a voting session on the Asylum and Migration Pact, throwing paper airplanes down on lawmakers and demanding the bill be rejected. pic.twitter.com/sL6c2vsLzr

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 10, 2024

The Hungarian government reiterated its opposition to the pact following the vote with spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs citing Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó who “declared that regardless of any migration pact adopted by the European Parliament, Hungary will maintain its legal and physical border barriers and will not allow illegal immigrants entry, opposing the pro-war and pro-migration stance of Brussels’ leadership.”

The majority of lawmakers who passed through the pact were lukewarm on its contents but considered it to be a compromise to end the status quo existing in a Europe plagued by illegal immigration. The argument on the left is that it goes too far in targeting illegal migrants, while those on the right consider it to be yet another sovereignty grab that will do little to solve the crisis.

Read more here…

This week Germany has begun deploying troops to the Baltic state of Lithuania, which marks the first such external deployment of its kind for Germany’s military since World War II — and which is the result of Berlin adopting a firmer ‘counter-Russia’ posture after more than two years of war in Ukraine. 

While merely two dozen soldiers have reportedly arrived Lithuania thus far, the German contingent will be stationed there permanently. Currently Germany leads a NATO deployment in Lithuania of some 1,000 troops, but which is temporary.

“This is the first time that we have permanently stationed such a unit outside of Germany,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said during a ceremony seeing the troops depart from Berlin. He hailed it as “an important day for the German army.”

Crucially, and sure to trigger deep alarm for Moscow, the permanent German force in Lithuania is slated to grow to 4,800 by the year 2027. 

German military leadership is touting this as in direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ‘aggression’:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is prompting Germany to do something unprecedented — to permanently base thousands of troops only about 100 kilometers from the border with Russia and right in the line of fire if the Kremlin ever launches an attack on NATO territory.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was in Vilnius on Monday to sign a deal with his Lithuanian counterpart Arvydas Anušauskas firming up the conditions on which 4,800 German troops plus 200 civilians will be based in the Baltic country.

“With this war-ready brigade, we are assuming a leadership responsibility here in the alliance and on NATO’s eastern flank,” Pistorius said, adding: “The speed of the project clearly shows that Germany understood the new security reality.”

What is alarming for the significant risk of direct escalation between Russia and NATO with this new German deployment is the geography of this Baltic neighborhood: Lithuania shares a border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

This puts a permanent deployment of troops from a NATO country directly on Russia’s borders. Additionally, Lithuania also borders Belarus, which forms a ‘Union state’ with Russia and currently hosts Russian tactical nuclear weapons. All of this comes as France’s Macron has been talking up the possibility of sending Western troops directly to Ukraine.

Germany has already sent Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, which have by many accounts done nothing to sway the momentum of the battle in Kiev’s favor. Instead, Russia has in the recent past published footage purporting to show several German-supplied tanks disabled and destroyed, burning on the battlefield.

Authored by Tilak K. Doshi via RealClear Politics,

On March 28, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali of the South American country of Guyana became an instant hero to many as he refused to take lectures on climate change from a BBC reporter during an interview. In a two-minute video clip that went viral on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media, President Ali turned the tables on the BBC’s Stephen Sackur when the reporter accused Guyana of worsening the “climate crisis” by allowing the exploitation of its newly found oil and gas reserves.

“Over the next decade or two, it’s expected that there will be $150 billion worth of oil and gas extracted off your coast,” Sackur told the president. “It’s an extraordinary figure. But think of it in practical terms. That means – according to many experts – two billion tons of carbon emissions will come from your seabed from those reserves and released into the atmosphere.” Guyana’s head of state quickly rebutted: “Let me stop you right there. Did you know that Guyana has a forest that is the size of England and Scotland combined, a forest that stores 19.5 gigatons of carbon, a forest that we have kept alive?”

When the reporter asked President Ali whether the rainforest gave him the “right” to release the carbon, the Guyanese leader retorted: “Does that give you the right to lecture us on climate change? I’m going to lecture you on climate change.” Being lectured by the BBC on climate change is not a new development; it’s what the state-supported media service often does, and in hectoring tones. But is the BBC correct in its proclamations about what the “climate science” says?

‘Stop Lecturing Us’: Guyana President Shuts Down BBC Journalist, Exposes West’s Hypocrisy

Guyanese President Mohammad Irfaan Ali had an heated exchange with a BBC journalist over climate change issue. The fiery exchange took place during BBC Hardtalk show, hosted by Stephen… pic.twitter.com/vZJuhvJ7MS

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) April 3, 2024

Climate Alarmists and Their Detractors

The BBC seems institutionally committed to an alarmist position in its coverage of climate change issues. Many BBC programs seem driven to inject the “climate catastrophe” narrative into every energy-related news item. Stephen Sakur’s pointed remarks to Guyana’s president on the country’s rapid emergence as an oil and gas exporter were unexceptional in this regard.

The response on social media to the viral clip is telling. Here is a short selection from X on March 29 and 30:

Chris Rose (over 130,000 followers): “This is magnificent to watch. The President of Guyana truly put the BBC in its place. When sanctimony and pomposity meets [sic] sense and modesty.”

Simon Ateba (over 670,000 followers): “EXPLOSIVE: President Mohamed  Irfaan Ali (@presidentaligy) of Guyana obliterates @BBC journalist Stephen Sackur (@stephensackur) over climate change hypocrisy. ‘No, no, I’m not done yet!’ WATCH.”

