Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

Pakistan has announced it has deported over half a million illegal immigrants in just three months, putting western governments to shame.

In October last year, the Pakistani government told migrants living in the country that they must leave by November 1st if they didn’t have proper authorization papers to remain.

Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti justified the policy by pointing out that Afghan nationals were involved in the majority of suicide bombings, 14 of the 24 recorded attacks, that had occurred through 2023.

“There are no two opinions that we are attacked from within Afghanistan and Afghan nationals are involved in attacks on us. We have given them a Nov. 1 deadline,” Bugti told journalists.

110,064 foreign nationals left the country voluntarily during the timeframe, while a further 541,210 were forcibly removed.

“Around 1.7 million illegal aliens are unlawfully living in the country, the majority of whom are Afghans. They are living without any legal documentation necessary for staying in the country. 541,210 people have been sent back after the cabinet’s approval of the deportation plan for illegal residents,” said a statement.

Authorities are now in the process of identifying more illegal migrants for removal, despite vociferous criticism by human rights groups.

“Meanwhile in Europe, reports from Germany showed the country was planning to take in expelled Afghan nationals who did not wish to return to their Taliban-governed homeland,” reports Remix News.

In comparison, while Pakistan manages to deport half a million illegals with little fanfare, the UK government brags about removing just 38, while sometimes hundreds of boat migrants continue to pour in on a daily basis.

Today we returned a further 38 people to Albania with no right to be in the UK.

This included offenders convicted of drugs offences and sexual communications with a child. pic.twitter.com/faUvxGgWhP

— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) January 24, 2024

*  *  *

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

In an effort to encourage the discovery of more treatment and diagnostic options in the medical field, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finalized a rule allowing certain clinical trials to operate without obtaining informed consent from participants.

The hitch? The study cannot pose more than minimal risk to humans and must include appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of those involved.

The rule was issued in late December 2023 and went into effect on Jan. 22, 2024.

“We anticipate this new rule will enable minimal risk research that would not be practicable to conduct otherwise,” Dr. Robert M. Califf, serving commissioner of Food and Drugs for the FDA, wrote on his FDA blog, “Catching Up With Califf.“ ”This could include studies comparing the effectiveness of approved products to determine which option works best for certain patients.”

The FDA initially proposed the rule in November 2018, permitting an institutional review board to waive the requirement for informed consent under certain conditions. The agency received fewer than 50 comment letters on the proposed rule from academia, institutional review boards (IRBs), public advocacy groups, industry, trade organizations, public health organizations, and citizens.

Most of the comments favored the agency’s efforts, supporting the rule because it reduced administrative burdens on both IRBs and researchers while encouraging valuable research on important health issues affecting the public without putting trial participants at risk, according to the FDA.

Not all comments were supportive, with some warning that “a waiver of consent may be necessary and ethically justifiable for certain types of clinical investigations that are critical for medical advancement, patient care, and safety.” Two commenters believed the rule simply goes “against the spirit” of protecting humans in medicine.

However, many researchers noted in their support that certain minimal-risk trials are nearly impossible to conduct if consent is required. One example includes the analysis of a retrospective records review; before the new rule, such a study required informed consent from the patients whose data were being studied. By being able to dig into such information, these researchers and the FDA argue they may be able to make medical advancements without sacrificing patient safety or rights.

A Road Toward Eroded Trust?

Much of the pushback against the new rule suggested the changes would allow IRBs to compromise on standards more and more, adding that the term “minimal risk” is too vague and could be misinterpreted or abused. The result would be decreased public trust in research and health care providers.

“No third parties, including IRBs, should be allowed to make decisions for study subjects as to what constitutes ’minimal risk,’” one commenter stated.

Minimal risk, as defined by the FDA, means the likelihood of experiencing harm or discomfort is not greater for a subject during a study than for them during everyday tasks. In other words, there’s minimal risk in nearly every activity, from walking to putting away the dishes to picking the kids up from school; the study’s risk cannot exceed the risk one experiences daily.

