President Vladimir Putin in his lengthy interview released Thursday with journalist Tucker Carlson clearly wanted to deliver a firm message of defiance to the West. At one point he stressed that Kiev’s Western supporters must understand it is “impossible” to defeat Russia in Ukraine.

“Up until now, there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat to Russia on the battlefield. But now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible, at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition,” he said according to the transcript. 

The war is days away from reaching its exact two year-mark, on Feb.22, and though frontlines have been largely stalemated while Russia has solidified its hold over much of the east and parts of the south, the ferocity of the war hasn’t lessened, given it has moved to a new and perhaps more dangerous cross-border phase.

Ukraine has not only taken responsibility for several attacks on Russian oil refineries and key installations of late, but its cross-border attacks deep into Russian territory are coming almost daily at this point. Russia’s defense ministry said Friday its forces shot down 19 Ukrainian drones over four different regions and the Black Sea overnight

“An attempt by the Kyiv regime to commit a terrorist attack with 19 aerial drones against sites on Russian territory has been thwarted,” the ministry said, identifying intercepts over the Kursk, Bryansk, Oryol and Krasnodar regions. One drone was sent to within 300 kilometers southwest of Moscow and targeted the country’s energy infrastructure.

The more the conflict spills over into Russian territory, and utilizing Western long-range weapons, the greater the potential for direct Russian-NATO clash, which would be an unmitigated disaster with potential nuclear implications.

This is why during the Tucker Carlson interview in Moscow, Putin’s words on the causes of the Ukraine war and the prospect for a future peace were being closely watched both in Ukraine and the West. Below are some key sections we have zeroed in on, in order to understand Putin’s thinking in his own words.

Putin on the origins of the Ukraine conflict

As expected Putin emphasized the threat of NATO and US military expansion near Russia’s borders. “We also know who the main adversary for the U.S. and NATO is — it’s Russia. In NATO documents, our country is officially and directly declared the main threat to Euro-Atlantic security. And Ukraine will serve as the advanced foothold for such an attack,” he told Carlson. 

Putin also at one point sought to downplay that Moscow thought the US would eventually engage in direct attack: “It’s not that America was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia. I didn’t say that,” he said.

Going back to the 1990’s, Putin explained: “Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and believed that this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as an invitation for cooperation and association.” But, “We were promised no NATO to the east, not an inch to the east, as we were told. And then what? They said, well, it’s not enshrined on paper, so we’ll expand.”

On the West thwarting peace: Boris Johnson

Putin at one point explained that a “huge document” had been prepared and was backed by the head of the Ukranian negotiating team during the early months of the war in 2022, but very quickly then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stepped in and “dissuaded” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.

“He put his signature and then he himself said, ‘we were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago’. However, Prime Minister Johnson came talk to us out of it, and we’ve missed that chance,” Putin said. He described that this had presented a legitimate window of peace by the Spring of 2022. But then… “Prime Minister Johnson came to talk us out of it and we missed that chance. Well, you missed it,” he said.

“The fact that they obey the demand or persuasion of Mr Johnson, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, seems ridiculous. Where is Mr Johnson now? And the war continues.”

Carlson replied: “That’s a good question. Where do you think he is, and why did he do that?” Putin then said that it was become of Johnson’s “arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.”

Looks like the Biden Administration deployed Boris Johnson to scuttle a tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in spring 2022. This was never about the Ukrainian people. It was always about engineering a war against Russia. #Kennedy24https://t.co/SYyFEqy5El

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 19, 2023

On how the war could quickly escalate to direct war with NATO: WW3

Putin said Washington has been engaged in “cheap provocation” given its extensive aid to the Zelensky government and military. He pointed out that if Western boots are on the ground, this could lead to WW3: “If somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity to the brink of a very serious global conflict,” he told Carlson.

That’s when he emphasized America must focus on its many problems at home. “Don’t you have anything better to do? You have issues on the border. Issues with migration, issues with the national debt. More than $33 trillion,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end.”

He held out of the possibility of a new Cold War exploding in the heart of Europe: “If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia’s borders.”

But, Putin said “It goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of a global war and a global war will bring all humanity to the brink of destruction.”

Is Putin seeking to expand the war into Europe?

From the start of the war it has remained a key talking point of Western pundits and leaders to assume Putin is driving an ‘expansionist’ war that threatens the rest of Europe. This has even resulted in some leading European allies to drastically increase their defense spending and arms production.

