A Houston businessman has placed a total of $10 million in bets on the Astros to win the World Series. He says his wagers carry an average payout of 7.5-to-1, which means a Houston championship would bring him $75 million — if the Astros can overcome their current deficit to the upstart Philadelphia Phillies. 

That would be the largest haul in sports betting history, according to the Houston Chronicle. 

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, the 71-year-old owner of Gallery Furniture in Houston, is famed for making enormous sports bets that hedge his sports-linked furniture promotions. This year’s gimmick: 

“When you purchase a Tempur-Pedic, Stearns & Foster or Sealy mattress sleep set priced at $3,000 or more, and if the Houston Astros win it all in the 2022 final championship series, your purchase is FREE!”

While there’s only upside for his customers, McIngvale could see $10 million of his estimated $300 million net worth vanish. Then again, he reportedly won $15 million betting on the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament earlier this year, so he may well consider this Astros bet as using “house money.” 

“Winning the bet is very important, but more importantly, winning the bets allows us to give money back to all of our customers who bought about $75 million worth of furniture,” McIngvale tells CNBC.

In Tuesday night’s Game 3 in front of a Philadelphia crowd, the Astros were positively pummeled by the Phillies, 7-0. The win put the Phillies up 2 games to 1 in the best-of-seven series, with the next two games played in Philadelphia Wednesday and Thursday (8:03 pm ET on Fox.) 

McIngvale has been a huge backer of the Astros, even after the team’s reputation was reputation forever stained by a 2017-18 cheating scandal in which video cameras were used to steal opposing catchers’ signals, and the banging of trash cans — or silence — was used to tell Astros batters what pitch to expect.

This week, he’s on the road to support his team. Ahead of Tuesday’s game, he enjoyed a warm welcome from Phillies fans who spotted the iconic fan and sports bettor:

Now I know why they call it the City of Brotherly Love. These @Phillies fans couldn’t be nicer. Our @astros are still going to win tonight!#levelup #AstrosVsPhillies pic.twitter.com/1DSpV8su2X

— @MattressMack (@MattressMack) October 31, 2022

After the lopsided Astros loss, things weren’t so pretty: 

Houston businessman Jim McIngvale, known as Mattress Mack, appears to be seen in a verbal altercation with Phillies fans following the Astros loss on Tuesday eveningpic.twitter.com/8vf0D6T8gu

— YouWager.lv (@YouWager_FF) November 2, 2022

It will live in the annals of market infamy as the day the Fed rugpulled the market, when first a very dovish statement sparked a frenzied buying spree, only to be followed by a blistering, hawkish assault on the bulls during Powell’s press conference, leading to risk freefall, and the worst final 90 minutes of a Fed day in history, according to Bespoke.

In his EOD wrap, Goldman tradaer John Flood agrees that today was a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde kinda day, when the Fed statement, ostensibly written by the dovish Lael Brainard, sparked a risk-on buying frenzy, only to crater when Powell said it was not only premature to think about pausing rates, but said that “incoming data since our last meeting suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected” suggesting that the dots will be revised materially up in December.

75bps it is (for the 4th consecutive meeting). Table now set for a potential pull back to 50bps in Dec (market was already pricing this in coming into today). Official 2pm statement was indeed dovish: The Fed said it will consider existing tightening steps, the lagged effect of policy, and “economic and financial developments” (all dovish phrases).

However, during the presser Powell was quite hawkish: “VERY PREMATURE TO THINK ABOUT PAUSING RATE HIKES” was the line that really stood out to me. After this comment we saw Macro HFs press shorts and L/Os outright cxl bids in singles that they had layered lower in the mkt. We had steady L/O supply in supercap tech all session (again). Our U.S. equities franchise ended with -449bps sell skew vs 30d avg of -135bp sell skew. Growth factor -$838mm notional sell skew which is most dramatic since 8/22/22 and in 79th percentile vs previous 52 weeks.

As the selling accelerated, all support levels were taken out:

S&P 50dma of 3822 didn’t provide any support. CTAs and Corporates can’t prop this tape up on their own. Lower for longer now when it comes to US stocks post today’s developments.