The ruling comes at a time when the FDA can’t afford to lose any more public trust; the agency has been attempting to rebuild its reputation after the COVID pandemic, during which many believe it was heavily swayed by political influence. The agency has been called upon by industry leaders to tighten its prescription drug and medical device approval process—and to make it more transparent.

In his blog post, Dr. Califf says the new rule is a start.

“These efforts will promote additional robust clinical research to generate the evidence needed to inform clinical decision making and ultimately enhance treatment and diagnostic options for patients,” he wrote.

On Thursday The Washington Post is reporting a hugely unexpected development related to the Israel-Hamas war, writing that President Biden will send CIA Director William J. Burns in the coming days to help negotiate a ceasefire.

Unnamed officials speaking to the publication described that “Burns is expected to travel to Europe for the talks and meet with the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs, David Barnea and Abbas Kamel, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.”

The news that Israel has offered a 2-month pause in fighting, which is being widely called the most significant and far-reaching ceasefire plan since the Gaza war began, emerged Monday and Tuesday. The multi-phase plan would involve the release of groups of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, safe passage for Hamas leaders to Gaza to other countries, and would in the end result in the release of all Israeli and foreign captives still held in the Strip. 

Very quickly upon news of the proposed deal, there were international headlines saying Hamas firmly rejected it while demanding that Israeli forces first withdraw from Gaza.

However, Israeli media has also confirmed that engagement on the issue was still underway. The Jerusalem Post had cautioned, “Senior Israeli officials on Tuesday told Israeli media that the Qatari and Egyptian mediators have not notified them of Hamas’s rejection of the two-month cease-fire deal proposed by the Israeli government.”

While Burns, a former ambassador, has been dispatched to the region before to engage in quiet back-channel diplomacy with allies on a range of issues, it’s somewhat unprecedented that the head of the CIA would be directly involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end a war.

Burns’ involvement sends an interesting message to terror groups and US rival abroad: you can conduct mass atrocities against civilians (Oct.7) and the White House will “reward” you by sending the highest CIA/intelligence official to engage.

There are emerging reports that Hamas is ‘open’ to the prospect of an Israeli-proposed deal:

HAMAS SAYS IF INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ISSUES RULING TO CEASEFIRE, HAMAS WILL ABIDE BY IT IF ISRAEL RECIPROCATES -OFFICIAL

But it remains that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) likely see Washington as a direct party to the conflict on Israel’s side, given the Israelis by and large rely upon US-supplied ordinance and weapons systems, especially in the aerial bombing campaign which has killed many thousands of Gazans.

Israel denies hostage talks advancing as lawmakers balk at talk of military respite https://t.co/pZkwARNycR

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) January 24, 2024

Continues WaPo of some of the details, “Burns’s discussions in Europe are expected to build on his phone conversations with counterparts, as well as the work of the White House’s top Middle East official, Brett McGurk, who this week has held related meetings in Qatar’s capital, Doha and in Cairo.”

As is typical, the CIA has yet to comment, and is unlikely to do so until at least after the fact of Burns’ overseas trip.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

How does it feel to have the largest government that the planet has ever seen? 

When I was growing up, I was taught that we had a capitalist system and that we had a limited federal government.  Of course neither of those things has been true for a very long time.  Today, the United States has the biggest government in the history of the world, and it gets even bigger with each passing year.  Running that gigantic government requires more money than we actually have, and so we are going into staggering amounts of debt. 

But there is no way that our politicians will ever agree to reduce the size of the federal government to an appropriate size.  So we are stuck with this system until the day when it finally collapses.

Let me give you some numbers that illustrate what I am talking about.

• Approximately 3 million people work directly for the federal government.

• The federal government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2023.  That figure is larger than the GDP of every nation on the entire planet except for the U.S. and China.

• More than 70 million Americans are on Social Security.

• More than 65 million Americans are on Medicare.

• More than 81 million Americans are on Medicaid.

• More than 41 million Americans are on food stamps.

Of course there are many more programs that hand out money to the population on a regular basis.

We have reached a stage where most U.S. households are at least partially dependent on the federal government.

