Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

After having rolled out the welcome mat, New York City Mayor Eric Adams now tells illegal immigrants to look elsewhere.

A Right to Shelter

The Wall Street Journal explains Why New York Is a Magnet for Migrants

More than 81,000 migrants have come to New York from the southern border since last spring. On May 13, Mayor Eric Adams deemed the Roosevelt an arrival center for migrants. Most of its occupants are families, but it functions mainly as an intake center for new arrivals. It delivers a “range of legal, medical, and reconnection services, as well as placement, if needed, in a shelter or humanitarian relief center,” according to a city press release.

The city has at least 176 emergency shelters in such places as school gyms and churches, and the number keeps growing.

“Because Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. don’t have a right to shelter—anything like New York’s—New York has the much larger migrant crisis,” says Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

On May 23 Mr. Adams petitioned a state judge to modify the city’s right-to-shelter obligations under the 1981 consent decree in Callahan v. Carey. He specifically asked for language that would ease the city’s obligations if it “lacks the resources and capacity to establish and maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter.” Mr. Adams later said in a statement: “It is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border.”

Self-Imposed Sanctuary City Crisis

Also consider Eric Adams and the Self-Imposed Crisis of a Sanctuary City

Mayor Eric Adams last week groused that local hotels and shelters are overrun with migrants whose care will cost the city about $5 billion this fiscal year. As New York politicians do, he’s begging the feds and ordinary city-dwellers to open their wallets. “This is not Mayor Adams’s job. This is the job of the people of the city of New York,” he said last week. “We need every New Yorker that has something to offer to play a role.”

Apparently, paying the nation’s highest taxes isn’t enough. Mr. Adams recently floated the idea of sheltering migrants in private homes. How rich considering that city regulations set to take effect next month will effectively prohibit New Yorkers from renting out their apartments on Airbnb. The home-sharing site estimates the new “de facto ban” will eliminate 95% of its revenue in the city.

Naturally, the result will be higher demand and prices for rooms at hotels, including those where the city is paying $256 a night on average to shelter migrant families. Some hotels, like a Holiday Inn Express in Brooklyn, are making upward of $300 a night housing migrants. This doesn’t include the cost of food, medical care and social services, which adds another $127 a day per migrant family.

Meantime, to prevent evictions from soaring rents, the City Council last month voted to expand housing vouchers, which will cost as much as $36 billion over five years. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last week warned the city could face a $40 billion budget shortfall over the next three years—most of which doesn’t stem from costs of caring for migrants.

What Mr. Adams wants is for Americans in the rest of the country to help underwrite the city’s progressive folly. Sorry, not our job.

Go Elsewhere

The BBC reports Adams now is handing out flyers at the Mexican border telling illegal immigrants ‘We Have No More Room‘.

New York City plans to distribute fliers at the southern border warning migrants there is “no guarantee” they will receive help if they come there.

Mayor Eric Adams announced the plan on Wednesday, arguing the city could not handle any more migrants as it has taken in 90,000 since April last year.

“We have no more room,” said the leader of America’s biggest city.

Republican-led states have been transporting migrants to Democratic-run areas in protest at border policies.

As a part of the plan, Mr Adams, a Democrat, also announced that single adult migrants will only be able to stay in the city’s shelters for 60 days and will need to reapply for a space after that.

Critics of Mr Adams’ new plan argue it violates the city’s right-to-shelter rules, which guarantee temporary housing for those in need. Mr Adams has attempted to weaken those rules amid the influx of migrants.

Mayor Adams’ Flyer

The flyer is in Spanish and English.

No Guarantees?!

“There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals.“

Say what?

What happened to the right to shelter?

Lesson of the Day

When you give people rights that don’t exist, expect problems, and lots of them.

For starters, the city faces a $40 billion budget shortfall.

Not to worry, Adams has a plan “This is not Mayor Adams’s job. This is the job of the people of the city of New York,” said Adams.

If you live in New York City, I advise having a plan to get the hell out as soon as you can. This applies to California and Illinois too.

Big Tech Should Pay Its “Fair Share”, the Best Way is to Leave California

Regarding California, please see Big Tech Should Pay Its “Fair Share”, the Best Way is to Leave California

Regarding Illinois, we escaped just over three year ago.

Escape Illinois

On July 10, 2020 I noted It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois

“Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,” a U-Haul agent told us a few weeks ago.

Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers, and So Are We

On January 2, 2020 I announced Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers, and So Are We

I am pleased to report we loaded our U-Haul rental yesterday and I am on the road driving to our new home in Utah. 

Right now we are just a few hours  into the trip, but we have crossed the state line and are now in Iowa.

It took three weeks to leave Illinois because one-way out U-Hauls were booked up that much in advance.

*  *  *

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Business activity declined in New York State in August, according to firms responding to the August 2023 Empire State Manufacturing Survey.

The headline general business conditions index fell twenty points to -19.0 (well below the -1.1 expected)

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that new orders and shipments fell significantly…

…while both the input and selling price indexes moved up several points…

So after a few weeks of blind optimism in soft data, it appears reality is biting back.

