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Apocalypse Now: The Government’s Use Of Controlled-Chaos To Maintain Power

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Apocalypse Now: The Government’s Use Of Controlled-Chaos To Maintain Power

Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

Figure One: Just stop a few of their machines and radios and telephones and lawn mowers…throw them into darkness for a few hours and then you just sit back and watch the pattern. 

Figure Two: And this pattern is always the same? 

Figure One: With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find…and it’s themselves. And all we need do is sit back…and watch…and let them destroy themselves.

– “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” Twilight Zone

Will 2024 be the year the Deep State’s exercise in controlled chaos finally gives way to an apocalyptic dismantling of our constitutional republic, or what’s left of it?

All the signs seem to point in this direction.

For years now, the government has been pushing us to the brink of a national nervous breakdown.

This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by—has manifested itself in the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today.

Why is the Deep State engineering this societal madness? What’s in it for the government?

What is playing out before us is a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps the populace fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, and incapable of standing united in defense of our freedoms.

It’s not conspiratorial.

It’s a power play.

Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, understood the dynamics behind this power play.

In the Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” Serling imagined a world in which the powers-that-be carry out a social experiment to see how long it would take before the members of a small American neighborhood, frightened by a sudden loss of electric power and caught up in fears of the unknown, will transform into an irrational mob and turn on each other.

It doesn’t take long at all.

Likewise, in Netflix’s apocalyptic thriller Leave the World Behind (produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s studio), unexplained crises lead to a technological blackout that leaves the populace disconnected, disoriented, isolated, suspicious, and under attack from mysterious ailments and each other.

As one of Leave the World’s characters speculates, the culprit behind the escalating catastrophes, which range from WiFi outages and mysterious health ailments to cities under siege from rogue forces, may be the result of a military campaign intended to destabilize a nation by forcing people to turn against each other.

It’s really not so far-flung a scenario when you consider some of the many ways the government already has the ability to manufacture crises in order to sow fear, fuel hysteria, destabilize the nation and institute martial law.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture health crises. Long before COVID-19 locked down the nation, the U.S. government was creating lethal viruses and unleashing them on an unsuspecting public.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture civil unrest and political upheaval. Since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI has been using agent provocateurs to infiltrate activist groups in order to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize” them.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture economic instability. As the national debt continues to rise upwards of $34 trillion, with little attempt by federal agencies to curtail spending, it stands as the single-most pressing threat to the economy.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture environmental disasters. Deployed in 1947, Project Cirrus, an early precursor to HAARP, the government’s weather-altering agency, attempted to disable a hurricane as it was moving out to sea. Instead of weakening the storm, however, the government steered it straight into Georgia, resulting in millions of dollars in damaged properties.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture communications blackouts. Internet and cell phone kill switches enable the government to shut down communications at a moment’s notice. It’s a practice that has been used before in the U.S. In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels (reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone). In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked (again, same rationale). And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down (this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man).

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture terrorist attacks. Indeed, the FBI has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting.

The government has the tools and the know-how to manufacture propaganda aimed at mind control and psychological warfare. Not long ago, the Pentagon was compelled to order a sweeping review of clandestine U.S. psychological warfare operations (psy ops) conducted through social media platforms. The investigation came in response to reports suggesting that the U.S. military had been creating bogus personas with AI-generated profile pictures and fictitious media sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to manipulate social media users. Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare (or psy ops) can take many forms: mind control experiments, behavioral nudging, propaganda. In fact, the CIA spent nearly $20 million on its MKULTRA program, reportedly as a means of programming people to carry out assassinations and, to a lesser degree, inducing anxieties and erasing memories, before it was supposedly shut down.

We must never forget that the government no longer exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.

Rather, “we the people” are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Think about it: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, trap and control us.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from threats to our freedoms.The U.S. government is creating the threats to our freedoms.

It’s telling that in Leave the World Behind, before disaster strikes, the main characters—on their way to a family vacation—are utterly oblivious, connected to their electronic devices and insulated from each other and the world around them. Adding to the disconnect, the family’s teen daughter, Rose, is fixated on binge-watching episodes of Friends, even as the world falls apart around them. As TV critic Jen Chaney explains, the sitcom’s presence in the story “underlines how human beings crave escapism at the expense of embracing the actual present, a different way of ‘leaving the world behind.’

We’re in a similar escapist bubble, suffering from a “crisis of the now,” which keeps us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality.

Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

“Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.”

Yet in addition to being distracted by our electronic devices and diverted by bread-and-circus entertainment spectacles, we are also being polarized by political theater, which aims to keep us divided and at war with each other.

This is the underlying cautionary tale of Leave the World Behind and “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”: we are being manipulated by forces beyond our control.