Zelensky too has long said that if the West doesn’t stop Russia in Ukraine, then EU countries are next to be attacked. But Putin in the interview batted down the idea that it’s an expansionist war or based on ‘imperial ambitions’. He called it “out of the question”. 

He addressed it specifically in the following: “Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest.” 

He said this likely given Poland has in recent years been host to growing US and NATO military infrastructure, even at one point Warsaw leaders proposed a sprawling ‘Fort Trump’ base.

Putin on the potential for negotiated peace

“I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the U.S. leadership. If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons,” Putin said at one point.

He suggested there are ongoing talks related to prisoner/hostage swaps with the US: “Certain terms being discussed via special services channels,” he said of imprisoned WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich. 

He again complained that early on, a peaceful settlement was actually close: “There have been [talks] they reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev… the other side threw away all these agreements,” Putin told Carlson.

“Wouldn’t it be better to come to an agreement with Russia? To agree, understanding the situation that is today, understanding that Russia will fight for its interests to the end, and, understanding this, actually return to common sense, start respecting our country, its interests and look for some solutions?”

He said he’s ‘ready’ for negotiations, despite Russia clearly being dominant in the war. Putin explained: “Let us go back to the fact that NATO and U.S. military bases started to appear on the territory, Ukraine creating threats to us. Let us go back to coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless, though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly, but they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?

* * *

Interestingly, Russian media is touting the Tucker Carlson interview as the first time Putin has offered ‘concrete conditions’ which can lead to settlement. “I think the most important message in Putin’s interview is that Russia is ready for for a political or diplomatic solution of the Ukraine conflict,” said Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, to Russia’s Sputnik. “But it requires a political will from the United States.” he said.

The West is calling all of this more of Putin’s ‘propaganda’ – but the reality remains that Russia is winning the war, and thus has less reason to enter negotiations. This fact alone means Putin’s words mark a significant invitation and overture. Yet Ukraine would have to do the one thing Zelensky has vehemently refused to do: territorial concessions as well as forever giving up claims on Crimea. But this is an inevitability, even if it takes years, Putin and his officials have pointed out.

Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Students at Harvard University will continue to be required to take the COVID-19 vaccine in order to register for the upcoming semester, the school has recently announced, joining 69 other schools around the country that still require the shot.

“Harvard requires all students who will be on campus to have some protection from COVID-19 through vaccination,” reads a statement posted by the school. “This may be through the initial primary series of COVID-19 vaccination or one of the most recent COVID-19 boosters.”

Students who fail to show approved documentation will be unable to sign up for classes, with the website warning that should they “fall out of compliance at any time for any of the required immunizations, registration holds will be automatically applied.”

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner in Texas and founder of Coalition of Health Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the COVID-19 vaccine is ineffective, but mandating medical procedures violates the student’s constitutionally protected rights.

“I am deeply concerned that a university once considered the best in the nation has adopted a policy that completely disregards the data showing the COVID shots do not prevent transmission,” said Dr. Bowden.

“Further, mandating the COVID shots violates human rights and discriminates against its students by setting rules that only apply to them, but not the entire campus.“

While students are required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, it is recommended but not mandated for the school’s faculty members or staff, according to Harvard University Health Services (HUHS).

“HUHS no longer requires employees to submit COVID-19 vaccine documentation,” the website states. “As we work to continue the high levels of vaccination needed to protect our community, Harvard highly recommends being up-to-date per the CDC definition for all Harvard community members, including faculty, students, staff, and researchers, who will have any on-campus presence.”

Government officials began pressuring schools to push students to get the vaccine almost immediately after it hit the market.

In 2021, Jerome Adams, the Surgeon General at the time, urged schools to mandate the COVID-19 shot in an “Open Letter to Leaders in Higher Education.” Mr. James said he was “asking leaders to take strong steps to get as close as possible to 100 percent of their students, faculty and staff vaccinated early in the academic year.”

The letter continued that for “all colleges and universities, we also encourage steps to make vaccination easy. Set up pop-up vaccine clinics to meet students as they return to campus, including move-in, orientation, football games and tailgates, and at student life events. Offer paid leave for staff and faculty to get vaccinated and in the event of side effects. Engage with your student leaders to get word out about vaccination to other students. … Peer-to-peer engagement is one of the best ways to achieve behavior change in young adults.”