Russia’s central bank unexpectedly hiked its key interest rate by 350 basis points to 12% on Tuesday, an emergency move to try and halt the rouble’s recent plunge after a public call from the Kremlin for tighter monetary policy.

This was the second straight increase and the sharpest since the start of the of Ukraine war almost 18 months ago. The emergency meeting came after the rouble tumbled past the 100 threshold against the dollar on Monday, dragged down by the impact of Western sanctions on Russia’s balance of trade and as military spending soars.

The rouble pared gains after the decision to stand 0.5% weaker at 98.16, but still significantly above lows near 102 on Monday which had not been hit since the early weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.

On Monday, president Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser Maxim Oreshkin rebuked the central bank, blaming what he called its soft monetary policy for weakening the rouble. Hours after Oreshkin’s words, the bank announced the emergency meeting, throwing the currency a lifeline.

The accompanying Bank of Russia statement was considerably shorter than previous ones. Unlike in the press release after the last meeting, the Bank refrained from including the usual hawkish phrase that “the Bank of Russia holds open the prospect of a further increase at its next meeting”, suggesting that today’s outsized hike is at least partially front-loading the hiking cycle that we and consensus had expected, and leading some analysts to speculate that interest rates had peaked.

“Inflationary pressure is building up,” the bank said in the statement adding that “the pass-through of the rouble’s depreciation to prices is gaining momentum and inflation expectations are on the rise.”

But a little after the decision, the bank issued an additional statement: “In the case of strengthening pro-inflationary risks, an additional increase in the key rate is possible.”

The Bank continues to see inflationary pressure building and puts inflation momentum and core inflation momentum in the 3 months to 7 August at 7.6% and 7.1% respectively, well above the 4% target. Similar to the previous statement, the Bank attributes the price pressure to “steady domestic demand surpassing the capacity to expand output” and, unlike in the previous statement, it explicitly links strong domestic demand to the recent depreciation of the Ruble through its positive impact on import growth.

Commenting on the decision, Goldman analyst Clemens Grafe writes that “the Bank’s economic assessment remains close to ours. Final domestic demand was, in our view, close to 4% above the pre-Ukraine invasion level in an economy that we estimate saw its potential output contract by a slightly smaller margin over the same period. Hence, stabilizing prices will require a meaningful slowdown in the economy. The strong expansion of domestic demand has also reduced the current account rapidly through higher imports, which in USD terms have risen back to slightly above the level in Q4-2021. Consequently, the current account surplus has fallen to our estimate of 1% of GDP in Q2 from close to 10% in 2022.”

He adds that “given the sanctions imposed on Russia, we doubt Russia would be able to fund a current account deficit, nor do we think the CBR would be willing to fund it from its reserves. Thus, we consider a balanced current account as a binding constraint on the economy, and hitting that constraint would lead to sizeable Ruble volatility. While the recent rise in oil prices will likely alleviate that risk somewhat, we interpret the front-loading of the hiking cycle partially as the Bank wanting to ensure it keeps the economy away from that BoP constraint.”

As Bloomberg notes, the precipitous decline in the Russian currency has thrust the central bank onto center stage in an increasingly fraught debate over how to steer an economy battered by shrinking export revenues and isolated from international financial markets. And even with rates now at their highest in over a year, the market remains unimpressed as capital seeps out.

“The recent acceleration of ruble weakness might indicate that some cracks in the capital control might have emerged and therefore capital might be able to flee Russia at an increasing speed,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of currency strategy at Commerzbank AG. “The rate hike will hardly convince those who might have a choice to keep their capital inside Russia.”

The central bank last made an emergency rate hike in late February 2022 with a rate raise to 20% in the immediate fallout of Russia’s despatching troops to Ukraine. The bank then steadily lowered the cost of borrowing to 7.5% as strong inflation pressure eased in the second half of 2022.

Since its last cut in September 2022, the bank had held rates but steadily increased its hawkish rhetoric, eventually hiking by 100 basis points to 8.5% at its last scheduled meeting in July. The next rate decision is due on Sept. 15.

Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina has won plaudits for her handling of the economy since Russia began what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, but the plunging rouble and high inflation have put her on the back foot, especially among pro-war nationalists. The Kremlin’s public criticism of her monetary policy adds further pressure as Russia heads towards a presidential election in March 2024, with consumers battling rising prices for basic goods.

“While such a depreciation risks boosting inflation, it is also the signal it sends out to the Russian public about the costs of the invasion of Ukraine,” said Stuart Cole, chief macro economist at Equiti Capital in London.

“As such, today’s decision will likely have had an element of politics behind it as well as economics.”

Quoted by Reuters, Andrei Melaschenko, economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, said the bank was right to react to inflation risks, but that the meeting, being announced so soon after Kremlin criticism, raised questions about the bank’s independence.

“(Nabiullina) has built quite a strong team around her and the central bank has been a strong regulator and I think and the market, both the domestic and international market, sees it that way.”