For Flood’s downbeat conclusion to today’s market action, he uses Jpow’s own summation of today’s message:

“Okay. So I would also say it’s premature to discuss pausing. It’s not something that we’re thinking about. That’s really not a conversation to be had now. We have a ways to go. The last thing I’ll say is that I would want people to understand our commitment to getting this done and to not making the mistake of not doing enough or the mistake of withdrawing our strong policy and doing that too soon. I control those messages. That’s my job.”

The pivotal moment in #Fed press conference:

When (incorrectly) told the market had reacted positively, Jerome Powell seems frustrated and lists ONLY reasons why this is the wrong interpretation.

Very telling for #stocks.$QQQ $SPY #macro #inflation pic.twitter.com/Vb9nhuskV7

— Andy West, PhD (@andycwest) November 2, 2022

JPMorgan’s Andrew Tyler agreed with Goldman, saying that – to use the parlance of the apes – the squeeze has been squoze.

Ron Adler sums up the Equity view, “There hasn’t been a real shift in the cadence or complexion of our flows. We’ve seen some faster $ players look to sell, but I wouldn’t say there’s a heightened sense of urgency. As noted earlier, buyers were buying this am on the hope that we would rally, knowing they had more stock lower to buy; they were set up to buy on weakness (which they are doing ~3800), not to chase. I’ll leave the parsing through Powell’s comments to others, but my simple view -> those looking for immediate gratification should continue to buckle up (this is going to take a while), and while the rate of increase will slow, Terminal Rate isn’t ready to go lower yet, and probably trends higher. The most recent squeeze has probably been appropriately squeezed at this point.

In retrospect, everything Powell said was with the benefit of solid payrolls numbers backing him. Let’s see how fast his enthusiasm to crush inflation taper, so to speak, once we get a -100,000 NFP print, which judging by what is happening in Silicon Valley, may be as soon as next month, especially since the BLS “seasonal adjustments” team will no longer have Biden propaganda henchmen breathing down their neck after next week’s midterms avalanche.

It looks like “Red Wave” in the the 2022 midterm may crest even higher, as the New Hampshire senate race is now tilting toward the GOP in what would be another flip of a currently Democratic seat. 

A multi-week narrowing of a 9-point lead held by incumbent Maggie Hassan has culminated in a brand new St. Anselm College poll that puts Republican challenger Don Bolduc up by a percentage point. That’s within the poll’s 2.5% margin of error — but who knows the extent to which, like other polls, it understates GOP strength.   

Chalk up the shift to Bolduc winning over more independents, who comprise about 40% of the electorate:

“Hassan’s lead among undeclared voters has evaporated,” reports St. Anselm’s pollsters. “After leading by 8 points (49%-41%) among undeclareds in September, Hassan is now tied with Bolduc at 45%.” 

Bolduc’s favorability rating has risen from 41% to 46%, putting him just ahead of Hassan, whose favorability has sagged. Asked about Bolduc’s surge on Tuesday, Hassan said, “We’ve always known it would be a very, very tight race.”

Hassan, a former New Hampshire state legislator and governor, is in her first term in the US Senate. Bolduc is a retired US Army brigadier general who spent most of his career in Special Forces, surviving both a helicopter crash and a 2,000-pound bomb in a friendly fire incident. He has acknowledged having coped with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

According to The Hill, Bolduc had struggled to convince Republicans to coalesce around his candidacy, as he’d faced controversy over previously claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. As he’s backed away from that rhetoric, his fortunes have risen, putting him on the threshold of victory. 

On Monday, Bolduc received Trump’s endorsement via the former president’s account on his Truth Social platform. Trump couldn’t resist including a scolding of his endorsee: 

“General Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire. He was a strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed.” 

Because of the swing in the New Hampshire race, RealClear Politics is now projecting that Republicans will control 54 seats in January, holding on to all their current seats while flipping seats in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada. 

As has been the case with Republican challenger Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate race, national GOP organizations dialed back their spending on the New Hampshire race when Bolduc was trailing by a significant margin, only for Bolduc to battle back into contention anyway. He’s done so while emphasizing energy policy and southern border security. 

Bolduc has opposed Washington’s relentless infusion of weapons and billions of dollars into Ukraine without any accompanying pursuit of diplomacy.

“Where’s the rest of the strategy? How are we going to get these guys to the table to talk about peace?” he asked in August. “We’re not the World Bank. We’re not the Bank of Ukraine. We’re not the bank of anybody. We’re not the world police.” 