Controversy

However, the past two years have seen the COVID-19 vaccines become mired in controversy. The original COVID-19 vaccines were taken by more than 80 percent of Americans after officials pledged that the shots would effectively prevent contraction and stop the spread of the disease.

However, once it was revealed that the shots didn’t work as promised, interest in the subsequent booster decreased dramatically.

Vaccines could also be attributed to widespread reports of adverse health outcomes believed to have been caused by the shots. COVID-19 vaccines have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. The numbers could be even higher. An FDA-funded study out of Harvard found that VAERS cases represent fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events.

Despite the controversy, COVID-19 vaccine mandates continue to be in effect for students at 70 (including Harvard) out of the top 800 colleges in the United States, according to recent data acquired by No College Mandates. This organization describes itself as a “group of concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”

Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, told The Epoch Times that the evidence shows that institutions of higher learning have turned their back on the scientific method.

“I can’t see how they can continue to justify a student-only mandate policy in the name of keeping the community safe,” said Ms. Sinatra. “There are such blinders on preventing any sort of open debate on what the actual data is showing that it is literally mind-blowing.

“It’s idiotic, and history will not reflect kindly on these elite institutions,” added Ms. Sinatra.

Dr. Bowden says momentum is growing, with over 17,000 physicians and scientists calling for COVID-19 shots to be pulled off the market.

However, to end the mandates would take a change in political leadership, according to Dr. Bowden, who helped form a political action committee—Americans for Health Freedom—dedicated to funding campaigns that support that cause.

“The pandemic was a stress test to our constitution, and we need our elected officials to step in and protect the people who elected them,” said Dr. Bowden. “Americans for Health Freedom is working to educate the public and support politicians who will fight for medical freedom.”

Even before the last week’s chaos surrounding New York Community Bancorp, US bank deposits (non-seasonally-adjusted) had been collapsing. But this week – amid the chaos – deposits exploded $147BN higher (NSA)…

Source: Bloomberg

On a seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits rose a stunning $101BN last week – the biggest weekly increase since June 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

And excluding foreign deposits, domestic banks saw the largest deposit inflows since May 2021 (+$81BN SA) with Large banks +$61.5BN and Small banks +19.5BN. On an NSA basis, domestic deposits jumped $131BN, with Large banks adding $103BN and Small banks adding $28BN…

Source: Bloomberg

On the other side of the ledger, loan volumes increased for the 4th week in a row with large banks adding $17.9BN and Small banks adding $5.4BN…

Source: Bloomberg

And finally, as a reminder – despite the rebound off the lows this week in regional bank shares, which must mean everything is awesome, right? – the regional bank crisis is still very much alive as evidenced by the red line below (without The Fed’s imminently expiring BTFP facility)…

Source: Bloomberg

…what else are big banks (green line) going to do with all that cash burning a hole in their pockets?

The bottom line is – this looks a lot like a ‘Small Bank’ crisis. The last time this happened, the crisis sparked a sudden $300BN ‘run’ in small bank deposits…

Source: Bloomberg

Is The Fed ‘hoping’ for a controlled bank-run this time – so as many small bank deposits are drained voluntarily, before they are drained all at once in a panic (and the Reverse Repo facility is empty, unable to provide any cushion)?

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

My focus is on economics and capital markets. In theory, politics shouldn’t factor much in my analysis.

But in reality, politics has become a major influence on markets, and I can’t afford to neglect the political dimension. I might not like it, but I can’t ignore it.

Sure, politics has always influenced markets to some extent. But today, it’s taken on whole new dimensions.

It’s not the 1990s anymore. The key issues are no longer whether the top marginal tax rate should be 36% or 39%, or if there’s too much government regulation of whatever industry. Today’s key issues are much more fundamental.

Today, many politicians can’t even agree upon what a man is or what a woman is. That would have been inconceivable until just a few years ago. Any such debate would have been a skit on Saturday Night Live as a topic so ridiculous it would never occur in real life. But today, those debates exist.

Ultimately, it comes down to culture.

As the late Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” In other words, politics follows culture. That means that in some sense, markets ultimately follow culture.

What cultural influences are presently dominant, and where did they originate? That’s what I want to discuss today.

A World Turned Upside Down

Many investors and everyday Americans have a sense of a world turned upside down. Investment funds are organized around ESG scores (environment, social and governance) rather than performance. Admissions to schools and promotion in jobs are no longer based on merit but are based on factors such as race and ethnicity.