Russia saw double-digit inflation in 2022 and after a deceleration in the spring of 2023 due to that high base effect, annual inflation is now above the central bank’s 4% target once more and quickening. In annualized terms on a seasonally adjusted basis, current price growth over the last three months amounted to 7.6% on average, the bank said.

Promsvyazbank analysts said an additional hike may be required if the rouble does not stabilize and that measures to reduce the rouble liquidity surplus were also needed.

Russia’s widening budget deficit and stark labor shortage have contributed to rising inflationary pressure this year, but the rouble’s rapid slide from around 70 against the dollar at the start of the year to more than 100 on Monday pushed the central bank to act.

The bank, which blames the rouble’s slide on Russia’s shrinking current account surplus – down 85% year-on-year in January-July – has already tried to limit the rouble’s decline.

Last week, it halted the finance ministry’s FX purchases to try to reduce volatility, a step that effectively saw Russia abandon its budget rule. Analysts widely agreed that those measures alone were too minimal in scope to significantly support the currency.

Looking ahead, Goldman writes that in its view “the Ruble will continue to weaken unless oil prices rise” and notes that in July, the real effective exchange rate was still about 10% stronger than in Q4-2021 on the Bank of Russia’s index, and hence Goldman does not view the Ruble as undervalued.

The transmission of rates to the Ruble is likely to be slow. Given the sanctions, the financial channel is weaker than it used to be and the main transmission of interest rates to the currency would instead be through lower domestic demand and weaker imports, which will take time. Whether today’s rate hike will ultimately suffice remains, in our view, primarily a function of fiscal policy and oil prices. Fiscal policy was very loose in H1-2023, with real expenditures of the consolidated budget up 12%yoy. The Ministry of Finance continues to say that spending was considerably front-loaded and that the deficit would be contained at 2% of GDP in 2023 and largely unchanged from last year. While real expenditure growth had indeed fallen to 5%yoy in June, the deficit target would require a sustained tightening of fiscal policy in H2-2023, a correction that seems unusual in a time of military conflict.

Hence, we think it seems more likely that higher oil prices could support the Ruble in the short run, in line with the view of our commodity strategists, who see Brent prices in the mid-US$80s till year-end.

Others agreed: “Today’s rate hike will only temporarily slow the bleeding,” said Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics in London.

“Russia will struggle to attract capital inflows because of sanctions,” he said. “And there’s little ammunition for FX intervention – the central bank has some unfrozen renminbi assets and gold reserves, but the bar for using these is likely to be high.”

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

The Fed has two mandates – Maximum Employment and Price Stability

If we look at price stability, the Fed has failed miserably. 

The Fed employs 3,000 people in Washington DC of which 300 have a Ph.D. degree.

Their mission is “to provide our nation with a safer and more flexible and more stable monetary and financial system” with the overall mandate being price stability. 

In addition to discussing the Fed’s total failure in controlling inflation, in this article I will also stick my neck out in the climate debate before I go on to the likely disastrous effects of debts, deficits and inflation will have on investment markets.

POWELL’S ABRACADABRA INFLATION TARGETING

Last week the Fed chairman explained, in the Senate, the method the 300 Fed PhDs and many of the 3,000 Fed staff apply for inflation targeting.

Senator Cortez asked Powell:

Cortez: 

“Why 2% inflation?”

Powell: 

“The 2% is globally agreed between all major central banks as a target.”

EvG question: So for this Lemming system 300 PhDs are required?

Cortez: 

“How does it help people?”

EvG: The contorted Fed Speak reply which Powell utters summarises the entire wisdom of the Fed.

Powell: 

“I will tell you how it does, I guess it is obviously not obvious how that is.”

EvG: Hmmmm… Powell obviously doesn’t have a clue – “OBVIOUSLY NOT OBVIOUS!” 

Powell continues:

“To have people believe that it will go back to 2% anchors inflation there. 

Evidence is that the modern belief is that people’s expectation has an effect on inflation. If we expect inflation to go up to 5%, then it will because businesses and households expect it.”

So there we have the inner secrets of the Fed’s inflation policy and targeting. 

Firstly, the 2% target is just a Lemming system. Every other central bank does it, so we the Fed must follow the system of mediocrity.

Secondly, it is only a matter of making people believe that inflation goes to 2% and it will. What about if the people believe inflation will go to 20%?

This is where Powell the magician comes in to hypnotise businesses and household into believing in 2% inflation:

I agree with senator Cortez’ question: Why 2%?  There is nothing desirable about the 2% at all. With 2% inflation, prices double every 36 years. The aim should really be to have no inflation.

The problem with an arbitrary Lemming system targeting 2% is that it doesn’t work. Neither the Fed nor any other central bank have managed to hold it at that level except for accidentally on the way to higher or lower inflation.  

INFLATION WILL TURN BACK UP

Between 2015 and 2021 inflation in most industrialised countries was between 0% and 3%. 

When inflation in 2021 shot up significantly, Powell and Lagarde (ECB) proclaimed that that was only “transitory”. Still inflation went up to around 10% before it started to retreat in 2022. 

As I have explained in previous articles, the world is gradually moving from a financial and debt based economy to a one based on real assets and commodities. 