We very much prefer not to call ourselves “socialists”, but that is precisely what we are.  Sadly, if we attempted to go back to the way things were 100 years ago, most Americans would not know how to survive.

The massively bloated federal government that so many of us depend upon constantly consumes enormous mountains of money.

We cannot provide enough money to keep it going, and so the federal government has been piling up insane amounts of debt.

Since 1980, the size of the U.S. national debt has gone from 1 trillion dollars to 34 trillion dollars.

The combined wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio and George Soros would not be enough to even pay the interest on our national debt for a single year…

The combined net worth of the most prominent billionaires in the United States would not be enough to pay a single year’s interest payment on America’s ballooning national debt, which currently stands at an astonishing $34 trillion.

The combined net worth of some of America’s most prominent billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and George Soros, adds up to approximately $726 billion according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Meanwhile, the net interest on our national debt is currently at $730.8 billion, dwarfing the sum for previous years.

We are now at a point where the national debt has become a major national crisis, and the percentage of Americans that believe that our politicians should do something about this has been going up…

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 57% of Americans said reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress, up from 45% the year prior.

But the politicians in Washington don’t have the stomach to do anything about the wild spending.

They know that if we tried to live within our means, it would instantly plunge the U.S. economy into a horrifying economic depression.

And voters wouldn’t like that at all.

So instead they are just going to try to keep the party going for as long as they can.

In fact, the size of the federal deficit in December was 52 percent larger than for the same month a year earlier…

The U.S. federal government posted a December deficit of $129 billion, up $44 billion or 52% from a year earlier as outlays rose while receipts fell from December 2022 levels that were swelled by pandemic-deferred tax payments, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday.

The Treasury said that outlays for December rose 3% to $559 billion, a December record, partly as a result of higher Social Security outlays and interest on the public debt. Receipts for the month fell 6% to $429 billion.

America’s “empire of money” really has reached the endgame.

Our debt spiral is out of control, our currency is rapidly losing value, and everyone can see that our entire system will inevitably collapse.

But for the moment, the talking heads on television continue to tell everyone that our leaders know exactly what they are doing, and millions of people actually believe that nonsense.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Regional factory activity in the Tenth District of the Kansas City Fed declined sharply in January, with production and new orders plunging but prices paid soaring.

The headline index tumbled from -1 to -9 – a contraction was driven more by durable goods manufacturing, particularly nonmetallic mineral and primary metal manufacturers.

That was the 16th straight month without a positive (expansionary) print.

Under the hood it was a bloodbath…

With prices soaring as growth signals weaken…

Comments from respondents were not all upbeat

“Freight due to issues in Suez and Panama canals are already affecting inbound prices. We expect that to increase in coming months. We are currently projecting a minimum cost increase to raw materials of between 5-10% depending on the item.”

“Demand is still weak. More companies are asking for longer payment terms.”

“There is a lot of uncertainty with inflation and demand. We are being optimistic and planning on growth, but we don’t have the visible indicators to support that plan in the market today.”

…and stocks are at record-er and record-er highs and Bidenomics is working!

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The Denver hospital system is turning away local residents because it is flooded with migrant visits…

ABC News reports Denver hospital system may collapse due to migrant crisis: ‘We are turning down patients’

Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne warned the center is in a crucial moment due to unexpected costs associated with immigrant visits.

What I think is not being said is that Denver Health is at a critical, critical point and that we need to take this up in 2024,” Lynne told the Denver City Council, according to the Denver Post.

Eight-thousand migrants from Central America accounted for approximately 20,000 visits in 2023. Denver Health asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide funds for immigrants’ medical costs. The state and federal governments aren’t reimbursing the hospital, which spent $136 million for patients who didn’t pay.

CEO Speaks Out on Uncompensated Migrant Care

Beckers Hospital Review notes CEO says ‘It’s Going to Break Denver Health’

The health system is overwhelmed with care costs for uninsured patients, particularly migrants — 36,000 of whom have arrived in Denver since December 2022, according to The Denver Post.

