Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The large data sets on the cost of living and the cost of children are instructive. But nothing compares with the anecdotes you hear from people who once thought they were prosperous but now wonder if they can really get by while completely ruling out the idea of having and raising children. It’s a genuine shift and one that is devastating for the future.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating piece by a high-end worker in New York City. He has a great job and so does his wife. But during the last year, they discovered that they are truly living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to pay the bills. They have discovered home cooking and have pretty well given up concerts and dinners out with friends. The writer was being deeply honest about a problem that seems to affect most people.

They thought that they had finally achieved the long-sought goal of prosperity. Instead, they feel a sense of impending doom. The kicker: the writer is in the C-suite of the Wall Street Journal itself! It turns out that this situation is now typical. A majority of Americans live this way!

And this is a childless couple. How in the world can they afford to have children? The wife cannot quit her job else they would both have to move, if they can find a place. Giving up a full income stream to raise a child is a huge expense in addition to the high costs of everything associated with children from diapers to formula to health care insurance.

The alternative is to keep working and put the kid in childcare. That is extremely difficult to come by everywhere. A report on childcare by Care.com offers some amazing data of the costs over the last ten years.

• Weekly nanny cost: $736 (up 56 percent from $472 in 2013). • Weekly daycare cost: $284 (up 53 percent from $186 in 2013). • Weekly family care center cost: $229 (up 80 percent from $127 in 2013). • Weekly babysitter cost: $179 (up 92 percent from $93 in 2013)

In terms of the most expensive places, the report offers the following. A weekly nanny in D.C. costs $885. In Massachusetts, it’s $865. In Connecticut, it’s $799. A weekly babysitter costs $200 in places like California. Daycare is going to run $250 to $400.

These are the most expensive cities and also the most regulated states. When there is no competition and the costs of opening child care are astronomical, this is what you get. However, the problem is also nationwide.

The report comments: “Today, families are spending, on average, 27 percent of their household income on child care expenses. And 59 percent of parents surveyed tell us they are planning to spend more than $18,000 per child on child care in 2023. It’s no surprise that 50 percent of parents are more concerned about the cost of child care than they were at this time last year.”

Think about this impossible situation that affects millions of young couples. You need two incomes to pay the bills, and that’s if you are lucky. Chances are that one of the two will need an additional part-time job, which is why multiple job holders are higher than ever before. That was the big change that occurred after the last great inflation of the late seventies. After 1985, women with children were more likely to have a remunerative job than not.

At the time, this was called “women’s liberation” but that was mostly a marketing gimmick to hide the dramatic decline in household income that required a second income to have growing household prosperity. That seemed to work for a while, even a long time. But as health care and childcare have become so expensive, the second income went from being a luxury to being an expected necessity.

Many people these days are hoping to homeschool children. This is especially true since the school closures forced so many millions into Zoom school that didn’t work and set a whole generation of kids back two years in learning outcomes. Many parents want to avoid that as their children get older. But homeschooling requires foregoing a full income stream. Only the richest can do that now, so that is ever more out of the question.

Oh and by the way, the Biden administration is considering new regulations on au pairs that would more than double their cost. The government wants to demand that they get paid the minimum wage, which would dramatically reduce demand and thus supply, thus ruining one of the few functioning migration markets we have.

After the school situation is solved, there is the problem of college, which introduces another set of problems. It’s no longer even thinkable that people can work their way through school and pay the bills. How many people are declining to have kids on those grounds alone? Who can afford to throw down $200K for a college degree in addition to paying the bills for the household?

For most of human history, having kids was just what you do, the whole reason for pairing up, and a driving force of the purpose of life itself. Today, we have different options and choices, and that’s great. But what happens when bearing children becomes completely unaffordable for any couple that has bills to pay, health care to cover, and would like to think about retirement too? That’s a huge problem and not just for the family but for the whole of society.

You will notice, too, that this grim situation is completely consistent with the depopulation agenda of elite classes that they have pushed for many decades. Elon Musk is exactly right to call this out and argue that it is a profound danger to society itself when the birthrate falls below its replacement rate. It literally means that humanity is dying out.

I do think it is about time that everyone admits that we have lost a huge amount in living standards over the decades. The expectation of two and three income streams in every household is a major culprit that is often not considered in the data. And yet in some ways, family income is all that really matters in terms of assessing the quality of life.

This week, I’ve been thinking back on the world my parents lived in circa 1958. They got married and immediately got in their car and drove to Northern California. Why? My father had finished his undergraduate degree in history and decided to go to seminary where he planned to study music. His ambition then was to become the director of music at a church.