This will lead to a shift from a financially and morally bankrupt Western system to the East and South based on commodities and manufacturing.  

An upmove in commodity prices normally lead inflation by 6-9 months. So when commodity prices turned up in late 2019, inflation followed in most countries in early to mid 2020. 

After a correction, commodity prices bottomed in March-May 2023 so we could see inflation in the US and Europe turning during the autumn 2023. 

So sadly for Powell and Lagarde, their 2% inflation targeting is going to fail again, however much they hypnotise the people to believe it!

Instead high inflation and high interest rates will prevail for decades. But it will most certainly involve a very high level of volatility with fast up moves and violent corrections. 

Before I move on to the dire effects that inflation deficits and debts will have for the US and global economy, I will stick my neck out in the heated climate debate.    

CLIMATE EMERGENCY – HYSTERIA OR REALITY

The climate debate is totally polarised and dominated by powerful interest groups. 

Since Al Gore politicised this issue at a heightened level at the Copenhagen Climate conference in 2009, the trend has been clear. 

Just like with Covid, it has suited Western governments to use the climate debate as a means of controlling the people and protecting special interests. 

The official climate debate is totally one sided. Any money for research is only granted to scientists who support the notion of man-made global warming caused mainly by fossil fuels. 

The fact that fossil fuels account for 83% of all energy and most probably cannot be reduced more than marginally for the next several decades is totally ignored in the debate.

A further problem is that the world has reached peak energy by way of fossil fuels and there is no serious alternative in sight for decades. 

In addition, the energy cost of producing energy is increasing fast. The consequence will be falling standards of living for a foreseeable future. (SEEDS – Surplus Energy Economics)

The fact that the Holocene period which started 11,700 years ago has been the coldest in geological history is totally ignored. All the climate activists are just looking at figures for the last couple of hundred years. 

Also, the fact that CO2 has been declining for 1 billion years is totally ignored. Without CO2 there would be no life on earth. Total CO2 in the atmosphere is today 0.04%. If that percentage declines below 0.02% there would be no life on earth.

Dr John Clauser, the 2022 physics Noble Prize winner, criticises the climate models as unreliable and not accounting for the dramatic temperature-stabilising feedback of clouds. Clauser says that clouds are more than 50X as powerful as the radiative effect of CO2. In summary he says that there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2 concentrations will benefit the world. 

A leading nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer warned that Net Zero would end modern civilisation. He observed that the new wind and solar infrastructure would fail, cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment “and be entirely unnecessary”.

I am not a Covid expert. But in the case of Covid, the debate was totally skewed by the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on propaganda and corruption by the pharmaceutical companies. A small censored scientific minority were totally against an untested gene-manipulating vaccine and warned about its severe dangers. Three years later the fears of this minority have been vindicated. 

I am obviously not a Climate expert either. But having studied economic cycles for many years, I am a great believer in understanding history and very long trends rather than basing my opinion on short term opportunism. 

Thus studying very long climate cycles, it is clear to me that they are much more powerful than whatever effect that mankind has had on climate in the last 150 years. 

To take an example, just look at the 11,000 year climate cycle graph above. It shows a Roman Climate Optimum 2,000 years ago. At that time Rome had a tropical climate. As far as I am aware, there were no cars or other manmade CO2 producing matters at that time. 

Of course we all want a world with less pollution in the air and in the oceans and should strive for that globally. 

But to believe that we can achieve Net Zero CO2 Emissions by 2050 is as unrealistic as believing that mankind can limit the temperature increase by 1.5 degrees by 2050.

Let me just take some examples. Many Western countries are legislating that only electric vehicles (EVs) can be produced after 2030 or 2035. 

What the climate activists ignore is that EVs are costlier to produce than ordinary cars and have a major CO2 effect.

To produce ONE battery takes 250 tons of rock and minerals. The effect is 10-20 tons of CO2 from mining and manufacturing even before has been driven 1 meter. 

Also, car batteries cannot be recycled but go to landfill which has major implications. 

But that’s not the only problem. For the first 60-70,000 miles an EV produces more CO2 than an ordinary vehicle. 

Hopefully the CO2 and cost efficiency of EVs will be improved but so far progress is very slow.

US DEFICITS ARE SURGING

The borrowing requirements of the US treasury is reflecting the total lack of fiscal discipline which is typical for a Banana Republic. 

From January to the end of December 2023, the Treasury expects to borrow $3.3 trillion. With some extra bad news, including higher interest rates, the $3.3 trillion could easily rise to $4 – 4.5 trillion. This deficit plus the ongoing QT (quantitative tightening) is likely to put upward pressure on rates. 

Except for the Fed, there will be no buyer of an ever increasing amount of US debt. 
And so the vicious circle of higher debts, higher inflation, higher deficits starts to spin ever faster. 

Sadly, such a dire scenario can never have a happy ending.

For the banks, higher rates mean much higher defaults and a constant squeeze to reduce lending, also mandated by the Fed. 

With massively increasing borrowing requirements from the US Government and the Fed as well from the banking sector with dwindling sources of funding, the likelihood of drastic measures are obvious. 