A popular meme circulating a while back described it this way:

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the government has never stopped shaking the jar.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 16:20

‘Goldilocks’ Gored By Growth Gains; Bitcoin Bounces As Rate-Cut Hopes Hammered

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‘Goldilocks’ Gored By Growth Gains; Bitcoin Bounces As Rate-Cut Hopes Hammered

Strong jobs data (ADP jobs added more than expected, slowing wage growth, and initial jobless claims at 2023 lows) and strong Services economy survey data (PMI at 5 month highs) prompted higher Treasury yields today, and sent rate-hike expectations tumbling for March

Source: Bloomberg

In the words of one veteran trader (who happens to be long and wrong), “the growth’s just too damn hot… The Fed can’t stand by as the market runs wild on rate-cut hopes.” (edited for NSFW words)

And rate-cut expectations for 2024 have tumbled overall…

Source: Bloomberg

And yields surged back to (or above) yesterday’s highs (curve basically all up around 6-7bps today). It’s been an ugly week for bonds to start 2024…

Source: Bloomberg

As the 10Y Yield surged back up to 4.00% (and stalled again)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y yields has broken back above its recent downtrend line…

Source: Bloomberg

And the longest-duration stocks suffered (MAG7 has erased all of December’s gains)…

Source: Bloomberg

And as goes MAG7, so goes the market (for now) as the 492 ain’t helping. Nasdaq was the day’s biggest loser while The Dow managed very small gains. A late-day slump ($4BN MoC to sell), wiped off any lipstick left on any pigs…

Nasdaq is down 5 days in a row – the longest losing streak since Dec 2022.

Small Caps (Russell 2000) and Big-Tech (Nasdaq) are down around 3.5% to start the year…

The S&P is down almost 2% – the worst start to a year since 2008…

The 200bps underperformance of Nasdaq relative to the S&P 500 in the last 5 days is among the largest in the last two years…

And it’s not just an AI thing as AI-at-risk names are down just as much in 2024 so far…

Source: Bloomberg

Anti-Obesity drug names are outperforming though in 2024 so far…

Source: Bloomberg

Value stocks have outperformed growth for the last few weeks, breaking the downtrend…

Source: Bloomberg

After yesterday’s pukefest to $41k (on nothing), Bitcoin ripped back up to $44k today as the spot ETF approval seems imminent-erer…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied for the 5th straight day (its longest win streak since September), rallying back during the European session after Asian weakness. This is the best start to a year for the dollar since 2005.

Source: Bloomberg

Oddly – again – with ‘growth’ fears sparking higher yields, lower rate-cut hopes, oil prices… tumbled. The driver was major inventory builds in gasoline and distillates (because the middle east is still a shit-show). WTI came within a tick of $74 intraday overnight before dropping back to almost a $70 handle before bouncing back…

Spot Gold managed very modest gains on the day, holding above $2040…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, financial conditions are starting to tighten (a little for now, but that’s a start)…

Source: Bloomberg

And remember The Fed Minutes specifically pushed back against too much exuberance in financial markets:

“Many participants remarked that an easing in financial conditions beyond what is appropriate could make it more difficult for the Committee to reach its inflation goal.”

So, be careful what you wish for – the porridge is too hot for Goldilocks here and if tomorrow’s payrolls print is ‘hot’, hopes and dreams of ‘just right’ rate-cuts in 2024 will be dashed on the hungry chins of ravenous bears.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 16:00

McDonald’s CEO Says Global Boycott Fueled By “Misinformation” Has Caused “Meaningful Business Impact”

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McDonald’s CEO Says Global Boycott Fueled By “Misinformation” Has Caused “Meaningful Business Impact”

Some Western brands in countries where pro-Palestinian sentiment has been traditionally strong have been battered with boycotts as consumers turn to local alternatives following Israel’s large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip in late October. 

McDonald’s locations across the Middle East have been hit the hardest with boycotts since McDonald’s Israel on X said it would give out 100,000 free meals. 

That’s the moment when boycotts hit McDonald’s operators across the Middle East. 

Bloomberg data in late October into early November shows the number of news headlines featuring “Boycott McDonald’s” surged after the McDonald’s Israel’s X post and the IDF’s subsequent invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27.

“Boycott McDonalds. Let them feel the hurt,” said one X user who responded to McDonald’s Israel post in October. 

Cairo resident Reham Hamed, who boycotted McDonald’s, told Reuters in November: 

“I feel that even if I know this will not have a massive impact on the war, then this is the least we can do as citizens of different nations so we don’t feel like our hands are covered in blood.” 

Following the controversial McDonald’s Israel X post, franchise groups in Kuwait, Pakistan, and other Middle East countries issued statements stating they disagreed with their Israeli counterparts. 

Folks are still boycotting the fast-food chain. 

Fast forward to Thursday morning. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski wrote a LinkedIn post explaining that the Middle East boycotts have had a “meaningful business impact.” He said the boycotts were “due to the war and associated misinformation.” 

I also recognize that several markets in the Middle East and some outside the region are experiencing a meaningful business impact due to the war and associated misinformation that is affecting brands like McDonald’s. This is disheartening and ill-founded. In every country where we operate, including in Muslim countries, McDonald’s is proudly represented by local owner operators who work tirelessly to serve and support their communities while employing thousands of their fellow citizens. That local community connection is the genius of the McDonald’s System.

Bloomberg noted franchises operate the majority of McDonald’s restaurants around the world. The company generates about 10% of its revenues from the Middle East. 