While he was in school, they had one child, my brother, and then when my father got his first appointment, they had me. My mother did not work. Somehow, and this seems inconceivable to me today, the very idea that a family of four could support itself in California on the salary of a beginning church music director. And yet they were not poor. They were middle class.

Later they moved again and when it became fashionable for women with children to work, my mother together with her mother both obtained teachers certificates and took jobs. They were enormously proud of what they had achieved. They felt themselves to be upwardly mobile, and the family certainly benefited since by then my brother and I were happy in good schools.

All of this changed in the later 1970s as inflation kicked in. I can recall how my mother’s job went from being a joy to a chore that she could no longer give up. Things became intense as we needed more cars, more clothing, and mortgage payments were rising and rising. Now of course the situation is enormously worse, as everyone knows.

My point is that the circumstances under which my own parents decided to have kids back in the early 1960s seem like a completely different world. It was a time that was in many ways massively more prosperous. True, they didn’t have streaming videos and the internet but I can never recall being bored. Life was good.

I often hear Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reflect on these days with a deep sense of nostalgia and an awareness that the American middle class was large and robust and optimism was everywhere in the air. This awareness more than anything is what drew him into politics to see if there is something he can do to bring back the greatest of the American dream.

I’m not sure that he or anyone can do it, but let’s not deceive ourselves. Poverty is spreading, the middle class is dying, the birth rate is plummeting, and the dream is fading faster and faster into the recesses of our memories. If you doubt it, speak to any newly married couple today about their plight and the decision to have children. You will get an earful.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

The strongest cold blast of this winter has gripped large swathes of China as temperatures in Shanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning have plunged to their lowest levels on record on Sunday. 

Reuters cited a meteorological forecaster from the city of Yichun in Heilongjiang, located in the Northeast part of the country, who said temperatures could reach a record low of minus 47.9 C (minus 54.2 F) early next week. 

Bloomberg data shows average temperatures across China have plunged well below 30-year, 10-year, and 5-year trends for this time of year to about 27 C. 

“The weather in China, including Beijing, is the coldest December temperature in more than 50 years. Climate emergency warnings have been declared for extreme cold,” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former NOAA chief scientist, wrote on X.

BREAKING: The weather in China 🇨🇳, including Beijing, is the coldest December temperature in more than 50 years. Climate emergency warnings have been declared for extreme cold.

ZBAA 172000Z 00000MPS CAVOK M18/M20 Q1036 NOSIG

-18°C = -0.4°F pic.twitter.com/LHc2rjWhd2

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) December 17, 2023

China’s cold snap was quick and vicious. 

From record-breaking warm to record-breaking cold! Today, 30 stations in northern China broke the lowest temperature record for December, and 5 stations broke the lowest temperature record for the whole year! @extremetemps @ThierryGooseBC pic.twitter.com/urBA1wI7I0

— Jim yang (@yangyubin1998) December 17, 2023

Meanwhile, Russia benefits from the “ongoing mega-blast of extreme cold,” Maue said. 

During the ongoing mega-blast of extreme cold, Russian natural gas flows through the Power of Siberia pipeline have reached record highs. https://t.co/w0TH3fRs2Q pic.twitter.com/HbLSYAM2KQ

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) December 17, 2023

On Friday, Chinese media Xinhua said President Xi Jinping urged “all-out efforts” in emergency response to the cold weather. 

While China freezes, weather blog Severe Weather Europe warned last week that “cold anomalies across much of the central, southern, and eastern United States” could begin after the new year. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Messenger on the decision of Hunter Biden to defy Congress in a press conference outside of the Capitol Building. Remarkably, this spectacle was coordinated by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Cal.) who presumably knew that Biden was going to violate the congressional subpoena. So Swalwell (a former impeachment House manager) helped facilitate a possible criminal act in refusing to share appear in an impeachment inquiry.

Here is the column:

Congress is often a theater of the absurd, from Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulling a fire alarm before a major vote to former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) being, well, a member of Congress at all. However, none of that compares to what unfolded on Wednesday as Hunter Biden stood outside Congress and defied a subpoena as being “beyond the absurd.” What happens next could be even more bizarre.

Hunter was under a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to appear for testimony. As I previously wrote, he had two choices: He could appear and either testify or invoke his right to remain silent. The only thing that he could not do is what he did — just refuse to go into the hearing room. Yet, there he was, with counsel Abbe Lowell by his side, holding forth with a public press conference while refusing to appear in the closed-door deposition being held in the building behind him.

By staying on the Senate side of the Capitol, Hunter guaranteed that the House sergeant at arms did not pull him into the hearing room. Ironically, that would have been a better option than his blowing a raspberry at the committee and then speeding away.