The administrative state (also known as the deep state) issues orders that are not supported by law and defy common sense. Government spending goes for subsidies to dead-end technologies such as electric vehicles and windmills.

Incidentally, EVs are fine if people want them, but why are they subsidized with tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money? This list of nonsensical policies and mandates goes on.

As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. was far down the road of racial reconciliation, technological advancement and world-class infrastructure. Some of that still exists, but much has been replaced with animosity, division and decay.

What’s at the root of this change for the worse?

A Blueprint to Undermine the U.S. From Within

I recently read one of the most fascinating political articles ever that addresses this question.

It’s a 39-year-old interview with a Soviet KGB defector to the United States named Yuri Bezmenov.

In it, he describes the psychological and propaganda techniques the KGB used (and that Chinese Communists still use today) to undermine the U.S. from within.

I found his analysis highly accurate and highly credible. He explains how controlling the meaning of words and controlling narratives can be used to undermine the beliefs that citizens have in their own society. From there, it’s all downhill for that society.

He’s not alone in his views. His analysis and prognosis are in line with George Orwell’s, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four; Aldous Huxley’s, author of Brave New World; and many others’.

One of the most prescient commentators on the decline of capitalist and democratic societies was Joseph Schumpeter. In his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), he predicted that capitalism would fail and be overtaken by socialism. His reason has nothing to do with a Marxian revolution. He thought that was nonsense.

Instead, capitalism would be a victim of its own success. We would become so wealthy as a society we would take prosperity for granted and forget where the wealth came from. At that point, we would move to socialism (without revolution) on the view that we could afford it.

He said the process would take 50 years. That turned out to be a highly accurate prediction.

A Rogue’s Gallery of Philosophers

The other thinkers along these lines include the post-structuralists (sometimes called postmodernists) including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Herbert Marcuse and others lumped into the category of deconstructionists.

That’s not a very accurate description and they’re not well understood. Interestingly, the entire French philosophy movement of the 1960s of which they were a part entered U.S. academia at a global conference hosted at Johns Hopkins University in 1966.

This article isn’t a deep dive into political theory. I won’t bore you with that, and you can do your own research if you want. It’s enough to know that these post-structuralists were philosophers who don’t get much respect in France today.

They had a bit of a movement in Germany in the 1970s, but that died out after the rampages of the far-left Baader-Meinhof gang (also known as the Red Army Faction) and the murder of German industrial magnate Hanns Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction in 1977.

The only place their philosophy really took off was the U.S. It did not get traction in philosophy departments. But it thrived in English departments, where it spread to primary education.

Words Have No Objective Meaning

Their main idea is that words do not have objective meanings. Words mean what those in power say they mean. Words are used to construct narratives, basically stories that define reality. The “truth” of the narrative is irrelevant. What matters is the power of the narrative to influence perception and behavior.

So those in power define words, construct narratives and control perceptions. This is the real purpose of taking over universities, foundations, media and corporations. You get to control the narrative.

All of this philosophy has its roots in the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger (neither liked democracy very much). They are not to blame for the results, but they are indispensable to understanding the outcome.

The practical implications of controlling the narrative are all around us: climate alarmism, pandemic, DEI, ESG, BLM, insurrection and more.

This redefinition of words and reconstruction of culture were implemented at the elementary and secondary school levels. The program was to eliminate critical thinking, SATs and merit-based admissions. One imperative was to stop teaching history.

What’s left is an ideologically brainwashed generation (or two) who know what they have been programmed to believe but lack the ability to challenge their own views, listen to opposing views or process facts.

Of course, the original source of this program was the Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who many consider the founder of cultural Marxism. His Prison Notebooks (1929-1935), about 3,000 pages long, are the playbook for everything that has happened since.

So, yes, the Bezmenov interview was revealing, and he got the analysis exactly right. Yet his views should be put in the broader context outlined above.

Trump

Which brings us to today’s political scene. Trump may be vulgar and narcissistic. He’s a bit of a Nietzschean Overman with a will to power that is active, not reactive. But make no mistake, Obama was as just narcissistic as Trump, but he was highly polished so he could conceal it. Biden is also a narcissist.

But the real reason Trump is so hated is because he stands in the way of everything described above.