Former Democrat and fellow veteran Tulsi Gabbard has campaigned for Bolduc, and recently penned an endorsement op-ed at Fox News: 

“Having both seen the cost of war firsthand, we understand the importance of peace, and how essential and urgent it is that we stop spending taxpayer dollars to escalate the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, walk us back from the brink of nuclear war, and support a negotiated end to this disastrous war.”

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MIshTalk.com,

I describe the roundtrip process in which Russian oil refined in Italy makes its way to to the US. It’s a real hoot…

Image composite from WSJ video below 

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting video that describes How Russian Crude Avoids Sanctions and Ends Up in the US.

With an upfront ad, that is a free WSJ video link.

The Lukoil Connection

Image composite from WSJ video

Sanction Avoidance Process 

• US sanctions are on crude oil, not refined products.

• Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil and gas company was not sanctioned by the US.

• Lukoil’s refinery in Sicily is the second largest in Italy and fifth largest in Europe.

• A Lukoil refinery in Italy once processed crude from multiple countries. Now it inputs are 93 percent from Russia. 

• After refining, the country of origin is Italy, not Russia. This is due to longstanding practice of changing the country of origin to where oil is refined. 

• The refined product then makes its way Exxon and Lukoil plants in New Jersey and Texas. 

• Lukoil still has a gas station presence in the US and it distributes products to eleven states. 

Lukoil Stations in 11 US States

Image composite from WSJ video

Note: Most of the 230 Lukoil gas stations in the US are owned by individual American franchisees, not the oil giant itself. 

Understanding the Process

• The US has sanction exclusions for oil “substantially transformed into a foreign-made product.”

• US refiners cannot process Russian crude, but Italian refiners can, then distribute the product here. 

• In return, US can send its refined products to the EU, completing the round trip! 

Lukoil is 6th largest refiner in Europe. It went from processing 30% Russian oil to 93%. That’s a pretty big sieve even if amounts to US are small.

Conveniently timed for the US election, European bans on Lukoil do not come into play until December 5. 

Unless the EU backs down, this could lead to another surge in the price of gasoline in December.

Meanwhile, In eleven US states, people are filling up their tanks in part with Russian oil products via the above convoluted means.

The US Treasury department refused to comment on this process. Gee, I wonder why.

Biden says this is all Putin’s fault, while traipsing the globe begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for more oil. 

Finally, after Biden told both OPEC and the US oil industry of its intent to kill the industry, the president now threatens both the US and Saudi produces with tax hikes and unspecified consequences.

For discussion, please see Biden Threatens Saudi Arabia With Unspecified Consequences for Slashing Oil Production

Consequences

“There will be consequences,” says president Biden. “It’s time to rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Yeah, there will be consequences. 

The one on the immediate horizon is an election blowout on Tuesday, November 8.

*  *  *

Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

Russia is preparing to order a “compulsory” transfer of tens of thousands of residents in the Kherson region as the fight for the south heats up. This could involve as many as 70,000 civilians in what would mark a large-scale Russian withdrawal from the occupied Ukrainian city. 

Citing Russian officials, The Wall Street Journal reports that “starting Sunday they would begin relocating residents from the Kakhovsky district on the east bank of the Dnipro River due to what they claim is the possibility of a Ukrainian attack on a strategic dam nearby.” Already evacuations have been ongoing for weeks from the city as fighting and heavy shelling encroach. 

And the pro-Russian governor of Kherson Volodymyr Saldo confirmed preparations for a mandated evacuation ahead of advancing Ukrainian forces, which a Russian decree said will be “in a compulsory manner.” Russian officials say this is necessary because Ukraine forces are plotting a “massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric station” to flood Kherson.

Ukraine has denied these plans of course, and has in turn accused the Russian side of essentially using the large civilian transfer as one big “human shield”:

“They want to create the impression that this is a civilian evacuation. Surrounded by civilians they understand that they have a degree of safety,” said a spokeswoman for the southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.

They say Russian military vehicles are intentionally mixing with civilian convoys as they exit the region.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media sources are touting that the national armed forces have conducted at least 100 firing missions on Wednesday, conducted by artillery and missile units.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine struck an extremely successful blow on the occupiers in Kherson, hitting the air defense systems at Spartak stadium, which were used to attack Mykolaiv,” a statement from an official with Ukraine’s Kherson Regional Council said on Facebook. 