Many pundits immediately claimed this was a clever move because the subpoena was not really enforceable until the House voted on the formal impeachment inquiry a few hours later.

I disagree. As I noted in my testimony in the first impeachment inquiry, there is no requirement for a formal vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry. Indeed, that is precisely what then-majority Democrats did with the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. While I encouraged the House to hold a formal vote on the inquiry, it is not constitutionally required.

Moreover, this is an oversight committee which has independent authority to issue subpoenas. The subpoena was issued not only by the Oversight Committee but by the Judiciary Committee. It was issued under three different authorities, including Rule 12(g) of the Oversight Committee which allows for subpoenas “in the conduct of any investigation or activity or series of investigations or activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee.”

In holding this spectacle, Biden and his legal team committed another unforced error. This one could prove as costly as pushing for an obscenely generous plea agreement and then telling prosecutors to “rip it up” in July.

Few people expected Hunter to testify in the deposition. The evidence against him is overwhelming, as shown in his second federal indictment on tax charges. He and his uncles were allegedly engaged in one of the largest influence-peddling operations in history involving millions of dollars from various foreign sources. Hunter simply could have done what prior witnesses have done: Go in and take the Fifth. That is what attorney and former IRS official Lois Lerner did — twice — when House Republicans wanted to ask her about the Obama administration targeting conservative groups.

It was a no-brainer that someone appears to have radically over-thought on the Hunter Biden legal team.

Hunter can now be held in contempt of Congress. That will force the hand of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who aggressively pursued Trump figures for contempt, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Despite some of us writing to the contrary, Bannon claimed his lawyers told him he did not have to appear before a House committee. He was swiftly charged and convicted by Garland’s prosecutors.

In this instance, the contempt case would go to the U.S. Attorney in D.C., Matthew Graves, who previously declined to assist in bringing tax charges against the president’s son. Yet by pulling a Bannon, Hunter now faces the expectation in many circles that he will get the full Bannon treatment from Garland.

There is another possible cost to this move. Fox News quoted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that President Biden “was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say,” which suggests that the president spoke with his son before his act of contempt and discussed his statement. If that is true, it was a breathtaking mistake. One of the four most obvious potential articles of impeachment that I laid out in my prior testimony was obstruction. There already are questions over special treatment potentially being given to Hunter in the form of alleged felonies being allowed to expire, warnings about planned federal raids, and sweetheart deals.

In addition, President Biden has enlisted White House staff to actively push challenged accounts of his conduct and attack the House Republicans’ investigative process. Such acts could legally bootstrap prior misconduct into his presidency under abuse-of-power allegations.

If this latest allegation is true, the president was speaking with his son about committing a potentially criminal act of contempt. Hunter was refusing to give testimony focused not on his own role but on his father’s potential role in the alleged influence peddling. The House can pursue evidence on that conversation and how the president may have supported his son’s effort.

With his bizarre public display, Hunter has opened a new potential front for prosecution.

If the same law is applied the same way as it was to Bannon, Hunter could find himself indicted within a few weeks.

In Bannon’s case, the subpoena was issued at the end of September. He was held in contempt by the House in October and indicted in November. It took just four days of trial to convict him.

Indeed, President Biden himself has maintained that defying subpoenas cannot be tolerated. When subpoenas were issued to Republicans during the House’s January 6 investigation, Biden declared: “I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally.”

That is precisely what Republicans will now expect from Garland in Hunter’s case. In the meantime, the House did not lose anything that it expected to get from Hunter. It will now move to secure the testimony of a circle of associates surrounding both Hunter and his father. At the same time, the National Archives has finally agreed to give House investigators tens of thousands of emails reportedly involving the president.

As expected, in a floor vote late in the day, not a single House Democrat supported getting answers to these questions through an impeachment inquiry. They unanimously opposed any inquiry even though 40% of Democrats have said in polling that they believe the president has acted illegally or unethically regarding his family’s business deals. (Overall, 70% of those polled held that view.)

Hunter, however, just tripped another wire that could seriously complicate matters not just for himself but for his father. Perhaps that is why, when dramatist-scholar Martin Julius Esslin devised the term “theater of the absurd,” he described it as “part reality and part nightmare.”

Authored by Thomas Neuberger via “God’s Spies” Substack,

In the exclusive piece below, Democratic Party donor Guy Saperstein argues that Kamala Harris’s presence on the 2024 ticket could be fatal to Joe Biden’s electoral chances.

I’ve said the same, especially here:

Trump (if he’s smart) pivots to Kamala Harris, dismisses Biden and makes her his opponent…

Biden improves his odds if he gets rid of Kamala Harris as a running mate.