He is, so to speak, not with the program of the progressives and neo-Marxists. That’s why they will stop at nothing — including criminal prosecutions, dismantling his business empire and personal attacks — to stop his current advance toward the White House.

If Trump wins the White House in November 2024, as seems likely, it’ll still take 20 or 30 years to reverse the educational and intellectual damage that’s been done. After all, these ideologies began their “long march through the institutions” in the 1960s.

Today they control the media, entertainment, government bureaucracies, education — all the major institutions that govern American life. The battleground is everywhere, but primarily in elementary schools and homes.

I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it really is a culture war. And remember, politics (and markets) is downstream from culture.

What began as an apparent attempt by the Biden administration to punish Texas over the border dispute turns out to be part of a successful campaign by wealthy donors – including the Rockefeller family – to pressure the government into shifting away from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “The Rockefellers, along with other wealthy donors including the philanthropy of Michael Bloomberg, have provided millions of dollars in recent years to front-line environmental groups that are campaigning against fossil-fuel projects, including LNG terminals that have been proposed on the Gulf Coast,” according to anonymous people familiar with the effort, which they claim is four years in the making.

Some green funders hadn’t given much attention to the LNG exports until recently, in part because of ambivalence about the role natural gas should play in the energy transition. Plus, some previous campaigns to kill LNG terminals had been unsuccessful, damping some donors’ and large environmental organizations’ appetite for taking on the industry. 

The billionaire-backed campaign, starting around four years ago, worked to identify and fund community leaders already campaigning against fossil-fuel projects. The activists buttonholed White House and federal officials in Washington, Houston and Dubai as part of a high-intensity grassroots campaign. -WSJ

Last month, the Biden administration effectively froze the approval process for new LNG terminals after the United States was crowned the world’s largest exporter of the commodity. According to the report, admin officials were influenced by environmental groups, as well as new research on emmissions from LNG facilities.

The move rattled the oil and gas industry, prompting House Republicans to hold a hearing on Tueseday – and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to announce an investigation into the decision.

Enter: The Rockefeller Family

In 2018, a fund created by the heirs of John D. Rockefeller (the Rockefeller Family Fund) launched a green fund called the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas. Its purpose was to call attention to the US’s status as a massive exporter of oil and gas, and to encourage the green movement to take action. Some of the Rockefeller heirs have been campaigning for years against Exxon Mobil – a descendant of Standard Oil – the fossil-fuel company founded by their ancestor.

In 2019, the Funder Collaborative sent a memo to NGOs to assess their level of interest in a campaign to take on the LNG industry. They dispatched scouts to Gulf Coast, home to several LNG facilities, and met with front-line leaders and organizers in opposition to new projects.

Maybe they want higher prices?

As the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee laid out in a Feb. 4 memo, banning American LNG exports won’t lower domestic energy prices – in fact, “Banning LNG exports will actually mean higher prices at home for Americans.”

Domestic natural gas prices are lower and more stable with free trade and open markets. The decision to ban exports creates uncertainty and discourages investments that would otherwise create jobs and expand the supply of natural gas. Banning LNG exports will actually mean higher prices at home for Americans. We need more American energy production to lower prices—not President Biden’s export ban.  

What’s more, preventing exports of LNG to various foreign countries will make them lean more on coal, resulting in more carbon emissions – not less.

The memo also notes that banning LNG exports is not good for the environment.

Clean natural gas is a major reason why the U.S. has reduced emissions more than any other nation. DOE has already studied the climate impacts of U.S. LNG exports, and their reports clearly show the environmental benefits. According to DOE, U.S. LNG exports are also 41% cleaner than Russian natural gas delivered to Europe.

The Journal‘s own comments section is all over this:

So, higher prices and more reliance on coal around the world. Mission accomplished?

Authored by E.J.Antoni via The Epoch Times,

President Joe Biden recently took to a stage in North Carolina to tout his economic agenda, which includes bringing high-speed internet to rural America. But that’s hardly what Americans struggling with a cost-of-living crisis need to hear.

Millions of Americans have been terribly frustrated with the economy over the last three years, as witnessed by countless economic polls. While several aggregate numbers like gross domestic product (GDP) and its largest component, consumer spending, may paint a rosy picture, millions of Americans are economically worse off than they were three years ago.

After annual inflation outpaced earnings growth for a record 26 consecutive months, real (inflation-adjusted) incomes are down about 4.5 percent compared to January 2021. Yet President Biden claims “we’re doin’ pretty damn well economically.”