It’s not just McDonald’s. Reuters said other Western brands, such as Starbucks and KFC, have been boycotted. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 15:45

“The System Is Not Going To Let Trump Win” – Dems’ Real Puppet Isn’t Gavin, It’s Nikki: Tucker And Vivek

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“The System Is Not Going To Let Trump Win” – Dems’ Real Puppet Isn’t Gavin, It’s Nikki: Tucker And Vivek

With establishment favorite Nikki Haley overtaking long-time runner-up Ron DeSantis in the latest polls, the mainstream media is going wild about the chances of the woman-warmonger toppling Trump somehow.

For context…

However, Trump’s massive lead is not stopping the deep state from doing everything it can to promote Haley, and that prompted Vivek Ramaswamy and Tucker Carlson to expose some reality behind her sudden success.

Tucker starts by pointing out the dilemma Democratic megadonors face with Joe Biden’s declining popularity and Kamala Harris’s unpopularity, suggesting that these donors might be attempting to subvert the Republican Party by backing a candidate like Nikki Haley.

“Strip away all the outward characteristics, and Nikki Haley is identical in her priorities to Joe Biden and the people who back Joe Biden,” Carlson said.

Haley, whose campaign raised $24 million between October and December, has received recent major endorsements from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Americans for Prosperity Action, which is backed by billionaire Charles Koch.

Mr. Carlson then shared a video of Ms. Haley during a town hall in Davenport, Iowa, in October.

During the campaign event, the former South Carolina governor claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the Hamas incursion of Israel on Oct. 7 and that Russian intelligence had helped aid the attack, which had simultaneously taken attention off the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict.

Tech entrepreneur Ramaswamy then weighed in on Tucker’s claims, concurring with the former Fox host that Ms. Haley is a “puppet” for the Democratic Party, and branding her a “Trojan horse.”

“I think the true puppet masters, the thing about them, is they’re fundamentally nonpartisan in nature,” the businessman said.

“There are a few things they care about: Keeping the foreign war machine humming is high on the list. Keeping the administrative state’s control of the United States is also high on the list. They found a much more convenient puppet within the Republican Party itself.

“They have their core objectives, and Nikki makes for a far better Trojan horse to actually accomplish that objective than anybody else.”

Mr. Ramaswamy concluded that it is now “crystal clear” that the “bipartisan system” wants to narrow the GOP presidential race down to just two candidates: former President Trump and Ms. Haley.

“It’s not Biden, and it’s not even Gavin Newsom. It’s Nikki Haley within the Republican Party itself,” he continued.

“And I think that that makes for a very convenient front man because then they actually have absolved themselves from any allegations of partisanship or Democratic partisanship against [former President] Donald Trump.”

Finally, Vivek notes:

“The system is not going to let Trump win, they have their chosen alternative, ready to trot out.”

Watch the abbreviated interview below:

Watch the full discussion between Tucker and Vivek here at TCN.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 21:10

Why Are So Many Californians Dying?

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Why Are So Many Californians Dying?

Authored by Thomas Buckley via The Brownstone Institute,

Covid has claimed about 105,000 lives in the state since 2020.

In that same time period, 82,000 more Californians died from everything else than is typical.

Adjusted for the decline in population, that non-Covid “excess death” figure becomes even more concerning as the state has seen its population drop to about the same it was in 2015.

In 2015 – obviously there was no Covid – 260,000 of the then 39 million Californians died.

In 2023, not including November and December, 240,000 people died not from Covid (6,000 additional people died of Covid.).

Extrapolating the year-to-date figures for 2023 creates a final year-end figure of 280,000 – 20,000 more people than died in 2015. That’s a non-Covid, population-neutral jump of 8%.

In other words, despite the protestations of certain officials, the state’s death rate has NOT returned to “pre-Covid” levels – in 2019 the year before the pandemic, 270,000 people died with a population at least 400,000 greater than today.

Why?

Dr. Bob Wachter, medical chair at UC-SF and ardent supporter of tight pandemic restrictions, did not respond to an email from the Globe (away for work the auto-response said) but he did recently tell the San Jose Mercury News that in “(T)he last three years, not only were there a lot of deaths from Covid, there were a lot of additional deaths from non-Covid causes, which are probably attributable to people not receiving the medical care that they normally would have received’ when ERs were overflowing with Covid patients (note – the truth of that ER assertion has not been verified), Wachter noted.”

In other words, the pandemicist Wachter admitted the pandemic response itself at least contributed to a significant number of excess deaths, a fact that was aggressively and roundly denied and – if mentioned – led to censoring and societal ostracization (and in many cases job losses) by the powers that be during the pandemic.

A second admission along these lines was recently made by former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins – Tony Fauci’s boss. 

In this video clip, Collins – who once called for a “devastating takedown” (see above) of those who questioned the hard pandemic response – said his DC and public health blinders, well, blinded him to the problems his pandemic response caused and is still causing:

If you’re a public health person, and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens, so you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from. Collateral damage. This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made. 