What’s different about Saperstein’s argument is his bill of particulars — reasons why Harris should be dropped. Much of this is in the public domain. But much of it isn’t — the Willie Brown connection, for example, or her sloppiness and massive “chain of custody” problems as DA.

About the Willie Brown material, you may not want to think ill of Harris for her romantic life or its effect on her career, but progressives avoiding the discussion won’t stop Republicans from making sure everyone in the country is exposed to it daily. Saperstein’s point is the effect of Harris on the ticket. Willie Brown will be made part of that effect.

The piece deserves your careful consideration. To paraphrase Saperstein, “Imagine how Republicans are going to play this.” They won’t be silent.

Guy Saperstein is a former member of the Democracy Alliance, a progressive, and a major Democratic Party donor. From his Huff Post bio page:

[H]e founded a law firm in Oakland which became the largest plaintiffs civil rights law firm in America, in the process successfully prosecuting the largest race, sex and age discrimination class actions in American history. Guy also prosecuted False Claims Act cases against Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. regarding satellite surveillance systems, and against Raytheon, Boeing and TRW regarding the sham National Missile Defense Program.

In 2006, Guy helped write the “Real Security” plank of the Democratic Party’s New Directions for America, and in 2007, helped found the National Security/Foreign Policy New Ideas Fund, with funding from the Democracy Alliance. He also has been Co-Chair of the Democracy Alliance’s Strategy Group and was active in its National Security/Foreign Policy Group. In 2006, Guy was described by Bill O’Reilly as “a character assassin” and “a member of the nefarious Left-Wing Mafia,” along with four other DA Partners.

The Twitter insertions below are mine. The rest is Saperstein.

The Time to Replace Kamala Harris Is Now

by Guy Saperstein

2024 is going to consist of an attack on Biden for being too old and frail, combined with an attack on his VP, who would become president if Biden died. The attack on Biden will be simple: endless, repeated videos of him slurring words, misstating facts, stumbling, looking lost, forgetting names — all the classic signs of dementia.

The Republicans ignored Kamala in 2020, but they won’t in 2024 because of Biden’s age. They will be shouting from the rooftops, “Hey, people, this person could become your President!”

Remember that the person we are talking about entered the 2020 primaries polling 18% and, after four debates, fell to 6% and dropped out. I can’t remember any presidential aspirant falling so far, so fast, so there should be no argument Kamala is a truly terrible candidate.

But there is more, much more.

Harris as District Attorney

My career was as a trial lawyer in the SF Bay Area. The mayor and later Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown, was a personal friend and political supporter of trial lawyers. I loved Willie. He was smart, politically gifted — he supported everything I ever asked him for — and funny. Willie defined the word “dapper.” We’d go shopping at the same store, Wilkes Bashford, where he was the King. He would always tell the staff, “Now, you take care of my white buddy Guy. Whites are not blessed with my good taste, so help the poor boy.” Willie had more charm than ten white boys.

Willie was married and estranged from his wife. It was well-known he had a young — 30 years younger — black girlfriend. He didn’t even try to hide it. The girlfriend was Kamala Harris, then a nondescript assistant city attorney. Next thing I knew, Kamala was running for District Attorney, supported by Willie’s powerful political machine against the then DA, Terence Hallinan, a progressive. Willie’s machine won and Kamala became San Francisco DA.

Next next thing I knew, assistant San Francisco DAs were calling me and asking, “Where is Kamala?” They knew I was a friend of Willie’s. Apparently, she wasn’t showing up for work.

A few months later, I read that Kamala had been read the riot act by a solid Democratic judge for not maintaining good chain of custody for evidence. “Chain of custody” is a legal term which means that the evidence you submit to the court is that same uncontaminated evidence you seized at the crime scene. Before I became a civil rights class action lawyer, I did 50 criminal jury trials, and chain of custody was never an issue because the DA would do his/her job competently and insure that the correct evidence was presented to the court. But that was before Kamala’s laziness set new standards.

Kamala was hauled before three liberal judges who were outraged by her sloppiness. In response, Kamala lied under oath to all of them, trying to blame it on the police department crime lab, but that was total bullshit. When an attorney presents evidence to a court, she or he vouches for it. Kamala should have been disbarred as a result, but San Francisco is a liberal “old boys” network, and liberals protect even lying, unethical DAs.

When the dust cleared, 1,100 FELONIES had to be dismissed — and by Democratic judges. In the history of American jurisprudence, I don’t think this has ever happened. Just think of what it means to have 1,100 felonies dismissed for defective chain-of-custody. Harris was willing to allow 1,100 people to go to prison for years because she wouldn’t admit her errors.