A report this week in the Associated Press said that many among the recently mobilized Russian recruits have been sent to Kherson front lines, despite official denials from the Kremlin.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Nothing is Forgotten, Nothing Will Be Forgiven.

On the very first day of this year I wrote that the pandemic was over and that only the most brainwashed true believers would cling to the absurd narratives that enabled it. Since then, all of it has been exposed to be falsehoods, cluelessness and lies:

• Vaccines were never tested or proven to stop transmission.

• The fatality rate was around 0.005%

• Ivermectin worked

• Masks don’t

• Lockdowns did more damage than good

…and the final straws for the credibility of all involved:

• This thing came out of a lab, and

• There is significant credible evidence of vaccine injuries and death

Innumerable careers, reputations and lives have been destroyed in order to enforce a completely debunked narrative as truth. The mainstream media, Big Tech, governments at all levels, neo-liberal glee clubs like the WEF, all coordinated to gaslight the entire population of the world that we were facing existential annihilation, and would have to henceforth trade in our civil rights to these authorities to escape it.

The economic damage is only now beginning to be felt in runaway inflation with central banks powerless to contain it, at risk of destroying what’s left of the economy.

We don’t need to enumerate the litany of injustice, ridicule and persecution  anybody who tried to counter these absurd narratives had to endure. Lost friends, family, jobs, position, businesses, cancelations, deplatformings – all of it.

So it is unsurprising, now that the edifice is crumbling, that those who piled on to the persecutions, those who feathered their nest being “on the right side of history”, seeing that it’s all turning to dust in realtime, are starting – one and all – to back away from their role.

Now the name of the game is to distance oneself from the most intense and virulent outbreaks of mass formation psychosis in recorded history:

You can fuck right off with this shit. pic.twitter.com/YmDiHIR7TU

— Clifton Duncan. (@cliftonaduncan) October 31, 2022

There are many who were up to their eyeballs in this who will now try to frame themselves as “the voice of reason” who was trying to introduce some rationality into the conversation.

We’re into the truly nauseating phase now, where every media whore, bluetard and imbecilic “expert” sombrely critiques the failures of Covid tyranny …as they frantically back-peddle away from their own complicity… https://t.co/9mFDpgCCD4

— Mark Jeftovic, The C̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶ ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) July 10, 2022

The most nauseating part of #EndTheMandates and #NoMoreLockdowns is going to be when every sociopathic zealot who wanted to literally wreck your life for non-compliance will start taking victory laps and pretending they were always champions of The Great Reopening…

— Mark Jeftovic, The C̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶ ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) February 9, 2022

Don’t believe them.

“Sooner or Later Everyone Sits Down to a Banquet of Consequences”

If the globally botched pandemic response accomplished one thing, it was to open many people’s eyes to how obsolete and ill equipped our current institutions are for handling a global crisis in this new, decentralized, multi-polar world.

While these insular elites believed they had Divine Right to “re-imagine” every aspect of our lives for some grandiose Great Reset, it’s these sclerotic, self-serving institutions they inhabit who are going to get their asses re-imagined. With a vengeance.

Here’s what you can do to reclaim your life, and take your power back from those who abused it and used their positions against you:

1. Vote out any politician who imposed lockdowns or vaccine mandates – regardless of party affiliation. At least the ones who doubled down on them after it became clear how destructive and ineffective they were.
2. Cancel all paid subscriptions to the mainstream media – you’re better off supporting the many independent outlets and those doing real journalism and providing high-signal content.
3. Advocate for defunding state-run media apparatuses: NPR in the US, CBC in Canada, BBC in the UK, et al
4. De-Google-fy your life: Start looking at alternatives to Big Tech. There are other search engines like Duck, Facebook is quickly becoming irrelevant, Twitter may be fun for awhile longer given the meltdowns over the Musk takeover.
5. Don’t hire or do business with Covid fanatics. If you’re hiring or scouting vendors, check their socials: were they demonizing lockdown skeptics? Hashtagging “#Freedumb”? (Better start scrubbing those timelines, mofos)
6. Buy Bitcoin. Yes, I’m shilling BTC because Bitcoin is the global opt-out – stacking sats is calling b/s on everything. 