(You can see Collins for yourself here.)

Needless to say there is not even a half-hearted apology involved. And Collins is/was wrong in the approach to public health he apparently subscribes to, as throughout modern history it has involved a cost/benefit analysis and a weighing of the impact on society. 

Public health, practiced properly, does not – and never before has – attached “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”

“We had the exact wrong people in charge at the exact wrong time,” said Stanford professor of medicine (and one of the people Collins tried to “take down”) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

“Their decisions were myopically deadly.”

To remind Collins of the ramifications of his decision beyond the excess deaths: 

Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street. 

The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends. 

The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Bhattacharya) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches; approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable –  that had been tested and succeeded before.  

Nationally, pandemic “all-cause” deaths spiked, for obvious reasons, but they remain stubbornly higher than normal to this day.

There could be mitigating factors to California’s numbers, specifically the issue of drug overdoses. Since 2018, the overdose death rate has doubled. The last overall figures available are from 2021 which showed 10,901 people dying of an overdose. While not specifically broken out for which drug, the vast majority are from opioid overdoses and the vast majority of those involve fentanyl. In 2022, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths with 6,473 of those involving fentanyl.

But the overdose death increase would account for only about 25% of the total increase in “excess deaths,” meaning it has an impact but cannot explain the whole story.

There is also the issue of homeless deaths. Homeless people die at a far higher rate than the rest of the population and California has had a burgeoning homeless population for the last few years, despite the money being spent on the issue. However, at least a portion of that increase can – as with overdoses – be attributed to fentanyl and is therefore difficult to separate out as discrete numbers.

Those two increases, however, may explain the fact that the “all-cause” excess death rate for those in the 25-to-44 year age bracket (it has comparatively higher overdose death and homelessness figures) have remained – except for two very recent weeks – above the typical historical range.

The increase in overdose (and alcohol-related deaths) has been directly tied to the pandemic response previously. In California, there were about 3,500 more alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic response than before: 5,600 in 2019 (pre-pandemic,) 6,100 in 2020, 7,100 in 2021, 6,600 in 2022, and 2023 is on pace to see about 6,000.

That still leaves roughly half of the excess deaths unaccounted for, raising questions about the safety of the Covid shot (a shot, not a vaccine) itself. The CDC lists 640 deaths in California directly from the shot and an increase in “adverse effects” from the shot compared to many other actual vaccines. The Covid shot “ adverse” rate was one in a thousand, while, for comparison, it’s about one in a million for the polio vaccine. 

That means a person was more than 9 times as likely to die from the Covid shot as any other vaccine and 6.5 times to be injured by it in some fashion.

Still that is – according to state figures – not enough to explain the increase.

There are three other issues to note: first, many of the counting questions are around dying “from” Covid versus “with” Covid remain, meaning the Covid death numbers could be elevated if the “withs” are lumped in with the “froms.”

Second, there is the simmering matter of “iatrogenic” deaths – i.e. deaths caused by the treatment. Early on in the pandemic response, a push was made to “ventilate” patients mechanically. From the above article (no caps in the original): 

here’s an unsettling comparison: in NYC area, mortality rate for all COV ICU patients was 78%. in stockholm, the SURVIVAL rate was over 80%. this is a staggering variance. the key difference: ventilators. NYC used them on 85% of patients, sweden used them sparingly

Combined with the placing of Covid patients in nursing homes, the number of actual “only” or “natural” (for lack of a better term) Covid deaths, again, may be elevated.

The state Department of Public Health declined to comment on the matter.

Which brings us back to the Wachter and Collins oblique, nearly accidental admissions that the response itself may have caused significant and ongoing damage across numerous personal and public sectors.

Comparing California to other states also shows a concerning trend, specifically when considering the aftermath of the pandemic response. While increasing in population, for example, Florida’s excess death rate increase was/is lower than California’s as was its Covid death rate, a fact Gov. Gavin Newsom has been lying about for years.

During the pandemic itself, the nation saw an “all-cause” – including Covid – death rate increase of about 16% above normal. Using that metric, as it is clear the response itself had knock-on effects – California’s was 19.4% and Florida’s was 16.7%, despite the wildly different pandemic responses.

Imagine, if you will, you own a baseball team and you have two shortstops, one that earns $10 million a year and one that earns $1 million. And it turns out that both are equally talented – errors, batting stats, etc. – and that maybe the cheaper one is actually even a bit more talented it turns out. Which shortstop was the better deal for the team? The less expensive one, of course.

That is an apt analogy for states choosing how to respond to the pandemic – Florida cut the $10 million player while California kept him. In other words, the two states got the same-ish performance but at wildly different societal costs.

This pattern seems to be borne out by many of the figures. Obviously, various states that ended up lower than the national average took very different approaches: North Dakota and New Jersey saw roughly the same all-cause mortality numbers, as did Washington (state) and South Dakota. 

This is true on the “high side” as well: California and Montana, Oregon and Arkansas are two pairs that had similar numbers with different approaches.

All of this raises a deeper question in that there appears to be little if any direct causative resultant difference between a draconian pandemic response and a softer touch. 