While President Biden claims that real earnings have risen for the bottom half of workers, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) mere hours before President Biden spoke show real earnings have fallen 1 percent for the bottom half of workers during his tenure.

People are struggling to make ends meet, with credit card debt at a record $1.1 trillion while 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is despite a record number of Americans having multiple jobs as they try to boost their lagging real incomes.

Having maxed out their credit cards, Americans turned to alternative financing options, like buy-now-pay-later plans, to cover their holiday spending. Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans still haven’t even paid off their holiday debt from 2022.

It’s no wonder that defaults and delinquencies on consumer debt like credit cards are rising at the fastest pace since the Global Financial Crisis.

However, official inflation metrics like the consumer price index (CPI) are understating the cost-of-living crisis by underestimating inflation, mostly because of methodological changes over the years. This is especially true for housing, which has seen affordability plummet over the past three years.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the median-priced home is affordable with the median income in only one metropolitan area (population of at least 500,000) in the whole country. Families are maxing out credit cards just to pay their rent.

This debt-fueled consumer spending binge of the past three years mirrors federal government spending. The national debt has breached $34 trillion, with another $1 trillion being added every 100 days or so. Interest on the debt is now $1 trillion annually, the third-largest budget item behind only the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The explosions in government and consumer debt are related. Runaway federal spending prompted the Federal Reserve to create trillions of dollars for the Treasury Department to pay its bills. That drove inflation to 40-year highs, which robbed workers of their purchasing power, prompting them to take on debt to maintain their standard of living.

Ironically, President Biden cited his American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure bill he signed as two critical components of Bidenomics that have aided in his quest to expand high-speed internet access. Of course, these multitrillion-dollar spending packages also supercharged inflation.

From his podium, President Biden predicted that everyone in North Carolina would have high-speed internet access by the end of the decade. Unfortunately, because of the explosion in government spending, the federal debt will exceed $52 trillion by that time.

The never-ending flood of government debt will bring more rounds of inflation and only worsen American families’ financial situations as prices and interest rates fluctuate violently.

Americans’ main concern today is not their internet speed but their inability to afford necessities such as food and housing.

The only way to reverse this cost-of-living crisis is to reverse what got us here: runaway government spending.

The tech industry has been so delirious about the vast wealth that pervasive chatbots will supposedly unleash, it forgot about the massive layoffs on the road to AI nirvana. Luckily, every day there is a new tech giant to remind us of just how much fewer jobs will be needed in said future, and how laughable the Biden Labor Department’s “strong jobs data” is… and today it was network giant Cisco’s turn.

According to Reuters, Cisco will lay off “thousands of employees”, as part of a business restructuring which seeks to “focus on high-growth areas”…. such as AI/chatGPT of course. The San Jose-based company, which has a total employee count of 84,900 according to its website – is still deciding on the total number of employees to be affected by the layoffs, but it will certainly be substantial. The official announcement will likely come next week, when the company holes its earnings call on Feb. 14.

In November 2022, Cisco announced during an earnings call a restructuring that impacted roughly 5% of its workforce which lead to $600 million in severance and other charges. Back then Cisco cut its full-year revenue and profit forecasts, and blamed the weakness on a slowdown in orders in the first quarter, saying “customers are currently focused on installing and implementing products in their environments.” The coming mass termination will probably reiterate continued weakness even as the lunatic buying up chatGPT chips and hot air keep bidding up the AI bubble.

Cisco joins dozens of other tech companies which have started 2024 – a year when supposedly the economy is bursting higher according to fans of the president with dementia and where AI stocks are soaring – with another brutal wave of job cuts, paring back even further after widespread layoffs last year.

So far, nearly 34,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2024 according to Layoffs.fyi.

Prior to Cisco, Snap and DocuSign became the latest examples, announcing earlier this week they they are reducing their workforces by about 10% and 6%, respectively. Earlier this month, software company Okta Inc. said it would eliminate 7% of its staff to reduce costs, affecting about 400 employees. The list goes on, including Big Tech employers like Amazon.com, Salesforce and Meta Platforms.

This year, “tech companies are still trying to correct for their over-hiring during the pandemic surge, given that the high interest-rate environment and tech downturn have both lasted longer than initially expected,” Layoffs.fyi founder Roger Lee told Bloomberg.