“Where do you think the migrants are getting care? They are getting care at Denver Health,” Dr. Lynne said at a Jan. 9 finance and governance committee meeting. Her remarks were reported by CBS Colorado on Jan. 12.

Denver Health has treated more than 8,000 migrants who lack legal documentation in the past year, totaling about 20,000 visits, according to Steven Federico, MD, a pediatrician at the health system.

The majority of these patients are coming from Venezuela and arrive needing treatment for chronic and communicable diseases after making the difficult journey.

Eric Lavonas, MD, an emergency physician at Denver Health, expects the situation to worsen as subzero temperatures sweep across Colorado, exposing unhoused, uninsured populations to frostbite and hypothermia.

In 2020, the health system had about $60 million in uncompensated care costs. Last year, costs sprung to $136 million, a quarter of which came from caring for non-Denver residents.

Due to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, Denver Health cannot turn patients away from the emergency room and has resorted to other cost-cutting measures. The system closed 15 of its 78 inpatient beds for substance misuse and mental health treatment and did away with planned salary increases. 

Denver Health lost $35 million in 2022, and 2023 could have been worse had the system not received some outside help, according to the Post.

Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), discusses the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.

Know Your Rights

The CMS want you to Know Your Rights.

Given 20,000 visits from illegal migrants, it seems the policy “know your rights” is a rousing success except to those who ultimately have to pay for the free handouts.

“I suspect that no other hospital in the state of Colorado can say that [they have cared for so many migrants] and there has been no reimbursement for that and quite frankly it is an ongoing conversation with the city, with the state and with the federal government,” Dr. Lynne said.

Questions Abound

1. Is Denver bagging or complaining?

2. Who was it that declared Denver a sanctuary city?

3. What percentage of Denver is migrants?

Is Denver a Sanctuary City?

The answer to question number one is Denver seems to be both bragging and complaining.

The answer to question number 2 is more entertaining.

In 2017, Mayor Michael Hancock, said Denver “won’t be bullied or blackmailed,” mayor says as city officials propose limiting cooperation with ICE

There was no official statement using the term “sanctuary city” but here are details of the ordinance Denver passed.

• Denver will not honor immigration detainer requests to hold immigrants who would otherwise be released from jail so that immigration agents can pick them up. Denver will only respond to a judicial warrant — one signed by a judge. This reflects existing policy and the city’s understanding of the Fourth Amendment.

• Denver employees will not ask for or collect information on people’s citizenship or immigration status, except as required by federal or state law. This is already prevailing city policy.

• Denver will not share any information for the purposes of enforcing immigration law. Fingerprints of people booked into the jail will still go to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, as required by federal law, and sheriff’s deputies will inform ICE when certain immigrants are due to be released from jail.

• Denver will not use city resources to assist immigration enforcement, including prohibiting ICE agents from entering secure areas of the jail. That last practice is a change from current policies.

• The ordinance applies to all city employees, including probation officers and pre-trial services staff in the Denver County Courts. Making this an ordinance means that employees who violate these rules face stiffer penalties than they would for violating a predominant practice.

• “We will not be bullied and we will not be blackmailed. We lean on our values. The reality is we may lose funding. We understood that going forward. We are going to stand by our values because when this administration is over, that’s what we’ll be left with, our values,” said Mayor Hancock.

Unspokenly Sanctuary

If that does not constitute “sanctuary city” what does?

However, denial now runs deep.

“Colorado is not a sanctuary state, and the Governor is not focused on buzzwords but on ensuring our law enforcement resources go toward fighting actual crimes to help make Coloradans safer,” Conor Cahill, a spokesperson for governor Jared Polis, told Axios in a statement in January of 2023.

Douglas County Not Sanctuary

On October 22, 2023, CBS News reported Douglas County warns Denver not to send migrants their way: “Not a sanctuary jurisdiction”

In Douglas County, leaders are affirming they are not a sanctuary county and calling on neighboring jurisdictions to follow suit.