And that should not at all be the case: the lockdowns, the masks, the shots, the social distancing, the closing of schools and stores and churches and parks, and everything else should have produced a clear and distinct difference – if the pandemicists were right.

If they were right, the difference in results should be stark and obvious to the naked eye. Miami should look like Genoa after the plague ships arrived while Los Angeles should seem like a New Eden. If the much-maligned Swedish “soft” model was as dangerous as the pandemicists said, Stockholm should be a ghost town.

But that’s not at all true and that’s why the pandemicists are/were so evidently wrong.: the harshest methods had little impact on the end results.

While there were differences between states, they cannot necessarily be directly tied to a specific policy construct (save Hawaii, which can be discounted considering their isolated geography). Hard or soft pandemic response, in the long run it didn’t seem to matter much in the Covid death tolls.

Where it did – and still does – matter is the immediate and long-lasting damage the more tyrannical responses had on society as a whole.

And – if California’s excess death numbers are an indicator – the pandemic response itself is still killing people.

And that, too, definitely shouldn’t be happening – if the pandemicists were right.

It is even more problematic – and even more ethically abhorrent – if the Covid death figures are inflated; the number of Covid deaths of 105,000 is only about 20% higher than the other non-Covid excess death figure of 82,000. 

In other words, the net “from Covid” deaths may not be terribly different from the “from the Covid response” death count.

And that possibility is the most terrifying of all.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 09:30

Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking At An Orgy, And Michael Jackson: Here’s Who’s In Unsealed Epstein Docs So Far

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Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking At An Orgy, And Michael Jackson: Here’s Who’s In Unsealed Epstein Docs So Far

Update (0855ET): Here’s the list of names mentioned so far in the unsealed Epstein documents (of which there are many more to come). Their inclusion does not necessarily equal wrongdoing.

Bill Clinton – “He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls.”

Michael Jackson – One accuser was asked: “”Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey?” to which she replies: “I met Michael Jackson” at “Jeffrey’s house in Palm Beach.” The accuser said she was not forced to perform ‘massage’ on the pop star (perhaps because she wasn’t a 12-year-old boy).

Prince Andrew – According to accuser Johanna Sjoberg, Prince Andrew touched her breast while posing for a picture with a puppet of himself.

Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell

“And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch,” she said, adding “They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”

Alan Dershowitz – who has vehemently denied all accusations, but allegedly came “pretty often to Epstein’s Florida mansion and got massages while he was there” according to accuser Virginia Giuffre.

Stephen Hawking – In addition to Sjoberg’s evidence, there is an email from Epstein to Maxwell in which he says she should “issue a reward” to any of Giuffre’s associates who can disprove her allegations.

“You can issue a reward to any of Virginia’s friends, acquaints, family that come forward and help prove her allegations are false,” writes Epstein. “The strongest is the Clinton dinner, and the new version in the Virgin Islands that Stephen Hawking participated in an underage orgy.”

Hawking was photographed on Epstein’s ‘pedo island’ in March 2006 as part of a trip to a nearby science conference.

Al Gore – Giuffre previously claimed that the former VP traveled on Epstein’s carbon-spewing private plane. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Bill Richardson – the former (and now deceased) New Mexico Governor, who Giuffre says was among those whom Maxwell directed her to have sex with.

Bill Richardson

George Lucas – Sjoberg was asked in May of 2016 if she had ever met or given massages to several other high-profile celebrities, including George Lucas, which she denied.

David Copperfield – Sjoberg said she also met famed magicial David Copperfield, saying that she observed him to be a friend of Epstein’s.

Naomi Campbell – Who flew on Epstein’s private jet, according to previously revealed logs from pilot David Rodgers. In 2019, Campbell admitted that she knew Epstein, saying “I was introduced to him on my 31st birthday by my ex-boyfriend Flavio [Briatore, the Italian businessman who has been convicted of fraud]. He was always front and centre at Victoria’s Secret shows.”

Kevin Spacey – Who Johanna Sjoberg denied meeting, but traveled to Africa with Bill Clinton on Epstein’s plane in 2002. 

Kevin Spacey and Ghislaine Maxwell sit on the Royal thrones

Donald Trump – who notably ‘did not’ receive a massage at Epstein or Maxwell’s request.

*  *  *

Update (1858ET): The Jeffrey Epstein files have been unsealed. As expected, former President Bill Clinton is prominently featured – as John Doe #36 (for another good look at this – the first of several Epstein doc dumps to come, check out The Reactionary).

As noted by attorney and journalist Techno Fog of The Reactionary…

“Apart from the defendant [Ghislaine Maxwell] and Epstein, former President Clinton is a key person who can provide information about his close relationship with the Defendant and Mr. Epstein…

What’s more, Bill allegedly ‘likes them young’…

One Epstein accuser also listed George Mitchell, Jeal Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky, and couldn’t remember the names of several other individuals.

We also learned that accuser Virginia Giuffre testified that she kept a journal filled with the names of men involved with Epstein, only to have burned it in a bonfire.