There have been two main waves of job cuts in recent years, according to Lee. The “early Covid” spike, from the first to second quarters of 2020, and the “interest rate hike” effect, which has been going on since the second quarter of 2022. “This year’s layoffs are typically smaller and more targeted than the layoffs a year ago,” Lee said.

Although economic factors are the main reason for tech layoffs, Lee noted that many companies are citing the race for artificial intelligence as a factor, as they are shifting resources to focus on AI talent. According to an analysis by CompTIA, which tracks employment trends in the tech industry, job postings in “artificial intelligence or requiring AI skill increased by about 2,000 from December to January, to 17,479.”

“I do feel like most of the layoffs have happened, and companies are going to start to rebound,” said Bert Bean, chief executive officer of staffing company Insight Global. “But it’s still very uncertain.” He expects the market to remain that way for about the next two quarters, “until the Fed really comes out and starts to cut interest rates.”

Good luck with Bert, who clearly has zero conflicts of interest. And also good luck to anyone else who believes that BS from the BLS that unemployment is “falling”; instead here is the truth, and this covers just the past few weeks.

1. Twitch: 35% of workforce
2. Roomba: 31% of workforce
3. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
4. LA Times: 20% of workforce
5. Spotify: 17% of workforce
6. Levi’s: 15% of workforce
7. Xerox: 15% of workforce
8. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
9. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
10. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
11. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
12: Snap: 10% of workforce
13. eBay: 9% of workforce
14. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
15. Paypal: 7% of workforce
16. Okta: 7% of workforce
17. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
18. Docusign: 6% of workforce
19. UPS: 2% of workforce
20. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
21. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
22. Pixar: 1,300 employees

According to the Biden Bureau of Goalseeked Statistical Bullshit, none of this is happening…

Via Global Macro Monitor,

The 49ers’ running back, Christian McCaffrey, aka CMC, was instrumental in leading his team to Super Bowl LVIII, which will be played on February 11th in Las Vegas.   

CMC came to the Niners in a trade for draft picks in October 2022 from the Carolina Panthers, owned by hedge fund great David Tepper.   

We are big fans of Tepper and have posted several pieces about him on GMM, including what he calls his worst trade ever — buying Russian local currency T-Bills (or GKOs) in the late ’90’s.   

Maybe he’s rethinking that… letting CMC go may be his worst.   

McCaffrey, often referred to as the NFL’s best non-QB player and star is the real deal, folks. 

Stanford boy, runner up for the Heisman, and now going to the Super Bowl; and then to…wait for it… Disneyland. 

Whatever the case, Super Bowl ticket prices are stratospheric.  No inflation here. 

Can’t wait for the prop bet on how many times Taylor Swift will be shown on camera.   

Eerily, the last time the Chiefs and 49ers met in the Super Bowl was February 2020,  just a few weeks before COVID broke out in the United States.  Yikes!

Go Niners!

Prospects for a new Israel-Hamas ceasefire are fading fast, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week slammed Hamas’ “delusional” demands. Key among these was a call for total withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the Gaza Strip. 

But a new Times of Israel report says that Israeli negotiators are not seeking to come up with new terms for a deal, but are instead trying to pressure Hamas to withdraw the “delusional” terms.

“The main target now is to create pressure from the Americans and other countries on Qatar, and from there on Hamas, in addition to the military pressure, to bring them down from their delusional demands,” said an official cited in the report.

Starting Wednesday Hamas presented its more detailed response to the Israeli plan. It outlined a 135-day ceasefire during which time all hostages would go free in stages, and Israel would withdraw its forces. Below are the proposed stages:

• Phase one: A 45-day pause in fighting during which all Israeli women hostages, males under 19, the elderly and sick would be exchanged for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza and the reconstruction of hospitals and refugee camps would begin

• Phase two: Remaining male Israeli hostages would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and Israeli forces leave Gaza completely

• Phase three: Both sides would exchange remains and bodies

Some 1,500 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails, which includes a third of these serving life sentences for heinous crimes like murder and assassinations.

As of Thursday the White House said that negotiations were still ongoing, which suggests the Biden administration is still holding out hope that an agreement can be reached, despite Netanyahu having clearly rejected the above while saying there was “no solution besides total victory.”

According to more from the Thursday Times of Israel report, “The US, along with mediators Egypt and Qatar, has continued to push for a hostage release agreement that would be accompanied by a truce, with a Hamas delegation arriving in Cairo Thursday for negotiations.” Additionally, “Egypt pressured Israel to also send representatives but Jerusalem refused to do so, according to Channel 12 news.