While it doesn’t appear Denver is currently trying to relocate any migrants to Douglas County, commissioners there want to make it clear that they’re not welcome. It comes after Denver sent migrants to Adams County with little to no communication.

“Douglas County expressly affirms that the county is not a sanctuary jurisdiction,” Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon said in an Oct. 12 news conference.

“It was just a lot of political rhetoric and I just don’t think that Douglas County commissioners have the responsibility or even the right to demand or dictate that the Denver mayor say that Denver is not a sanctuary city,” said Thomas.

But she agrees Douglas County is not the place for migrants. Despite the county being one of the wealthiest in the country, Thomas says it’s an issue of resources.

“We have no shelters in Douglas County and it’s not humane or compassionate to bring people here to Douglas County and drop them off at a park,” said Thomas.

The resolution states Douglas County recognizes the humanitarian plight of these migrants and encourages legal migration. It also encourages Douglas County citizens who want to help migrants to donate to the Newcomers Fund.

What Percentage of Denver is Migrant?

It’s about one in twelve according to Vera.

Who Will Pay for This?

I believe you know the answer.

You will, to varying degrees. Those in sanctuary cities like Denver will bear the brunt whether or not the mayor or governor is in denial.

Those in places like Douglas County that “recognize the humanitarian plight” while “expressly affirming that the county is not a sanctuary jurisdiction,” not as much.

Emergency Executive Order to Stem Migrant Arrivals

On December 28, I noted New York City Mayor Issues Emergency Executive Order to Stem Migrant Arrivals

Adams said his executive order will help the city manage the incoming migrants “in an orderly way.”

That’s excellent news. And take heart. Kamala Harris is on the case.

Biden Doing All He Can

Our “Roots Causes Strategy” has been in place for 2.5 years, said Kamala Harris.

If that’s not progress, what is?

In addition to the clearly magnificent performance of Kamala Harris, I would like to remind everyone that Biden is doing everything he can.

Q&A on Everything He Can

Q: Everything he can? Like what?
A: Like new back doors.

Texas Showdown

In Texas, the Supreme Court Lets Feds Cut Abbott’s Razor Wire

The swing vote, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is a Trump nominee. Expect to hear calls of “traitor”.

There is one way to decide this issue. Vote out Biden. The ruling does help Trump.

Meanwhile, the floodgates are open.

Sanctuary Cities Seek More Money for Migrants, But is Money the Problem?

On December 30, I asked Sanctuary Cities Seek More Money for Migrants, But is Money the Problem?

I suspect you know the answer to this one. If not here it is. The more money we throw at this problem, the worse it will get.

By the way, if you have not figured this out, it’s very inflationary.

Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in jail on Friday for ignoring a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.

The DOJ had sought six months in jail and a $200,000 fine.

As we noted last week, Navarro was arrested at a DC airport in June of 2022 on two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges for doing exactly what Obama AG Eric Holder did (with zero consequences), and more recently, Hunter Biden – ignore a Congressional subpoena when he told the Jan. 6 committee to pound sand.

“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi in a 20-page sentencing memo submitted last Thursday night, Politico reported at the time.

Navarro was held in contempt in April of 2022 after he refused to provide documents and testimony to the Jan. 6 committee. A grand jury agreed with prosecutors that Navarro knew Trump hadn’t asserted executive privilege to bar him from testifying, and that even if Trump had – it wouldn’t have barred Navarro from testifying about certain non-covered subjects demanded by the Committee.

“At no time did the Defendant provide the Committee with any evidence supporting his assertion that the former President had invoked executive privilege over the information the Committee’s subpoena sought from the Defendant, or otherwise challenge the Committee’s authority or composition,” wrote Aloi. “The Court was left with only the Defendant’s fan fiction version of what the Defendant wished or hoped the former President might have wanted but left unsaid.“