And who’s not alleged to have gotten a massage from one of Epstein’s girls? Trump…

And let’s not lose sight of what Epstein’s operation is speculated to really have been about…

A good summary:

Just the News has all the files here.

Live discussion:

As noted earlier, the documents include over 150 names which stemmed from a civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking and other charges for participating in Epstein’s enterprise.

As Axios notes;

Last month, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered most of the material within 187 entries listed under the pseudonym “J. Doe” be released after Jan. 1. in regard to the suit.

  • In part of that lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre accused Maxwell of facilitating her sexual abuse. The case was settled in 2017, though the terms were not made public at the time.
  • Preska also noted that anyone who may be named in the documents could file an appeal prior to the documents’ release.

Developing…

*  *  *

Documents containing previously unknown names of Jeffrey Epstein associates are set for release on Wednesday, after a New York federal court ordered court documents unsealed, CNBC reports.

Over 150 people are reportedly named in the filings, some of whom have previously been disclosed as connected with the dead pedophile, who was found dead in a New York jail after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.

“Things should start getting unsealed today,” Edward Friedland, the district executive for that court, told CNBC.

The  documents were filed in connection with a Manhattan federal court lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and ‘madam,’ who recruited girls for exploitation by Epstein and pals.

Only Epstein and Maxwell have been criminally charged in connection with his longstanding abuse of girls and young women at residences in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere. -CNBC

That said, Judge Loretta Preska granted a 30-day extension of the disclosure of several names, including a woman identified as “Doe 107,” in order to review her claim that she faces risk of physical harm in her home country if her name is released.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 09:12

Peter Schiff: 2024 Could Be Horrible For The Dollar

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Peter Schiff: 2024 Could Be Horrible For The Dollar

Authored by Joel Bauman via SchiffGold.com,

Peter Schiff left a stark warning in his recent podcast: “2024 could be a horrible year for the dollar.” 

Here are 3 big reasons why Peter thinks inflation might rise even higher this year.

1. The Fed wants to boost Biden’s reelection

The Fed is deeply influenced by political dynamics and, with the 2024 presidential election around the corner, it’s already maneuvering to align with the political incumbent.

“I think that the Fed is going to be doing everything it can to try to reelect Biden or whoever may run if Biden does not… The Fed chairman always wants to play ball with whichever Administration is in power.”

This has less to do with blatant political bias and more to do with self-preservation.

The President plays a decisive role in appointing the Fed chair. Given this, Jerome Powell is incentivized to prioritize monetary policies that could boost a Biden reelection. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

The Fed already announced considerably lower interest rates in 2024 through 2025, strategically timed for this year’s US election.

Peter predicts that the Fed will continue its dovish, inflationary policies through the end of this election year.

2. US Economic “Strength” Rides on Inflation

The perceived strength of the US economy is largely illusory, a facade created by inflationary policies rather than genuine economic growth.

Peter explains that higher stock market indexes and other financial indicators in 2023 reflect investor expectations of inflationary Fed stimulus rather than genuine economic progress:

“Investors are anticipating a big bond rally. That’s what they think. The Fed is going to going to go back to zero or close to it back to quantitative easing. And so they’re factoring all this in. They’re pricing this easing cycle into the markets now. They’re betting on it.”

Rather than ruin the bets of the broader economy and suffer a massive stock market collapse, the Fed would rather keep monetary policy loose. Congress, too, would prefer to maintain high budgets than risk losing reelection.

This all drives up inflation, which Peter dubs as “the only magic trick they have.”

3. U.S. Trade Deficits Contribute

Peter links the dollar’s weakening to recent large U.S. trade deficits. A cheap dollar will mean higher commodity prices and even higher trade deficits, which in turn will undermine the dollar further. 

Peter explains:

There’s no way that inflation is going to come down in an environment where the dollar is that weak, because that’s going to really push up commodity prices. That’s going to push up our trade deficit… These big trade deficits are going to weigh heavily on the dollar.”

We’re entering a classic scenario where a depreciating currency contributes to domestic inflation. Trade deficits are not just a symptom of economic issues but also a causative factor in the declining value of the dollar.

As long as the U.S. continues to run these deficits, the pressure on the dollar will persist.

Meanwhile, investors are flocking to other safe haven assets, like the Swiss Franc.

In 2023, the Franc was up a whopping 10%:

That is a very negative sign for the dollar for 2024 and a positive sign for gold because people are buying the Swiss frank as a safe haven. Gold is an even safer haven than the Swiss franc, but the fact that the Swiss franc is gaining so much on the dollar is an indication that people are leery of the dollar.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 08:49

Initial Jobless Claims End 2023 At Year Lows

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Initial Jobless Claims End 2023 At Year Lows

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time fell to just 202k last week (week-ending Dec 30th) from +220k the prior week. That is basically 2023 lows…

Source: Bloomberg

We wait for next week when the biggest non-seasonally-adjusted jump in claims is expected.