Pretty low-integrity, in my opinion. Now imagine how the Republican law-and-order zealots are going to play this!

Harris as National Candidate

In two Senate campaigns against weak opponents, Harris ran behind Democratic registration. And though Biden picked her for his VP, the first black woman to be so chosen, she is not well-liked in the black community. She is seen as “the black DA who put black men in jail.” Her parents were not inner city blacks; her mother’s heritage is Indian and her father is Jamaican. She didn’t really share the American black experience, having grown up middle class.

The guy who sold @KamalaHarris weed must feel like the luckiest man on the planet.

Every other person she saw with weed for the next 30 years wound up fighting forest fires for 2 bucks an hour.

— 🇵🇸🅲🅷🆄🅲🅺🇵🇸 (@benigma2017) February 13, 2019

There is video of @kamalaharris saying she smoked weed while listening to Tupac and Snoop albums that didn’t exist.

There is video of @KamalaHarris laughing about locking up a poor woman working 2 jobs because her kid didn’t go to school.

This is your Democratic frontrunner.

— 🇵🇸🅲🅷🆄🅲🅺🇵🇸 (@benigma2017) February 17, 2019

When she was California Attorney General, I interfaced with her many times, mostly around federal bail-out money for homeowners. She was uniformly terrible. She wouldn’t do a damn thing unless pushed to the wall and embarrassed politically.

My last direct contact with her was when she ran for her second Senate term. She came to my house and we talked in my living room for 1-1/2 hours. Partway through I said, “We’ve been talking for at least an hour and all I’ve heard are Democratic platitudes. Now I would like to hear one original idea.”

She couldn’t do it.

Time for Change

We may be locked into Joe Biden, but VPs get changed all the time.

Since Biden played race politics the first time, he may feel compelled to choose another black woman. Fine with me. My first two choices are Stacey Abrams and Karen Bass. Abrams is an accomplished author, incredibly eloquent, very likeable, very smart. And not just attractive to black women. I have heard so many white women comment about how they feel her compassion.

Bass had at least several terms in the House, some in leadership positions, and now is running an iconic major city, Los Angeles.

Gretchen Whitmer would also help Biden with women. She is younger, attractive, more robust, and she governed Michigan, a major state.

Of course, I think Newsom is the strongest candidate and Pritzker in Illinois is doing a great job.

Let the discussion begin, but let’s not assume Harris is irreplaceable.

Oil isn’t the only commodity at the center of tensions between the U.S. and Russia…

Now Russian state-owned uranium company Tenex is telling American customers that “the Kremlin may preemptively bar exports” to the U.S. if Washington passes certain legislation that would prohibit imports beginning in 2028, Bloomberg reported on Friday. 

Tenex’s US branch has already alerted firms like Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, and Dominion Energy about a potential scenario, the report says, though Russia hasn’t finalized a decision. The individual companies didn’t respond to comments from Bloomberg, while Rosatom, Tenex’s parent company, refuted claims of any warnings issued to US clients.

Rosatom commented: “Tenex completely refutes as inaccurate the information regarding the alleged ‘warnings’ of a potential ‘pre-emptive’ ban on enriched uranium supplies to the United States.”

“Neither Tenex itself nor any of its subsidiaries have issued any such notifications to their foreign customers,” they added. 

Banning Russian uranium exports could disrupt markets and increase fuel prices, affecting smaller utilities, the report says.

As a reminder, the US Senate halted a fast-track approval of a House bill banning Russian uranium imports, though it remains popular and might resurface.

If the bill passes it would permit imports until 2028 via waivers, giving utilities time to find other sources.

Russia, supplying nearly a quarter of America’s enriched uranium last year, is a key provider.

Jonathan Hinze of UxC LLC told Bloomberg that without these waivers, prices could jump from $152 to a record $180 per separative work unit. SWUs measure uranium’s volume and enrichment.’

He added: “But if there is an immediate ban it could be even more extreme. There are very limited supplies available.”

Recall we noted at the end of October that hedge funds were loading up on uranium stocks, many of which have had returns double digit percentages higher than the S&P for 2023, after uranium lagged in previous years. 

“We’re most focused on uranium miners in public markets,” Arthur Hyde, a portfolio manager at Segra Capital, told Bloomberg two months ago. “For the supply and demand of this market to balance, we need new assets to come online…If you’re going to insulate the US, Europe and Canada from the global fuel cycle, which is heavily dependent on Russia and China, the best way to do that is to build new mines, new conversion capacity, new enrichment capacity.”