After the subprime crises 2006-9, governments agreed that bailouts would be replaced by bail-ins at the next crisis. So far this didn’t happen in mid-March when 4 US banks and Credit Suisse collapsed. 

But the coming pressures on both public and private funding are likely to lead to draconian actions by governments next time around. This will probably involve forced savings in government debt for most Western countries, including US, Europe and Japan. 

It could involve compulsory purchases by bank depositors of say 10 year bonds with interest rolled up for 25-50% of customer liquidity in the bank.

My old forecast of future US debt made in 2016 is so far looking on target. Whether the debt will be my original $40 trillion forecast or the revised $50 trillion, time will tell. 

Major bank and derivatives defaults could easily push it up to $50t.

HOLD TANGIBLE ASSETS  

The main beneficiaries of the Western debt and deficit problems are of course: 

• Precious Metals – especially gold and silver 

• Commodities – especially oil and uranium

Stocks might benefit short term from higher inflation but over the medium and long term they will collapse. 

Buffett’s favourite indicator, Stocks to GDP is massively overvalued. To decline to the mean would involve a 50% fall. But overbought markets always overshoot. So a 70-90% decline would not be unrealistic. In such  scenario, it won’t only be stock prices that decline but GDP could easily fall 10-20% in real terms.  

Bonds, especially issued by governments, should be avoided like the plague. Inflation and potential defaults or moratoria will make them the worst investment ever. In addition the debasement of currencies will lead to the value of bonds in real terms reaching ZERO very quickly.

So is my forecast too pessimistic. Maybe but I doubt it. No one can of course predict the exact timing. 

But what we can evaluate is the risk. 

And with global risk being more elevated than at any point in history (and I haven’t even discussed political or geopolitical risks), why not protect your assets today from potentially the biggest wealth destruction ever. 

Timing the market seems simple enough: buy when prices are low and sell when they’re high.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld details below, there is clear evidence that market timing is difficult. Often, investors will sell early, missing out on a stock market rally. It can also be unnerving to invest when the market is flashing red.

By contrast, staying invested through highs and lows has generated competitive returns, especially over longer periods.

The graphic below shows how trying to time the market can take a bite out of your portfolio value, using 20 years of data from JP Morgan.

The Pitfalls of Timing the Market

Mistiming the market even by just a few days can significantly affect an investor’s returns.

The following scenarios compare the total returns of a $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 between January 1, 2003 and December 30, 2022. Specifically, it highlights the impact of missing the best days in the market compared to sticking to a long-term investment plan.

As we can see in the above table, the original investment grew over sixfold if an investor was fully invested for all days.

If an investor were to simply miss the 10 best days in the market, they would have shed over 50% of their end portfolio value. The investor would finish with a portfolio of only $29,708, compared to $64,844 if they had just stayed put.

Making matters worse, by missing 60 of the best days, they would have lost a striking 93% in value compared to what the portfolio would be worth if they had simply stayed invested.

Overall, an investor would have seen almost 10% in average annual returns using a buy-and-hold strategy. Average annual returns entered negative territory once they missed the 40 best days over the time frame.

The Best Days in the Market

Why is timing the market so hard? Often, the best days take place during bear markets.

Over the last 20 years, seven of the 10 best days happened when the market was in bear market territory.

Adding to this, many of the best days take place shortly after the worst days. In 2020, the second-best day fell right after the second-worst day that year. Similarly, in 2015, the best day of the year occurred two days after its worst day.

Interestingly, the worst days in the market typically occurred in bull markets.

Why Staying Invested Benefits Investors

As historical data shows, the best days happen during market turmoil and periods of heightened market volatility. In missing the best days in the market, an investor risks losing out on meaningful return appreciation over the long run.

Not only does timing the market take considerable skill, it involves temperament, and a consistent track record. If there were bullet-proof signals for timing the market, they would be used by everyone.

Via Remix News,

Revenues of leading Western defense companies have sky-rocketed following the outbreak of war in Europe, and U.S. arms manufacturers continue to dominate the global arms industry, news portal Mandiner reports.

According to the Defense News magazine’s recent ranking of the “100 largest defense companies in 2022,” the five largest U.S. arms companies have combined revenues of $196 billion.

Four U.S.-based companies were ranked among the world’s five largest military companies.

The United States has become Ukraine’s main source of arms in the midst of the war, providing some $37 billion in military aid to Kyiv, according to the portal.

In the first half of the year, revenues at the 25 largest Western defense companies rose 11 percent to $212 billion, according to the latest available data.

It is calculated that total arms sales by these companies are expected to reach $448 billion in 2023, an increase of $47 billion from last year.

By 2026, that amount could rise by more than 20 percent to $554 billion due to arms shipments to Ukraine and rearmament in Europe, according to the report.

Further estimates suggest that Western defense companies will increase their revenues by $150 billion, or 37 percent, between 2021 and 2026, Iran’s Farsi news agency reported. In contrast, economic growth in developed countries will reach half that rate in the same period.

In Defense News’ top ten ranked by 2022 sales, there are seven U.S. and three Chinese companies.