Dilly Hussain  (over 110,000 followers): “LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE!” An absolute masterclass shutdown by President Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana when probed by @BBCHARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur on his country’s new found oil and gas fields and the West’s concerns about “carbon emissions”.

Visegrád 24 (over 970,000 followers): “I am going to lecture you on climate change,” says Guyana President @presidentaligy to BBC journalist Stephen Sackur, as he pushes back against the journalist attempting to lecture the Caribbean leader about oil being bad for the environment.”

The headlines of leading newspapers on March 30 reflected these social media messages:

The Telegraph: “Watch: Guyana’s president scolds BBC presenter for climate change ‘lecture.’”

Times of India: “‘Are you in their pockets?’: Guyanese President calls out reporter for Western hypocrisy.”

Fox News: “Video of Guyana’s president snapping back at BBC reporter’s climate quiz goes viral: ‘Let me stop you.’”

Hypocrisy As the Default Option in Climate Change Narratives

What is of interest here is the inherently hypocritical nature of the interactions between representatives of developed countries and those of developing ones concerning energy and climate policies. Some of the most apparent of such interactions occur during the UN’s annual COP (“Conference of Parties”) climate summits.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, never one to shy from hyperbolic pronouncements, warns of a “code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.” Indeed, based on dubious “hockey-stick” global-warming models formulated in the West, the secretary-general proclaims the approach of the “era of global boiling.”

At COP26, held in 2021 in Glasgow, Western leaders addressed those making up 80% of humanity in speeches that reeked of carbon imperialism (here, here, and here). Their message can be fairly summarized as follows:

We pledge climate finance to help you. There are promising new energy technologies to achieve our goals of net zero by 2050. The outlook for new jobs and economic growth are limitless with solar and wind power, electric vehicles, green hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration. However, we must stop all new fossil fuel investments now! You must give up fossil fuels or else the planet is doomed.

Faced with the increasingly untenable hypocrisy of the Western elites discouraging fossil fuel use in the developing world, the pushback by leaders such as Guyana’s President Ali is no surprise. In 2015, the Indian government’s then-chief economic adviser Arvind Subramaniam spoke in no uncertain terms of a new carbon imperialism: “The rich world’s move against fossil fuels is a disaster for India, and other poorer countries.”

In the lead-up to COP27 held in Sharm Al Sheikh, Egypt in 2022, Africa’s top energy official, Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, said that African countries will push for “a common energy position that sees fossil fuels as necessary to expanding economies and electricity access.”

At the COP28 climate summit held in Dubai, UAE, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, president of the summit and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, rebutted questions from Mary Robinson, a former UN special envoy for climate change: “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C [maximum global temperature increase].” In an interview, he said that “You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuels . . . Please, help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

URL: Cartoons by Josh

That’s Enough Already!

Germany, the world leader in green energy ambitions, provides the best lesson of untenable hypocrisy when faced with the real-world constraints of physics and economics. In 2022, the country faced the prospect of entering winter without adequate energy supplies. It had shut down its nuclear power plants and lost access to piped Russian natural gas by imposing sanctions against Moscow (which was then followed by the sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline). In this context, Germany quickly retreated to coal power generation, and it now plans to double its gas-fired power-generating capacity.

According to Doomberg, an energy and finance consultancy, Germany moved back to coal “with the speed and efficiency of the British evacuation of Dunkirk.” The IEA, the institution most responsible for the West’s clarion calls to stop fossil fuel investments, noted that Germany’s “significant reversal” drove European coal consumption up 9% in 2022. Energy security and the need to heat homes and keep lights on and factories humming trumped virtue-signaling climate goals – and Germany’s abject hypocrisy is obvious to many leaders in the developing world.

Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali has little to explain, much less apologize for, as his country rapidly emerges as an important South American exporter of hydrocarbons. Let the BBC’s reporters peddle their luxury beliefs to those who think they can afford them.

Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an energy economist, independent consultant, and a Forbes contributor based in London.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

The government wants your money.

It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.

This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity, and that “someone” is the U.S. taxpayer.

The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security complex that continues to undermine our freedoms while failing to making us any safer.

Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

According to the number crunchers with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in order to spend money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, the government is borrowing roughly $6 billion a day.

Basically, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card.

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is more than $34 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033.

The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars.

It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).

In other words, the government is spending more than it brings in.

The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Interest payments on the national debt are more than $395 billion, which is significantly more than the government spends on veterans’ benefits and services, and according to Pew Research Center, more than it will spend on elementary and secondary education, disaster relief, agriculture, science and space programs, foreign aid, and natural resources and environmental protection combined.

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we’ve paid on this borrowed money is “nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.”

In ten years, those interest payments will exceed our entire military budget.

This is financial tyranny.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.

None of that has come to pass, and yet we’re still being loaded down with debt not of our own making while the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic reports, “U.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

Of course, we’re the ones who have to repay that borrowed debt.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.” That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that’s only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.

The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation, with nearly $300 billion disbursed over a five-year period. More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That price tag keeps growing, too.

As Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.”

Most recently, the U.S. has allocated nearly $115 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine since the start of the Russia invasion.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex continues to get richer, while the American taxpayer is forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

This is no way of life.

Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, corporate turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.

Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.

And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?

What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?

What if, instead of quietly sending in our tax checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re no longer living the American dream.

We’re living a financial nightmare.