Currently, Netanyahu is threatening an all-out assault on the southern city of Rahah, even as it’s packed with hundreds of thousands of refugees – some reports say over one million. The White House has urged an evacuation of civilians first, and on Friday Israeli officials are signaling the military will allow a humanitarian exit corridor.

President Biden added to the pressure by calling Israel’s military response “over the top” in a Thursday night speech…

Biden’s full answer on Gaza. He calls the response from Israel “over the top,” says he got humanitarian aid into Gaza adding “there are a lot of innocent people are starving. Lot innocent people or in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop” pic.twitter.com/EZM01RP9HX

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) February 9, 2024

According to his latest words Friday, Netanyahu said in a written statement, “It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah.”

Crucially the statement added: “On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones.”

Test of U.S. policy coming up. The United States publicly drew the line right here, at Rafah, and Netanyahu now says he will cross it with a “massive operation.” There are ways to finesse disagreements, but he’s not trying: he’s demonstrating that he can make Biden bend the knee. https://t.co/xJ2ioEoXDu

— Aron Lund (@aronlund) February 9, 2024

The Israeli leader has ordered the IDF and Defense Ministry to draw up options for a civilian evacuation. But one key question is: where will they go?

Authored by Peter St.Onge via The Brownstone Institute,

Fresh GDP numbers came in and it was a blowout.

The kind of blowout that only a $2.7 trillion government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it.

Another couple blowout GDP reports like this and Americans will be living under an overpass.

Biden’s GDP Miracle

First the numbers. The Bureau of Economic Analaysis reported that GDP for the fourth quarter came in at 3.3% annualized. Which blew away estimates of 2.0%.

And it brought growth for all of last year to 2.5%.

Which is very healthy.

On paper.

Note the numbers are preliminary, so they’re subject to revision.

Still, the regime media rolled out their finest adjectives: CNN called it “shocking” — in a good way. The New York Times called it “stunning and spectacular.”

So what’s the problem? Debt.

Your grandkids bought it all. And then some.

To see why, in the past 12 months the federal deficit increased by $1.3 trillion. Yet we only got half that in GDP — about $600 billion.

In other words, everything else shrank.

It’s even worse for that brave and stunning Q4 — there we got just $300 billion in extra GDP for — wait for it — $834 billion of new federal debt.

GDP vs Wealth

Remember that GDP isn’t measuring wealth, it’s measuring spending — production which is sold.

As Megan McArdle put it, GDP “counts the dollar value of our output, but not the actual improvement in our lives, or even in our economic condition.”

For example, if you dig holes and fill them, it’s GDP. In fact, you could build a missile, blow up the Golden Gate Bridge and every house within 5 miles of it, and it shows up as GDP. The missile cost money after all, and the government paid for it.

Of course, mainstream media — indeed, mainstream economics — pretends that GDP is identical to wealth. Pumping out articles celebrating GDP as prosperity.

That’s close enough when it’s private firms or individuals producing more to sell more — in that case, rising GDP means the country is getting richer. Because more stuff is being produced.

But it’s actually the opposite when it’s government spending. Because government’s job is taking wealth and lighting it on fire. That means when GDP is growing from government spending it’s not measuring wealth.

It’s measuring dissipation of wealth at best, destruction of wealth at worst.

Essentially, the pace at which we’re going Soviet, replacing private wealth with government waste.

So translating that brave and stunning GDP into the real world, we’re destroying wealth at rates not seen since 2008.

This actually lines up with what we’ve seen in jobs — in a recent video I mentioned that over half the jobs last year were actually government and government-related social service jobs.

In some states it was literally more than all the jobs created — in other words, the private sector is shrinking.

All these government jobs, of course, are unproductive — they’re not making us more prosperous as a society.

On the contrary, they’re taking wealth earned from productive activities and squandering them on vote-buying or worse — think of the wealth-destruction contained in a single EPA bureaucrat.

What’s Next

The lapdog media will keep playing along with the government statisticians and the gaslighting academics.

They’ll keep trashing regular Americans for posting their grocery bills and mortgage payments, praying they can maintain the illusion long enough for the next election.

Fortunately, there’s millions of us who can see the emperor is buck nekkid.

*  *  *

Republished from the author’s Substack