“It is complete nonsense – and I think President Biden understands that,” Russia’s President Putin told state television channel Rossiya in a Sunday interview, as a response to claims made earlier this month by President Biden, who claimed that Russia is eyeing an invasion of countries beyond Ukraine.

“Russia has no reason, no interest – no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military – to fight with NATO countries,” the Russian leader added.

He then suggested that Biden’s recent rhetoric is all about stoking fears in the Western public in order to further justify his “erroneous policy” concerning the Ukraine conflict.

Biden’s words had come in the context of trying to press Republicans in Congress to pass his $106 billion defense aid package – the bulk of which would go to Ukraine. Here’s what the US president had said, as reported in The New York Times: 

The president even raised the prospect that an emboldened Mr. Putin would pose a threat to NATO allies, requiring the United States to come to their assistance with troops on the group. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s important to see the long run here. He’s going to keep going. He’s made their pretty clear.”

“If he keeps going and then he attacks a NATO ally” to which the United States is bound by treaty to help, “then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today — American troops fighting Russian troops,” Mr. Biden said.

“Make no mistake,” he added. “Today’s vote is going to be long remembered and history’s going to judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause. We can’t let Putin win. I’ll say it again, we can’t let Putin win.”

This is all part of the usual ’emboldening Putin’ narrative, by not approving the White House’s foreign funding package. It’s long been a Democratic and administration talking point to say that blocking Biden’s request is a ‘gift’ to the Kremlin. Of the broader more than hundred billion dollars in funds, the president wants to see $61.4bn of that go to Ukraine support.

Also on Sunday, Putin said at an event for the ruling United Russia party that the country’s very sovereignty is threatened after years of NATO expansion.

NATO’s expansion in Europe pic.twitter.com/8ETqeZIeu0

— Epic Maps 🗺️ (@Locati0ns) December 11, 2023

“We must remember and never forget, and teach our children: Russia will be either a self-sufficient and sovereign state or will not exist at all. It is a very important thing, which we should keep in our minds and hearts,” he said according to TASS.

There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear

– Buffalo Springfield

Something is not right, and the drastically divergent messages from Powell and his cronies at the Fed over the last month and a half confirm this suspicion.

The Burning Platform’s Jim Quinn writes that the current situation does remind me of September 2019 when the repo market revealed the underlying mechanisms within the financial system were malfunctioning and were about to lead to another massive financial crisis.

Powell restarted QE and “luckily” the COVID scamdemic was rolled out, so Powell and and our corrupt political class could pump trillions into the system and keep it alive.

Powell and his fellow tough guys at the Fed had increased rates to 5.3% and have talked tough about keeping rates up until inflation got back to their 2% target.

With GDP supposedly accelerating at 5.2%, unemployment still near all-time lows, and corporate profits still booming, there should be no fear about rates being too high by Powell and his sycophants.

But suddenly this week Powell and these economic “rocket scientists” now are saying they will be cutting rates soon and more than anyone expected.

The Fed Since November 1st:

1. Nov. 1: Getting inflation to 2% “has a long way to go”

2. Nov. 21: “No indication of rate cuts at last meeting”

3. Dec. 1: Talks about rate cuts are “premature”

4. Dec. 1: “We are prepared to tighten policy further” if needed

5. Dec. 13: Rates have peaked, 3 rate cuts coming in 2024

6. Dec. 15: Fed “isn’t really talking about rate cuts”

What is happening here?

Source: The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) December 15, 2023

The stock market exploded to all-time highs and interest rates plummeted.

This seems odd, when more than half the country is struggling to put food on the table.

It’s almost as if Powell and his pals know something really bad is about to happen and want to front run the event, or, like September 2019, they see something terribly wrong within the financial system and are trying to fix it before it blows up.

We do know the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks have close to $700 billion of unrealized losses on their books due to interest rates hitting 16 year highs.

We also know these banks have been increasingly utilizing the Fed’s emergency facility every day.

All it would take is some sort of emergency, whether global crisis, natural disaster crisis, or war breaking out between global powers, to start a run on the banks.

If that were to happen, those unrealized losses would become realized, and the entire financial system would begin to collapse.

Is that why Powell and the Fed are now desperate to drive interest rates lower, in order to eliminate those unrealized losses before they become realized?

Whatever the reason, they are trapped.

Drastically lowering interest rates will just reignite inflation again.

It looks like Powell has chosen inflation rather than deflation as we spiral into the abyss.