Europe’s two leading defense companies, Airbus and Leonardo, ranked 11th and 12th respectively.

While both Airbus and Leonardo are multinational corperations, Europe’s biggest single defense company is Germany’s Rheinmetall AG, manufacturers of the state-of-the-art Leopard 2 tank, and was ranked 19th. Its 2022 sales totaled $6.75 billion.

RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson sat down for a lengthy interview published on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, in which the two discuss Ukraine, bio-labs, and who killed his uncle, JFK. Carlson made clear that he wasn’t going to badger Kennedy with questions about his stance on vaccines, which the MSM has made a central focus for obvious reasons.

The interview begins by discussing the Biden administration denying RFK Jr. Secret Service protection

Despite the fact that his uncle and his father were both assassinated, the Biden administration denied SS protection

“We applied for Secret Service protection in May,” said Kennedy, adding “The President has discretion to give Secret Service protection to any candidate, for any reason.”

Kennedy noted that former President Barack Obama was given Secret Service protection more than 500 days before the election, and that his uncle Ted Kennedy received protection more than 450 days before an election.

“I think the DNC is playing hardball,” Kennedy added.

On the topic of Ukraine

(12 minutes in), Kennedy says Americans are being lied to, and were sold on a “comic book pitch, which we see in every war. There’s a bad guy who’s like, you know, unspeakably evil, who’s planning world conquest or a terrorist attack on America. And we have to be the good guys and go in and stop it.“

Kennedy then explained that “a group of people who are known as Neocons, since 2001, have been talking about putting NATO in Ukraine. Now, I’ll give you some background. In 1992 the walls came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Gorbichev went to Tony Blair and President Bush and said ‘I’m going to withdraw 400,000 Soviet troops from East Germany. I’m going to allow you to reunify Germany under NATO troops – so you’re gonna move NATO troops, a hostile force, into our barracks and our bases – and the only commitment I want from you, is that once I allow Germany top become part of NATO, that you will never move NATO further to the East.'”

“James Baker, who was the Secretary of State at that time, famously said: ‘we promise that we will not move NATO one inch to the East.'”

“Then, in 1996, 1997, five years later, Zbigniew Brzezinski … says ‘ok, we should start moving NATO to all the former (USSR) satellite states.'”

US Biolabs in Ukraine

At around 35 minutes into the interview, Carlson and Kennedy begin discussing the US bioweapons program. Meanwhile back home, RFK Jr. said that there are “36,000 ‘death scientists’ who are now employed full time in developing microbes that can be used to kill people.“

🚨BOMBSHELL: @TuckerCarlson asked @RobertKennedyJr about the shadowy biolabs in Ukraine. RFK’s jaw-dropping answer, if proven true, could shake the very foundations of trust and demands unparalleled consequences for both Anthony Fauci and Ralph Baric.

RFK: “Anthony Fauci got all… pic.twitter.com/fWBv9JCTbe

— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) August 15, 2023

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney put Fauci in charge of the US bioweapons program.

Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. Ralph Baric, and Dr. Anthony Fauci should never have transferred their coronavirus research to Dr. Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.https://t.co/KP1tPc6AAR

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 15, 2023

On the topic of who killed his uncle

RFK Jr. alleged that the CIA was involved, and that most of the people at the agency had associations with Cuba.

“The specific people who were involved in it were pretty much all associated with a Miami station, which was the largest CIA station at the time. It was basically, it was the Cuban station,” said Kennedy.

“And the people who were involved in that station were people like Bill Harvey and David Atlee Phillips who was clearly involved in my uncle’s assassination. He was by all evidence, he was Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler at the CIA.”

Kennedy also says that the corporate media has been publishing “outright lies” about him.

“Right now, what it seems to me is that there’s been this alignment, this political alignment that I think really started with Fox News back, you know, when Roger was running things there where he overtly made it a political network. He ended it with the Republican Party and said we’re gonna push their agenda. And up until then, that has been considered a journalistic ethical breach. The networks were supposed to at least pretend neutrality and the newspapers as well,” he said.

“But now I think that business model works so well for Fox and again, I think MSNBC and CNN adopted the same business model and there’s been this big consolidation in the media where really there’s no independent media.“

Watch the entire interview below:

Ep. 16 RFK Jr. explains Ukraine, bio-labs, and who killed his uncle pic.twitter.com/RMr5VZVqSM

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 14, 2023

Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

August is the time of year that the majority of Europeans head off on vacation, and Americans reading the news are reminded of how crappy the paid time off policy is in the US.

That is no doubt true. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), American workers put in more hours than every other “developed” country in the ILO’s report – France, Belgium, Germany, Australia, the UK, and Sweden. That averages out to roughly 400 more hours on the job every year compared to Germany.

The legal right to paid vacation and total number of mandated paid holidays. Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research

In theory the Europeans’ vacation policies are a comparatively sane balance between capital and workers.

But if you start to peel back some class layers in Europe, what you’ll find isn’t pretty.

The vacation “privilege” has for some time been quietly eroding for the working poor.