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Unpopulism

The Fed just tweaked its BTFP programme. It’s still being phased out on 11 March, but effective immediately the adjusted rate for borrowing will ”be no lower” than that of reserve balances. This prevents markets arbitraging the BTFP’s typical 4.88% rate vs. the 5.40% rate on reserve balances, with this gap widening due to the market expectation –read ‘salivation’– of rate cuts. In short, Wall Street was making money thrice: first, via lower bond yields (“because rate cuts”), second on higher everything else (“because rate cuts”), and third because of arbitrage: markets always exploit those variations rather than lending consumer savings to businesses for productive investment, as economics textbook wrongly teach. So, that’s one blow vs. easy money. Another is this morning’s chatter that the BoJ might raise rates before the Fed cuts following the strong US PMI data seen yesterday. If the looming Fed meeting doesn’t clearly open the door for that magical March rate cut, then it looks likely yields can travel significantly higher again, short term.

Acronyms like BTFP are important. Try explaining what played out in the last 16 years without saying NIRP, QE, QT, RRP, MMT, or BTFP. However, all the alphabetti-spaghetti serves a political-economy goal: the real key is in understanding what that goal is. Sadly, one can’t study political economy at a Western university today, just ‘political science’, taught by Marxists, and ‘economics’, taught by crony capitalists. For that and other reasons, Wall Street shows no interest in thinking in this way – which is fine until it gets the underlying assumption wrong.

It was OK not to grasp NIRP and QE proved financial capitalism’s political economy was rotten because those acronyms were Cantillon pipes taking money to The Street. With each new missive from a Fed-plumbing expert I asked, “Who are they bailing out this time?”

It wasn’t OK to miss that NIRP, QE, and de facto MMT of huge fiscal spending into public pockets supported by central banks changed the political economy. And we got huge demand, and huge inflation, helped by the corporate oligopolies The Street and global regulators helped build over decades.

It wasn’t OK to look at BTFP in 2023 and scream “rate cuts!” Those making that call were still in the Yes-We-Cantillon mode of expecting a bailout. Yet post-inflation, the Fed saw the political-economy game had changed. Banks couldn’t be allowed to fail, but rates had to stay high. Now BTFP is being phased out before rates are cut. Does a crisis lie finally ahead, or a Brave New World?

It isn’t OK not to see we are in a post-Ukraine and post-10/7 “pre-war” world of national insecurity, and face a Red Sea crisis that suggests at least that freight rates plateau at four times recent lows. Headlines of war with Russia should be taken seriously but not literally, but speak to the direction of fiscal, monetary, industrial, and trade policy. A new political-economy waits to be born while the old refuses to die: and so monsters arise – at least for a Wall Street thinking acronyms spell CASH.

Grasping the zeitgeist, the Financial Times op-eds ‘The world must start to prepare for Trump 2.0’, making the specific point that, “US allies, especially in Europe, need to begin rethinking security arrangements.” Indeed, EU defence spending needs to increase not just to 2% of GDP, but arguably by at least 2 percentage points, for decades, if it is to have any hope of ‘strategic autonomy’. That will, in turn, require new industries, guns-or-butter choices, and a new fiscal-monetary-industry-trade policy under a new political-economy (as argued here in detail). Moreover, the US will need to do the same too given it also has hard choices to make – which is why it’s likely to lean on its allies: it’s a cliché, but freedom really isn’t free: and as we see in the Red Sea, neither is ‘free’ trade.

Meanwhile, in China the PBOC is setting up a loan bureau to direct cash to strategic sectors, which will only lead to more trade clashes with the US and Europe ahead. Yet, oddly in a political-economy where Common Prosperity and national security rules, authorities are also now demanding SOE CEOs be ranked by how their stock performs: sadly, Wall Street shows us that incentive system produces the polar opposite of both common prosperity and national security.   

So, can we still get those 2024 rate cuts? Yes, but we need supply to stay cheap and steady when it’s now getting pricier and wobblier – as the ECB is likely to note today (see our meeting preview here); and we need demand to stay in check when rate cuts are designed to increase it, and as we also have to contend with more populist fiscal policies. For example, even in a fiscally prudent Australia where the market was begging for rate cuts (despite property already overheating again as soon as they were sniffed), the government is rolling back large tax cuts for high earners with a low marginal propensity to consume in favor of more expensive tax cuts for lower-income earners with a much higher chance of going shopping. And to offset their higher taxes, wealthy Aussies will do what the tax system incentivizes: buy more investment property, forcing house prices even higher, to offset tax via the interest payments on their mortgage. But “rate cuts soon!’, right?