[ZH: as we warned on Friday, “trouble is brewing” in the banking system]

…the key warning sign continues to trend ominously lower (Small Banks’ reserve constraint – blue line), supported above the critical level by The Fed’s emergency funds (for now)…

Source: Bloomberg

As the red line shows, without The Fed’s help, the crisis is back (and large bank cash needs a home – green line – like picking up a small bank from the FDIC).

All of which makes us wonder – you know, just thinking out loud – are we setting up for another banking crisis in March as:

1) BTFP runs out (it was only a 12 month temporary program), and

2) RRP drains to zero, at which point reserves get yanked which means huge deposits flight.

Is that why The Fed needed to bring rates down massively and fast, to reduce the bond losses on banks’ books?

[ZH: Or, as we detailed here, is there another reason for Powell’s big pivot?]

Enjoy the show and buy more ammo.

I think it’s time we stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

Buffalo Springfield

Comedian Bill Maher discussed the Israel-Hamas conflict on Friday, suggesting that Palestinians get used to the fact that Israel isn’t going anywhere, and there’s no way for Israel to negotiate with Palestine in good faith when the other side’s position is “you all die and disappear.”

“Things change. Countries, boundaries, empires,” said Maher, citing various historical instances where other groups of people accepted regional defeat and moved on. “In 1950, the little town of Bethlehem was 86 percent Christian, now it’s overwhelmingly Muslim.”

While failing to address international calls for Israel to dial back civilian deaths in dealing with Hamas (out of optics, not genuine concern – we assure you), Maher’s position is essentially – deal with it.

“After World War II, 12 million ethnic Germans got shoved out of Russia, and Poland, and Czechoslovakia because being German had become kind of unpopular,” Maher continued. “People get moved, and yes, colonized. Nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert and took over much of the world in a single century.”

He also noted that there were several missed opportunities for deals with Israel in years past.

“There were deals on the table to share the land called Palestine… And East Jerusalem could have been the capital of a Palestinian state that today might look more like Dubai than Gaza,” Maher pointed out, noting that “Arafat was offered 95 percent of the West Bank, and said no.”

Maher then used a map to show how the slogan “from the river to the sea” is a call for either the death of all Jews, or at minimum – to move all of them out.

“Look at what Mexico used to own… but no Mexican is out there chanting, ‘From the Rio Grande to Portland, Oregon.‘”

“Get used to it…”

After laying out historical examples, Maher got to his point – that Israel isn’t going anywhere, noting that it’s “one of the most powerful countries in the world with the 500-billion-dollar economy, the world’s second largest tech sector after Silicon Valley, and nuclear weapons. They’re here, they like their bagel with a shmear, get used to it.“

Watch:

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about “kicking the can.” Not because “kicking the can” has been effective, but because we seem to have hit the point where a wall is in the way, stopping us from “kicking the can” much further. This is more apparent on the geopolitical front, where the Middle East seems to need serious, long-term solutions. While we aren’t there yet with China and Taiwan, it seems that solutions like “one country, two systems” will be tested sooner rather than later.

But, since it is the holiday season in the U.S. and much of the world, let’s stick to a more positive message.

From Stalemate to Victory – the Fed

As you can tell from the immediate post-FOMC reaction and Thursday’s T-Report – Unthinking the Fed, I’m struggling to process the shift in tone. Much of that came out during Thursday’s Bloomberg TV interview (Academy’s section starts at the 41 minute mark). We did focus on my “pet theory” that the Fed is far less interested in creating a recession during an election year, than they were, say, in 2023. Also, they might not need to.

Maybe that is the problem, I’ve been arguing that the Fed has done too much already. That they should be on pause and thinking about cutting. Not every analyst has had that view, and until Wednesday, it didn’t seem like the Fed did either. Sure, they had slowed the hiking process rather dramatically, but they were still portraying a Fed that could hike or cut with equal probability. That does not seem to be the case. It is telling that they didn’t trot out multiple speakers to dissuade the market from their exuberance.

So maybe I’m just too jaded to accept that the Fed might actually be on the same page as we are. Maybe I have some self-destructive tendencies that make me want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (I am a contrarian, after all).

While it is difficult to love a market at or near all-time highs, we can always go higher. Just because August didn’t follow trend and everyone seems to be betting on a rally into year-end, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Maybe it is simply time to accept that the stalemate is over, victory conditions have been achieved, and we can move on? Maybe this applies beyond the battle with the Fed?

From Stalemate to Victory – Russia/Ukraine

While there is no sign of the stalemate ending, it seems that most people involved, directly and indirectly, have to face the reality that some form of “absolute” victory is unlikely. If that acceptance occurs, should we be thinking about what a victory looks like?