While 75 percent of Europeans planned to travel this summer, the number one reason for those staying home was economic challenges. Forty-seven percent said they were too short on cash to go on vacation, which was up six points over last year. More from The European Trade Union Confederation:

The share of the total population who could not afford a holiday has increased in over half of EU member states since 2019 and even the share of working people who can’t afford one has increased in 11 countries.

Romania, Greece and Lithuania have the highest share of workers unable to get away for a week. Italy (8m) , Spain (4.6m) and France (4.1m) have the highest number of workers missing out on a break for financial reasons.

This coincides with a rise in the profit share of European companies, meaning executives and shareholders hoarded more money among themselves to the detriment of workers.

The cost of living crisis in Europe, largely due to the collective West’s ill-fated war against Russia, is only making matters worse. Inflation is sapping enthusiasm for vacation. Nearly one in three of Europeans say that price increases have increased their anxiety about summer vacation travel, and 48 percent were concerned about running out of money while traveling this summer. And that’s if they can get away from both of their jobs at the same time. From Euronews:

As inflation soars across Europe and beyond, an increasing number of workers are taking on additional jobs to combat the cost of living crisis.

New research from software company Qualtrics shows that nearly half of UK employees have either already looked for or are planning to look for a second stream of income, and 77 per cent are considering picking up overtime or extra shifts to pay their bills.

Other European countries are seeing similar trends: 30 per cent of workers surveyed in Germany and 22 per cent of those in France are considering taking on a second job.

Additionally, the professional managerial class might still spend their August at their beach homes, but they are increasingly working while there. According to Ipsos:

“Workation” is gaining in popularity among European actives: almost three out of 10 intend to work from their holiday location this summer, a four point increase compared to 2022 (28% vs. 24%). It remains significantly below Americans, 36% of US actives planning a workation next summer.

These trends are a continuation of the deterioration of the European summer holiday for the working class, poor, and retired. While the percentage unable to afford vacation varies from year to year depending on the economic situation ( e.g., it was 40 percent in 2013 and 28 percent in 2018), the key is that the ability to go on vacation is no longer universal, which was integral to the original labor efforts to win paid time off.

It wasn’t long ago that European countries offered free vacation destinations through the church, unions, or government. Those options are now mostly gone and those unable to afford a summer holiday either stay home or continue working because they need the money. On Europe’s current economic trajectory, how long until vacation is exclusively for the rich?

So what we have is a crumbling of one of European socialists’ crowning achievements, which started when the universality began to be chipped away. And unfortunately European policy is becoming more like the US rather than the other way around. The French labor movement fought for and gained guaranteed paid vacation time back in the 1920s and 1930s, and such policies soon became rivalries between the fascist and socialist states of Europe, as well as an opportunity for the latter to build support for the universality of the program and patriotism. David Broder writes at Jacobin:

Key here was the focus on leisure’s ability to bridge class divides — [undersecretary of state for sports and leisure Léo] Lagrange not only sponsored the “People’s Olympiad” in Barcelona, alternative to Hitler’s Olympics, but himself provided tours of Paris to agricultural laborers from other regions. Government support for member-run associations was aimed at fostering a collective management of leisure time, free of the patronage associated with church or charitable initiatives: for Lagrange, this would allow the “miner, the artisan, the peasant, the mason, the clerk and the teacher [to] gradually understand the unity of human labor.”

Without that unity, the hard-fought vacation time victories are being whittled away. I’ll use Italy as an example for this process since that is the country I am most familiar with, but data shows it is increasingly a bloc-wide assault on working class vacation. Rome used to be a complete ghost town in August. If you were a tourist who showed up at that time, you would have thought a fast-moving plague ripped through while you were en route at 35,000 feet.

Some bodegas might have been open in the city center around the tourist attractions, but that was about it. Everyone was on vacation. It did not matter if you were a manager or a janitor; you didn’t work in August, and nearly everyone fled the city for the beaches or mountain lakes.

Even for the poorest there were le colonie (“the colonies”). These were free retreats managed by the public or the church in post-World War Two Italy where children could go if their parents didn’t have the money for a family vacation. The colonies first began towards the end of the 19th century to house children with tuberculosis. More colonies were constructed during the 1920s and 30s and they began to host even healthy children, largely with a propaganda function under the fascist government.

After the war, as Italy built up its welfare state, it expanded the colonies and provided low-cost or free options for the entire family to vacation, as did France and other countries in Europe. As Italy’s economic boom progressed, however, the colonies and other cheap vacation options emptied out as most Italians had more money to spend and/or didn’t want to be seen as too poor to pay for their holiday.

The 1990s dealt the final death blow to the colonies. As Italy prepared to enter the eurozone, Rome was required to scale back its social spending, which meant less money for municipalities, and funding for the colonies dried up. Many have now become high-end resorts, and previously free areas for families have also been overtaken by development catering to wealthy Italians and international travelers.