Point me to a government willing to tighten its belt as in the pre-Covid political-economy, and I will show you someone who will lose their next election. More money is going to be spent. The only question is if it’s in a new political-economy to boost supply, which is inflationary short term but disinflationary longer term, and which will mean geopolitical tensions, or in an old political-economy to boost demand, which is just inflationary – especially when supply is not assured unless we get a geopolitical retreat by the West.

So markets will have to adapt – and the ones who read political economy will do it fastest. For example, the FT also notes ‘Wall Street’s bargain with Trump’, which with commendable honesty points out the pink paper had “only nice things to say about Benito Mussolini in a June 1933 supplement entitled ‘The Renaissance of Italy: Fascism’s gift of order and progress’.” That’s meant as a warning, of course. However, it makes a less convincing case for handwringing over business’ attraction to strong leaders after decades of backing politically blind globalization, which is now crumbling at the edges after producing the very populism being decried.  

In short, populism is “unpopulism” for markets when they aren’t getting the same old Cantillon cash.

Corporate media is on life support. Driven to cut costs by sagging ad revenues and waning appetite for propaganda, layoffs and ‘restructurings’ are happening all over.

Earlier this week the LA Times laid off 120 employees, around 20% of its newsroom.

Seasonal adjustments. https://t.co/zyvIar3Q1X

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 25, 2024

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed and Vice Media – two former darlings of digital media, are looking to siphon off assets. BuzzFeed, which has lost over 97% of its value since going public in 2021, is looking to sell its food sites, Tasty and WeFeast. While Fortress Investment Group, which took over Vice in bankruptcy last year, is looking to sell its Refinery29 women’s lifestyle site, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Fortress is in talks to sell Refinery29 after a failed attempt to find a buyer for Vice in its entirety, which includes its namesake news brand, production studio and creative agency, among other assets. Fortress is in discussions with prospective bidders for Refinery29, which saw a decrease in revenue to $30 million last year from around $50 million in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter.

Vice notably bought Refinery29 for $400 million in 2019, while Tasty was an attempt by BuzzFeed to generate revenue streams beyond advertising with direct sales of kitchenware.

The outlets join Jezebel (“Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth”), which was shuttered in November by G/O Media amid corporate layoffs, and Business Insider, which is now cutting 8% of its staff, per Semafor.

Time Magazine also laid off 30 people this week.

Memo to staff from Time magazine CEO Jess Sibley announcing the cuts, saying the company has “diligently reduced our expenses” but “there is still more work to be done.” https://t.co/Sarjuf7GsX pic.twitter.com/xiX16mgdAg

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) January 23, 2024

In 2023, there were over 30,000 workers laid off by media companies.

This is the largest number of cuts in employment since 2020 when Covid-19 was raging and over 30,000 workers were laid off.

The figure is also six times higher than the number of job losses in 2022 when several large media companies including Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney and others had undergone a series of layoffs impacting thousands of media workers. -Forbes

Taylor, Taylor, Taylor

Opining on the sad state of journalism is Jeff Bezos’s vocal-fry champion,Taylor Lorenz, who said this week that “The entire journalism industry is basically in a free-fall,” and that the LA Times’ woes follow “months and months of layoffs in the media industry.”

“And it’s not just digital media sites,” she continues. “Local news has been obliterated, the newspaper industry is cratering, radio is essentially dead – aside from NPR which has been gutted. Meanwhile, hundreds of workers at Conde Nast, the parent company of pretty much every major magazine from GQ to Vogue to the New Yorker to Vanity Fair are on strike.”