You can put that pandemic amnesty where the sun don’t shine. pic.twitter.com/NGIaMvLb5L

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) November 1, 2022

There will be no pandemic amnesty. More likely, by the time this is all over, there will be pandemic tribunals.

*  *  *

Mark E. Jeftovic is the CEO of easyDNS, co-founder of Bombthrower Media, author and investor. Sign up for The Bombthrower mailing list to get updates straight into your inbox and get a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you’re at it. Follow me on Gettr, Telegram or Twitter.

Does gaslighting still represent an effective debate strategy in 2022, or does the public understand how the tactic works?  We’re about to find out this month as the midterm elections approach, but for now the political left has decided that instead of addressing the numerous problems that have arisen nationwide on their watch, they would rather pretend that those problems don’t exist and anyone that says they do is a liar.  

The View’s Joy Behar is leaping into action to save Democrats, arguing that the nationwide spike in crime is not real and that the numbers have been inflated by the Republican party.  Behar once again tried to distract from the main issue by mentioning the Jan 6th riot and suggests that protesters “tried to kill the vice president,” even though there was not a single death at the event attributed to the protesters.  She then states that crime has actually gone down under Joe Biden.  

“Republicans now, coming up to the next election all they do is talk about crime, crime, crime…I looked it up, murders in major cities have fallen by 4% so far in 2022, compared with the same period a year ago. So crime is not on the rise, it’s actually going down under Joe Biden.”

Behar does not cite the specific source for this optimistic data, nor does she outline the context.  Though, one can already see a highly dishonest spin on display in her comments.  

For example, she seeks to conflate all crime with a single stat – Murder rates in major cities.  Americans are not only concerned with one type of crime, they are concerned with an increase in all types of crime.  According to data from Axios, overall violent crime rates are actually up 4.2% from January to June of this year. 

While homicides rates did fall 2.4%, Behar should have taken into consideration the fact that they skyrocketed from 2020 through 2021, in almost exact parallel with the BLM riots and the covid lockdowns.  The drop in 2022 does not erase the gains from the past two years.

This is much like Joe Biden making the claim that gas prices went down on his watch.  Prices actually doubled on his watch, and then fell slightly the past few months as he continues to dump oil from the US strategic reserves onto the market.  When it comes to statistics, everything is about context.   

The downfall of the gaslighting methodology is that it is usually only effective against individuals, not an entire population.  You can’t tell millions of people that they are not suffering from increased crime while they deal with the effects on a daily basis.  They’re going to call you out for lying, and they certainly aren’t going to vote for your candidates at election time.  The frog in the pot strategy doesn’t work when the water is already boiling.  

Even CNN, citing a poll from Gallup, recently admitted that Americans are more worried about crime today than at any other time this century.  And the majority of areas facing rising crime are in large cities controlled by Democrat politicians.    

Separating the Dems from the spike in US crime is truly an impossible task after years of blind support for the BLM/Antifa riots and calls for defunding the police.  Behar’s misrepresentation of the statistics underscores a long running trend of political leftists ignoring inconvenient truths, from rising crime, to rising inflation, to rising public discontent over extreme social policies.  Pretending as if all is well is no longer an option.

With midterms right around the corner and polls looking dismal for Democrats, President Biden is set to give a Wednesday speech on “preserving and protecting our democracy” during a DNC event in Washington DC.

Because when you don’t have any accomplishments to ride on, use fear.

Biden is scheduled to speak at 7pm ET at the Columbus Club in Union Station, where he will discuss “the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy.” Really?

Watch live:

The speech was announced Wednesday morning during an Axios event.

“Well, obviously, President Biden has been speaking about democracy for the entire time he’s been in office. And before then know, I think you can expect to hear from him this evening similar to what he’s been saying over the course of the last several months, that there is a lot at stake, including democracy, and that everyone has a role on that,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told Axios.

“I think the other thing that will be really important and something you heard from President Biden in 2020 was that people are going to be able to vote. Over 25 million already have. They are voting all across the country. You know, in some places where we will have a lot of attention, focus, the votes will be counted and will take a few days to be counted because that’s how democracy works to make sure every vote is counted. So and highlight that as well for,” she added.

White House senior adviser Anita Dunn said that Union Station was chosen as the venue because of its proximity to Capitol Hill, where the January 6th riots took place, Fox News reports.