Maybe at no time is this trend more evident than in Italian cities in August. Take Rome, which as stated above, used to be a ghost town during the month. By the 1990s the city center was no longer going quiet during August as service employees were required to remain and tend to the tourists. It’s only been in the past 10 years that the trend has moved outwards into Rome’s working class suburbs. More and more grocery stores, restaurants, and shops now remain open. Many workers say they would prefer to work because they need the money. While it’s great that European workers have 20 to 30 days of paid time off, it loses its luster if you’re not able to actually if you can’t actually afford to go anywhere or instead spend that time working your second job.

This also reinforces the idea of the summer vacation for some and not for all. An obvious solution would be better pay and bringing back free vacation destinations for the poor.

Without a summer vacation that all classes can enjoy, the hard-won tradition will likely continue to be slowly taken away (one can already hear the arguments that sacrifices on the number of vacation days must be made by workers to keep European businesses competitive) by capitalists who have never liked the August tradition for workers but will continue to enjoy it themselves.

Europeans don’t need to look far for what such a future looks like. Just ask the Americans.

Authored by Peter Hitchens via The Daily Mail,

It could happen any day now.  After yet another brief, unsuccessful  court hearing, a column of vans and police cars roars out of Belmarsh prison in London and hurries to Heathrow, where a manacled, stooped and blinking prisoner is handed over to American officials and bundled aboard a plane bound for Washington DC.

There he will face the strong possibility of decades buried alive in some federal dungeon, the sort of place intended for mass murderers or terrorists.

But the man involved is neither of these things.

This will be an irrevocable and shameful event, against which all patriotic, freedom-loving people in this country should be ranged. But by the time most of us have realised what has happened, it will be over. So now is the moment to act. 

I must beg you to join me, as soon as you can, in protesting against the fast-approaching extradition of Julian Assange to the USA. I am sorry to say that I do not believe he will receive justice when he gets there. I simply cannot see why our supposedly independent courts have so far permitted this, when the extradition is so blatantly political – something clearly banned under the UK-US Extradition Treaty.  I am astonished at how few people in Parliament or the media have spoken out against this grave injustice. I am amazed that it should have fallen to me – a person who has no great love for Mr Assange or his politics – to speak for him.  The only time we ever met, in debate, we clashed angrily. But his extradition would be an outrage.  

He faces absurd charges of spying, when he never spied. His crime was to embarrass the US government by selectively releasing information that Washington had tried and failed to keep secret. I do not think this is a crime, here or there. Claims are made against him, by supporters of the extradition, which I do not think are true.  He took considerable care not to release material which would endanger or compromise individuals, and if he were an American citizen he would certainly be protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which safeguards journalists – as Mr Assange is – from the anger of the state.    

It is almost three years since I asked here : ‘Do we really want the hand of a foreign power to be able to reach into our national territory at will and pluck out anyone it wants to punish? Are we still even an independent country if we allow this? The Americans would certainly not let us treat them in this way.’ 

The question is perhaps more urgent now we have seen the dismissive way in which President Biden has twice treated our Prime Minister. Do we think that the Biden White House will be nicer to us if we do their bidding over Julian Assange? Or just even more contemptuous than they are already?  As France’s mighty Charles de Gaulle proved long ago, the Americans treat independent nations much better if they stand up to them than if they suck up to them.  

I also explained exactly why this is a political extradition, a case I have never seen answered:  For a start, different US administrations have taken opposite views, clear proof that it is about politics above all. Prosecutors working for the Obama White House (2009-2017) decided, for legal reasons, not to prosecute Mr Assange almost a decade ago. They concluded that charging him would have meant they would then have to prosecute any journalist who published information alleged to endanger national security. That would have violated the US constitution.  Under Donald Trump’s rule, US policy veered wildly. In April 2017,  US Attorney General Jeff  Sessions declared that the arrest of Mr Assange was now a ‘priority’.  Yet at one point Donald Trump himself had said ‘I love WikiLeaks’ and rejoiced that the source was ‘like a treasure trove’.  

Mike Pompeo, Trump’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency, later promoted to the even higher office of Secretary of State, said on April 13, 2017, of Mr Assange and his WikiLeaks colleagues: ‘They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.’

He also said: ‘Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms…He’s not a US citizen.’   

He also made a long and excoriating personal denunciation of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks.  If any British official or Minister of similar standing had made these statements about a person accused of a crime in a UK court, the trial would have to be stopped on the grounds that it had been hopelessly prejudiced. Yet our courts are apparently ready to pass Mr Assange over to a Justice System, in my view gravely inferior to ours, where this is acceptable. Only one person stands between Mr Assange and this hole-in-corner handover. The UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, can – if she chooses – refuse to hand him over. There is a precedent for this.  One of her forerunners, Theresa May, did so in the case of Gary McKinnon, who had hacked into US defence computers, saying ‘Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights.’  Britain faced no adverse consequences as a result. I think Lady May deserves great credit for this action.

I think Ms Braverman, likewise, would deserve much credit for courage and compassion – and justice – if she halted the extradition and finally allowed Mr Assange to go home to his wife and two small children.

If you agree with me, please write, politely and briefly, and soon, to The Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP, Home Secretary, the Home Office, 2 Marsham St, London SW1P 4DF