Good morning. Taylor Lorenz has some great news for you today:
pic.twitter.com/xRP4SALnbv

— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) January 25, 2024

More on Taylor

Despite her claims that she is a grassroots reporter that worked her way up from independent media into the halls of establishment journalism, Taylor Lorenz represents the quintessential media spin doctor.  She is notorious for her consistent and often ludicrous defense of the Biden Administration, as well as her constant attacks on the alternative media; specifically on conservative YouTubers and social media accounts like Libs of TikTok. 

She became somewhat famous after her exposé on Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik in what many argued was an attempt to dox and intimidate a person critical of woke activists (the initial story published by Lorenz contained a link to the woman’s work address and other work details.  A later version of the story had the link removed). 

She was also accused of lying in an article about coverage of the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial when she claimed she had contacted certain YouTuber’s for comment before publishing her attack on them (they say she did not and she had no evidence to support her assertions).  The Washington Post was forced to quietly stealth-edit her article in embarrassment.

The point is, Lorenz has made it clear by her actions that she views citizen journalists negatively if they aren’t on the political left.  She has tried to sabotage them using dubious methods, and ironically it is this kind of behavior from corporate journalists like her that has led directly to the death of her industry.  It is this kind of biased behavior that has compelled the public to seek out the alternative media and abandon legacy platforms.   

No matter how much you hate journalists, it’s not enough

In a 2022 Pew Research poll of US mainstream journalists of all ages, over 55% said that they don’t believe all sides of any given story deserve equal coverage.  The youngest journalists (ages 18-29) were the worst, with 63% saying they did not agree with equal coverage.  Lorenz reflects this very sentiment as she rolls her eyes at the notion of objectivity in news writing.   

In a similar poll, over 76% of the general public said they want equal coverage of all sides by the media.  The disconnect between establishment news sources and what their audience wants is immense.  Given that progressive ideology is greatly over-represented in most corporate media, the public has simply sought out the other side of the story.       

Lorenz argues that she wouldn’t want to live in a world where people get their news from sixty second TikToks (while posting her appeal to TikTok), but she knows full well that it’s not TikTok journalism that’s taking the legs out from under organizations like The Washington Post – It’s the growing prevalence of the alternative media which she has lambasted for a large portion of her career.

That said, ultimately the picture Lorenz paints is actually a positive one (though she doesn’t realize it).  The implosion of legacy media is an expression of the free market.  The public has spoken and finally these people are suffering the consequences of their dishonest activities.  And to be clear, no, legacy companies do not matter.  

They are not special or integral to the economy or to society.  They are not “too big to fail” and their collapse should be applauded after the years of disinformation and propaganda they have excreted on the doorsteps of the American populace.  They deserve this and the world is better off without them.  They are already being replaced with better companies and better journalists; may the free market run its course.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering – while corporate media has been imploding, ZeroHedge has been growing. We thank you for your readership.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows lost another attempt to force review of her disqualification “decision” before the United States Supreme Court hears arguments on the issue on Feb. 8th.

The Maine Supreme Court declined to review the matter. With other states like Massachusetts ruling this week against disqualification, Colorado will remain the outlier as the only state supreme court willing to embrace this dangerous and anti-democratic theory.

I have previously written about my criticism of this unfounded theory. Advocates have been rejected in a dozen states, but have continued to seek judges willing to accept this novel argument. They knew that they had Bellows at hello given her prior public comments.

Bellows previously declared that “the Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election…The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.” 

A year after the riot, Bellows was still denouncing the “violent insurrection.”

The decision is poorly written and conclusory in virtually every respect.

A couple weeks ago, Maine Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy deferred judgment, in the case given the upcoming argument over the Colorado decision.

Bellows appealed but the justices noted that Murphy had only deferred judgment.

He had not ruled.

Thus, “because the appeal is not from a final judgment, we dismiss the appeal as interlocutory and not justiciable.”

So the Maine event will not happen.

That leaves Colorado where, on a court entirely composed of Democratically appointed justices, advocates could only secure a 4-3 ruling with a vigorous dissent. Courts in ultra liberal states like Massachusetts and Michigan have ruled against disqualification.

In the meantime, over half of the states have now filed to denounce this theory and ask the Supreme Court to reverse Colorado.