California and Texas saw the largest drop in initial claims while Pennsylvania and New Jersey saw the biggest increase…

Additionally, continuing jobless claims declined from 1.886mm to 1.855mm in the week-ending Dec 23rd…

Source: Bloomberg

Goldman believes that persistent seasonal distortions more than explain the increase in continuing claims since early September, and expect those distortions to boost the level of continuing claims by an additional 100k by March.

However, if the massive loosening of financial conditions is any signal, continuing claims are about to plunge (4 week lagged continuing claims track US FCI)…

Does this look like an economy that needs six rate-cuts this year? Or is it political after all?

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 08:38

US Crowned World’s Top LNG Exporter

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US Crowned World’s Top LNG Exporter

The United States has become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, surpassing Qatar and Australia for the first time. This development is at odds with the Biden administration’s goal of becoming the world’s climate leader. 

Bloomberg data compiled through Dec. 31 shows the US exported 91.2 million metric tons of LNG in 2023. This is a record for the Western country and was made possible by the restart of the Freeport LNG export terminal in Texas, which was closed for months after an explosion rocked the facility in June 2022. 

 The US surpassed Qatar, previously crowded ‘king of LNG exporters’ in 2022 after export volumes dropped for the first time since 2016 by 1.9%. Australia ranked second. 

Alex Munton, director of global gas and LNG research at consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group, told Reuters that LNG exporters in the US rose for two reasons: 

“The return of Freeport LNG to full service, which added 6 MT and the full-year output of Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass facility that added 3 MT more than in 2022.” 

Most US LNG exports depart from terminals across the Gulf Coast with top destinations in the Netherlands, the UK, and France for the first half of 2023. 

The US only joined the LNG export scene in 2016 amid an abundance of shale gas and growing demand for gas globally.

More than a year later, the US stands as the largest beneficiary of the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline system under the Baltic Sea to Europe.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 05:45

The Day The Dollar Dies?

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The Day The Dollar Dies?

Authored by J.G.Collins via The Epoch Times,

Since roughly the last year of World War II, the U.S. dollar has enjoyed what one-time French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once called the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency. It’s had that position since roughly 1944, when it seized the role of the world’s currency hegemon from the British pound sterling.

But now, that standing is threatened by a whole variety of U.S. policies and assaults by our foreign adversaries. And the results for the dollar—and the people of the United States—could be catastrophic.

How We Got Here

By July 1944, it had become clear that allied advances over the Nazis in Europe all but ensured the Allies, and particularly the United States, would dominate the postwar world. It was then that 730 delegates from 44 countries convened at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to reestablish the postwar global monetary order.

Together, they agreed to a multinational system whereby global currencies would be convertible to the U.S. dollar at fixed exchange rates that could be modified, if necessary, within a very narrow band. The dollar, in turn, would be convertible to gold at $35 an ounce. It was left to the United States to ensure that the dollar/gold exchange rate remained stable.

But by 1971, social welfare spending on Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,’’ the Vietnam War, and dollar investment in overseas businesses, factories, and other assets, as well as balance of payments deficits resulting from imports from more fully recovered Japan and Europe, had greatly expanded the amount of dollars in global circulation. U.S. officials recognized the nation’s gold reserves were insufficient to honor its commitment to convert dollar into gold at $35 an ounce. That year, Europeans started converting small amounts of their dollar for gold. Then, the British asked for a “guarantee” of the dollars they held in reserve.

A currency crisis was brewing. And the United States needed to circumvent it before it happened.

So in August 1971, President Richard Nixon, at the urging of his advisers, convened a secret meeting at Camp David over three days, concluding on Aug. 15, a Sunday. That evening, the president announced to the world in a nationally telecast statement a purported “temporary” closing of the gold window—prohibiting conversion of dollar to gold—to stop any run on U.S. gold reserves. That “temporary” closing lasted until 1975, when a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), another legacy of Bretton Woods, approved a “managed” or “dirty float” of currencies at a conference in Jamaica. The IMF was to operate to maintain stability via some ambiguous “guardrails,” at least nominally, but central banks—including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, et al.—were able to intervene to support their respective currencies.

The dollar was—finally and officially—off the gold standard and was now a “fiat currency”—meaning the dollar had value in the United States simply because the government said it did.

But in other countries, after President Nixon closed the gold window, the U.S. dollar became, with other currencies, essentially a commodity. If you wanted to buy U.S. property or securities, or acquire U.S. products, you needed to obtain dollars to pay for them. Since the dollar had been overvalued by its link to gold, closing the gold window caused the dollar’s value to decline and inflation to increase.

To ameliorate some of the decline, President Nixon’s Treasury Secretary, William Simon, made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia in 1974 whereby the United States agreed to sell arms and give protection to the House of Saud in exchange for the Saudis investing their U.S. dollar reserves from oil sales in U.S. Treasurys instead of some other “hard” asset.

Oil had been traded in U.S. dollars almost everywhere since the Lucas Gusher at the Spindletop oil field in east Texas was discovered in 1901. The Saudis explicitly guaranteed to maintain the pricing of their oil sales in U.S. dollars. The 1974 arrangement with the Saudis helped the United States to run government budget deficits, and to improve its balance of payments deficit, as well as to maintain the global demand for the dollar, termed “petrodollars” after the Saudi deal, because any country that wanted to buy oil had to buy U.S. dollars to buy it.