“On January 6, we saw violence geared toward subverting democratic processes there. So it is you know, it’s an appropriate place to make these remarks tonight,” Dunn said. She added that most Americans find political violence “abhorrent” and cited the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi as a recent example,” she said, adding “[Political violence is] something that unites almost all Americans and that we can all be united against. And obviously, we’ve seen horrible things happen quite recently, certainly the speaker’s husband. But it’s from Capitol Hill because that is where there was an attempt to subvert our democracy.”

A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest owner of container ships and one of the best bellwethers for global trade, lowered its outlook for the growth of 2022 global container demand and warned next year could be worse. 

Maersk’s warning about a slowdown in container demand and economic turmoil ahead was conveyed in a third-quarter earnings report released today and in an interview by the company’s top executive on Bloomberg. 

The Copenhagen-based company lowered its outlook for the growth of 2022 global container demand to decline 2-4% from the previous estimate of plus or minus 1%. The forecast sent Maersk’s shares tumbling nearly 6%. 

“However, it is clear that freight rates have peaked and started to normalize during the quarter, driven by both decreasing demand and easing of supply chain congestion. As anticipated all year, earnings in Ocean will come down in the coming periods,” Maersk wrote in the earnings report.

“There are plenty of dark clouds on the horizon,” the company continued, adding, “this weighs on consumer purchasing power which in turn impacts global transportation and logistics demand.”

It then warned: “With the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis in Europe, high inflation, and a looming global recession.”

Maersk CEO Soren Skou joined Bloomberg TV this morning for an interview where he said, “it’s really hard to be very optimistic with a war on our doorstep and a bigger energy crisis this winter so that is impacting consumer confidence and therefore also demand.” He added:

“Global trade is moving backward this year.” 

The company expects the global container market to be “broadly flat to negative” as risks in 2023 are “skewed to the downside” due to the macroeconomic headwinds. Skou noted in the interview that it is “clearly better for the economy and for our customers” to have lower freight rates. 

In May, we outlined that a reversal of the “shortage of everything” bullwhip effect was nearing, as skyrocketing inventories (the result of Covid-era overordering due to snarled supply chains) was about to hit a faltering economy, and prices of goods would decline as companies would be forced to liquidate excess inventories into a recession (see “Bullwhip Effect Ends With A Bang: Why Prices Are About To Fall Off A Cliff” from May 23). We reminded readers about this a few times over the summer (“Bullwhip-Effect Reversal Is The Major Downside Growth Risk” and “Container Rates Slump As “Bullwhip Effect” Enters Terminal Phase“). 

Companies across the board are bloated with inventories. This can be shown in the inventory-to-sales ratio, reaching multi-decade highs — forcing importers to reduce shipments from overseas suppliers. 

As importers are stuck with inventory, they have reduced orders from overseas manufacturers, which has led to a plunge in container spot rates. Even to the extent that major shipping companies are canceling sails. 

Maersk’s warning comes as central banks are engaged in the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades to quell inflation. Any overtightening could spark a global recession next year. 

Perhaps, JP Morgan’s consolidated manufacturing PMIs suggest mounting recession risks and declining price pressure are a big theme in 2023.  

Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

The Supreme Court is likely to rule that colleges may no longer consider race as a qualification for college applications.

This has been a problem in America for many years as colleges aim to admit racially diverse incoming classes and overlook test scores in the process.

Even Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed to be Native American to gain access to a job at an Ivy League school, earning her the name of “Pocahontas.” The SCOTUS 6-3 conservative-liberal majority is reconsidering Affirmative Action in general.

Justices Kagan and Jackson threw around the word “diverse” many times, but Clarence Thomas said that “diverse” has not been properly defined.

Thomas has long been a critic of Affirmative Action and believes it is in itself racist.

He explained his beliefs in 2003:

“The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”

North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park told Thomas that diverse means “a broadly diverse set of criteria that expands to all different backgrounds and perspectives and not solely limited to race.”

Thomas said he failed to see the educational benefits.

“I’d like you to tell me expressly when a parent sends a kid to college that they don’t necessarily send them there to have fun or feel good or anything like that,” Thomas pressed.

“They send them there to learn physics or chemistry or whatever their study. So tell me what the educational benefits are.”

When Park said that students perform better in a diverse environment, Thomas said he has heard “similar arguments in favor of segregation.”