What opportunities and risks are there if Russia and Ukraine agree to some sort of serious ceasefire/peace agreement in 2024? Are we (or your company) prepared for the opportunities that rebuilding Ukraine would create? That impact could be immediate and large if the agreement includes the use of some or all of Russia’s frozen dollar reserves.

One of the things that also prevents “rebuilding” is the availability of funds – it seems plausible that there will be readily available funds for this rebuilding as it is in the interest of not just Ukraine, but Europe too! Europe, more than the U.S., needs to get Ukraine up and running as quickly as possible so it can export commodities again, and more importantly, so that displaced Ukrainians can return home.

I’m now spending more time thinking about what a peace agreement could mean for markets and the global economy, than I am thinking about how the war can progress.

From Stalemate to Victory – China Trade

I’m still looking for some attempt to create better relationships between the two countries.

• Whether we like it or not, incumbents do best in elections when the economy is doing well. Almost anything done with China will help in that direction, at least in the near-term, which is what may be directing the actions of many incumbents looking to get re-elected. My apologies if this sounds too cynical, but my view is that most politicians view their jobs as being politicians, so to keep their jobs, they need to get re-elected. Cynical or not, that is my working assumption and shapes why I think that we can get something in the headlines in the next month or two (Treasury Secretary Yellen heading back to China seems good on this front).
• Many economic advisors to the Democratic party were very vocal about how detrimental tariffs were for the economy. There must be some who are still prodding the administration to ease back on tariffs. Whether it is cutting tariffs or just creating a “pathway” to reducing tariffs, the markets would likely respond well. At the very least, there is an argument to be made, depending on how it is done, that easing tariffs should reduce prices, and in turn reduce inflation.
• Chips. Clearly defining what is mission critical for the U.S. with respect to the military and AI could help the chip sector, as it would reduce uncertainty about which chips may or may not come under scrutiny. Just some clarity could help markets.
• While nothing to do with the U.S., China itself seems overdue for some more aggressive stimulus.
• Food. That is one area where (hands down) the U.S. dominates China and could create some good bargaining positions for the U.S. in any negotiations.

So, rather than being worried about what has gone on, maybe it is time to think about what happens next.

For clarity, Academy’s Geopolitical Intelligence Group is adamant that China remains the number one concern in D.C. on the National Security front. We will not, as a nation, jeopardize the nation’s future in our dealings with China. Having said that, there is plenty of room to come up with a deal that is (or at least seems to be) more economic in nature – which is what I’m betting on.

From Stalemate to Stalemate

It is unclear how we get to “victory” by almost any definition in the next few weeks (or even months) in the Middle East or with respect to the tensions surrounding China and Taiwan, especially with Taiwan heading into a crucial election. Those both seem to fit the “kicking the can into a wall” metaphor, but today, we are erring on the positive side.

Bottom Line

Rates. Difficult to like here, so slightly bearish bias. The rising debt, the growing percentage of our budget spent on interest, etc. were (and are) real. It shouldn’t have pushed 10s to 5%, but it makes sub-4% somewhat untenable.

Equities. Difficult to like here, but slightly bullish bias, favoring the “laggards.” My inclination is to step away from the punch bowl, but am I just snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? I cut positions but am buying dips. So, a timid bullishness, even with the laggards, which I continue to favor.

While I’m cautious about leaving early, it has been one heck of a party!

Since November 9th, the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 have underperformed the equal weighted indices. They got beat up pretty badly by the Russell 2000 and have been left in the dust by Regional Banks and ARKK. I use ARKK as a proxy for “disruption” and early in the year it was performing more or less in line with the Nasdaq 100, which surprised me. I view it as very high beta and would have expected it to trounce the Nasdaq 100 in such a strong market (it is finally doing that).

When I look at this chart, it gives me optimism for the IPO market and for M&A coming into 2024 – typically good for stocks!

Credit. It is tight by recent measures, but I think that it can go tighter. People seem to want to fight the spread tightening. While it is difficult to pound the table for credit, especially since M&A activity could result in an even bigger (and longer duration) calendar than expected, I wouldn’t fade it just yet.

For once, let’s enjoy the victory and keep on enjoying it for a little longer.

I’m looking to add more risk on dips, as whatever ranges we thought applied to markets at the start of the week have materially moved with the Fed Put back in play!

Submitted by Decensored News,

 “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces.”

Congressman Dan Crenshaw: “By the very nature of funding and training [Hamas] for decades, [Oct 7] is clearly Iran’s fault.”

Me: What about Netanyahu’s decades-long funding of Hamas?

Crenshaw: *Slams car door* pic.twitter.com/XIGFKWGG3i

— Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) December 13, 2023