Where We Are Today

In 1974, when Secretary Simon arranged his deal with the Saudis to avoid a “dollar crisis,” our national debt was roughly 32 percent of GDP. We were winding down our decades-long involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia and had secured a detente with Cold War adversaries China and the Soviet Union.

Today, the United States is over $34 trillion in debt, around 120 percent of our GDP—more than it was even during World War II. A bit over $7 trillion of that—the value of the entire U.S. annual budget—is held by foreigners. We are on our way to $1 trillion a year in debt service, more than our defense budget. And the $10 your grandmother stuck in your birthday card that was lost in the commotion of your birthday party in 1971 would, if found today, be worth $1.20.

And in the world, the United States is engaged in escalating conflicts with two powerful, nuclear-armed, adversaries, China and Russia, as well as the war Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hamas, is waging on our ally, Israel.

  • Citing three current and former U.S. officials, NBC News reported that China’s leader Xi Jinping boldly told the U.S. president that he intends to acquire Taiwan, a vital interest of the United States. Not only do we (and the rest of the world) get most of our chips from Taiwan, but 50 percent of the world’s maritime container traffic passes through the Taiwan Strait.

  • The Ukraine-Russia war continues and has escalated in the last few days with no end in sight. In a conflict where U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has pledged American prestige by asserting in October that we will “deliver what it takes, for as long as it takes, so that Ukraine can live in freedom.” But just last month, President Biden seemingly walked back his commitment by saying the United States will back Ukraine “as long as we can.”

  • U.S. Navy forces deployed to the Red Sea to protect shipping and deter Iranian belligerence against Israel were attacked by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. Scores of U.S. armed services members have been injured in Iraq and Syria in similar attacks.

Within our own borders, violent protests that went unchecked after the death of George Floyd, the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the Marxist-inspired pro-Hamas protests have rattled the sense of American stability among foreigners more than at any time since the Vietnam War.

Given all that, it should not be a surprise that other countries are moving to de-dollarize their holdings. The world has growing concerns about the stability of the United States and our ability to meet our debt obligations. The Saudis, whom we have relied upon for 50 years to help maintain demand for the U.S. dollar as the world’s global reserve currency, had announced that they are joining the BRICS, the international coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined the same day.

Were that not enough, now the Biden administration is contemplating a policy that cannot help but exacerbate de-dollarization. According to the Financial Times, the United States and the G-7 “are actively exploring ways to seize Russian central bank assets” in their countries to fund Ukraine because political opposition to continuing Ukraine support in the United States and Europe threaten the flow of money that has kept Ukraine afloat. The paper reported it had seen a document written by the United States that said, under international law, “G7 members and other specially affected states could seize Russian sovereign assets as a countermeasure to induce Russia to end its aggression.”

Robert Schiller, the Nobel Prize-winning Yale economist, reportedly told Italian news outlet La Repubblica in an interview published Sunday that he warned against the tactic. “[T]his will be confirmation for the Russian leader that what is happening in Ukraine is a proxy war [and] it could paradoxically turn against America and the entire West,” Mr. Schiller said. He warned it could create “a cataclysm for the current dollar-dominated economic system” because it would sow doubt among other countries that their investments in U.S. Treasurys, markets, and financial institutions could be seized by the United States in a political dispute.

America’s “exorbitant privilege” has allowed us to roll up extraordinary levels of debt in exchange for, basically, IOUs we’ve given to our creditors. And given our level of debt, and particularly our debt-to-GDP ratio, our trading partners are now questioning our ability to repay it, the same as any other creditor.

In addition to this fiscal environment, malicious actors from foreign countries seeking to undermine the United States for their own geopolitical advantage, particularly China, are actively pursuing efforts to subvert the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Part of their strategy is to close trade in their own currencies.

Summary

The U.S. dollar is under assault by the global market. While we continue to enjoy the largest, most transparent, and best regulated capital markets in the free world, and the largest per capita consumer market, the other elements of dollar supremacy are eroding. Its status as the world’s reserve currency—its “exorbitant privilege”—is unlikely to last into the next decade. That will have enormous negative consequences for American citizens for the latter decades of this century. Interest rates needed to fund our debt will soar, closing out other alternative, productive investments in businesses and innovation.

Congress must absolutely get a handle on our spending to make vigorous, real, reductions and have the courage to raise taxes principally on its own donor class so that we get to a balanced budget no later than 2030. To grow our way out of debt as we did our World War II debt, we must make our nation more productive and more resilient. That means graduating more chemical engineers and computer scientists and fewer social workers and grievance studies graduates. It means fiercely protecting our technology and re-shoring high value-added manufacturing. It means making smart policy choices, across the board, to keep our people healthier, our children far better educated and much more physically fit to reduce healthcare costs. And we need to ensure our family structures and institutions are more resilient so that charities and families—not governments—support our most challenged citizens.

If we don’t, we will come to the day the dollar dies—and with it, the republic.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/04/2024 – 05:00