Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The US and its allies are worried that Ukraine’s stalled counteroffensive means the war between Russian and Ukrainian forces will be an open-ended conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The report said the US was hoping Ukraine would regain some territory and that would pave the way for a negotiated settlement, although the US has discouraged diplomacy throughout the war. “My hope is and my expectation is you’ll see that Ukraine makes significant progress on their offensive and it generates a negotiated settlement somewhere along the line,” President Biden said in Helsinki earlier this month.

But without significant Ukrainian gains, the West is preparing to support the proxy war against Russia for years to come. “The only real response is an industrial mobilization that will give Ukrainians, and the Russians, a clear message that the Ukrainians will always have plenty of what they need,” an unnamed Western diplomat told the Journal.

The diplomat said that the US might have to accept that the war won’t end anytime soon. Biden administration officials have repeatedly said they’re willing to arm Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” but it’s unclear if the US and its NATO allies can sustain support for Ukraine as officials are warning Western military stockpiles are running low.

Time is also on Russia’s side as potential political changes in the US could impact the level of support Ukraine receives.

The Journal report said a stalemate could bolster the argument of those inside the US who oppose supporting Ukraine in the conflict, although opposition to the policy of pouring tens of billions of dollars in weapons into Ukraine is still relatively small in Congress.

A US official told the Journal that it’s still too early to assess the Ukrainian counteroffensive since Kyiv hasn’t committed all of its combat brigades that were trained by NATO. “If they commit their reserves and their reserves aren’t successful, then we will have to determine the way ahead,” the official said.

The Journal reported over the weekend that Western officials knew Ukrainian forces did not have enough training or equipment to dislodge Russian forces but hoped the counteroffensive would be successful anyway. Leading up to the counteroffensive, the Discord leaks and media reports revealed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain much territory from Russia. 

This is such vacuous drivel. pic.twitter.com/8AHPs5I6Fj

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) July 25, 2023

A European official quoted in the Journal article published Tuesday said his government does not believe Ukraine can regain all the territory Russia has captured. But the government in Kyiv maintains that recapturing all the territory is its goal, including Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, demonstrating that the war will drag on as long as the US and NATO keep backing Ukraine.

San Francisco’s crime situation is so bad that even CNN decided to shine a spotlight on it — and while they were shooting from the nation’s most-robbed Walgreens, a shoplifter casually walked by the reporter and camera with stolen merchandise. 

In fact, CNN’s Kyung Lah says she and her crew observed three shoplifters in just 30 minutes at a Walgreens in San Francisco’s Richmond District, which is bordered by Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. Among the company’s 9,000 US stores, that one is robbed the most — an average of 12 times a day.  

“In the 30 minutes we were at this Walgreens we watched three people, including this man, steal,” says Lah, as the accompanying video shows a messy man with stringy hair and a winter jacket walk right out the store with some type of product in his hands. Turning to a cashier, she asks, “Did that guy pay?” The cashier replies with a simple “no.” Naturally, CNN protected the thief’s identity by blurring his face. 

The particular Walgreens featured in the story is the same one that garnered social media buzz earlier this month after installing heavy chains and padlocks across the frozen food coolers. 

NEW: The Walgreens at 16th/Geary in San Francisco has chained up the freezer section ⛓️

Workers said normally shoplifters clean out all the pizza and ice cream every night. They’re usually hit 20x a day. The whole store is virtually locked up. @KPIXtv

h/t @greenbergnation pic.twitter.com/lfFWmkLWdo

— Betty Yu (@bett_yu) July 18, 2023

Lah reports that store workers, fed up with being ripped off a dozen times daily, installed the highly conspicuous chains and padlocks on their own initiative. However, after the imagery was widely shared across social and traditional media, Walgreen’s corporate leadership ordered the locks removed, apparently fearing the visuals would damage the company’s brand more than they would underscore the increasingly desperate situation for retailers in San Francisco and other crime-plagued cities. 

While the unsightly hardware is gone, an astonishing proportion of the store’s products are behind locked plexiglass, from mustard to maple syrup to cough medicine. At another retailer, CNN showed frozen foods under cable locks, while the purchase of products like fake eyelashes and lotion also requires asking an employee for help.

In San Francisco, we went to the Walgreens that is the #1 spot for theft in all the 9000 US stores, per Walgreens. This is where chains once shut the freezer section. And we saw 3 thefts right in front of us. But across SF, coffee, mustard, nail polish– are all locked up: pic.twitter.com/IfYBVgpeI2

— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) July 25, 2023

CNN’s Lah also observed ground coffee under lock and key. Asked for his perspective, a clueless customer told her, “I don’t understand why coffee [would be locked up.] It’s become kind of like a police state in San Francisco.”  Of course, any rational observer would realize the locked-up coffee demonstrates San Francisco has become the opposite of a “police state,” as criminals steal property with utter impunity.  

California’s Prop 47 chummed the waters for shoplifters by making thefts of up to $950 of merchandise a misdemeanor. Now, Sacramento legislators are working hard to make things even worse: Last month, the state senate passed a bill that would make it illegal for store employees to confront thieves.

Hell-bent on wealth redistribution, it seems California’s Marxist rulers are as happy to enable it by individual, criminal acts as they are via government programs.  

Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

GOP lawmakers and other conservative critics are working to expose and fight a secretive executive order by President Biden to expand voter participation in elections, which they suspect has become a powerful government-wide complement to private left-wing election financing that could tip the 2024 campaign illegally and unfairly in Democrats’ favor. 

Cast as a civil rights measure issued as the nation marked the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” police beatings of voting-rights marchers outside Selma, Ala., the president’s 2021 directive orders every federal agency, more than 600 in all, to register and mobilize voters – particularly “people of color” and others the White House says face “challenges to exercise their fundamental right to vote.” It further orders the agencies to collaborate with ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits.  

Since issuing the order, critics claim, the Biden administration has stonewalled efforts to scrutinize its implementation by often ignoring document requests and litigating to shield relevant records. The critics, including members of Congress, state officials, and government watchdog groups, say the executive branch is attempting to federalize elections with an end-run around constitutionally prescribed state control over voting – in many cases using the resources of agencies with missions unrelated to registering voters. 

Some have labeled the president’s order “Bidenbucks,” evoking “Zuckbucks” – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan’s funneling of some $400 million through two nonprofits into election offices across the country during the 2020 election. That money often flowed to left-leaning nonprofits managing critical aspects of election administration that were considered crucial to Biden’s winning the White House. 

In a notable recent defeat for conservatives, Judge Beryl Howell of the D.C. District Court, an Obama appointee to the generally liberal jurisdiction, on July 18 dismissed Freedom of Information Act requests from the America First Legal Foundation, siding with administration arguments that the records in question were exempt as privileged presidential communications. Trying to pry strategy documents loose, America First had sued nearly a dozen non-responsive agencies, ranging from the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Left-leaning think tank Demos, which in late 2020 drafted a blueprint for the order, estimates that if fully implemented, it could generate 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually. Even a far more modest increase could dramatically impact the 2024 presidential election, considering that recent contests have been decided by just thousands of votes in several states. 

Critics say the order could violate laws including the Administrative Procedure Act, barring agency actions “in excess of statutory jurisdiction” and the Hatch Act, curbing political activities by federal employees. 

Their concerns are driven in part by the fact that the directive appeared to be cribbed from the Demos white paper. Two ex-Demos executives – one of whom helped write the paper – departed for the Biden administration for roles positioning them to push for the order.  

Republican House members raised the alarm about this issue in a January 2022 letter requesting documents from administration officials, calling the order “nearly identical to a federal election takeover plan crafted by the radical left-leaning group known as Demos.” 

Months later, on the first anniversary of the order, Demos revealed it had worked extensively with federal agencies as well as state partners to implement the order, noting that it did so “in close partnership with the ACLU and other allies.” 

Conservatives say their fears of federal government collusion with supportive progressive groups appear to have already been substantiated. 

In ongoing FOIA litigation against the Justice Department, the Foundation for Government Accountability obtained an email between the White House Counsel’s Office and numerous agency officials regarding a July 2021 “Agency Listening Session” apparently led by “Civil and Voting Rights Organizations.” 

The email includes a roster of “advocates.” These include representatives from progressive groups such as the ACLU, the George Soros-affiliated Open Society Policy Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center; labor unions including the AFL-CIO and AFSCME; and a coterie of identity-focused organizations such as the Arab American Association, Black Voters Matter, and UnidosUS. 

RealClearInvestigations contacted over a dozen prominent private groups supporting the order, some of which were represented at that meeting, but only one responded to its queries. The Project on Government Oversight, a self-described “nonpartisan independent watchdog,” indicated it had not met with federal agencies regarding the executive order, undertaken any activities to advance it, nor planned to do so during this election cycle. It publicly supported the executive order, according to a spokesperson, because “access to voting is a critical way to hold public officials accountable.” 

The organizations that did not respond ranged from the Center for American Progress to politically powerful public-sector unions, including the American Federation for Teachers, the National Education Association, and AFSCME. Also not responding were Fair Fight Action, founded by unsuccessful Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. 

RCI also posed a series of questions to Demos centering on concerns expressed by lawmakers and others about its involvement in the order – including a report that it helped the Indian Health Service register and mobilize voters. It did not respond. 

“Promoting voter registration and participation – i.e., mobilizing voters – is an inherently political act for a partisan president,” Tarren Bragdon and Stewart Whitson of the Foundation for Government Accountability wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. “The resulting efforts can be directed at groups expected to vote for the president’s party and may take the form of pressure to support the party or its policies.” 

Likewise, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, recently submitted congressional testimony indicating that the kinds of activities contemplated under the Biden administration’s executive order “risk confusing and intimidating vulnerable members of the public who are applying for federal benefits into thinking they have to register and vote for the political party in control of the White House to ensure their applications for benefits are not declined.” 

In addition to its largely successful efforts in court to date to stave off greater disclosure, the Biden administration has rebuffed Republican lawmakers’ numerous oversight inquiries into the order. 

The administration has refused to produce agency-specific strategic plans that would comprehensively capture the order’s scope and has remained largely silent about which third-party groups agencies are coordinating with to execute the order, and on what grounds – a key area of concern among the directive’s critics. 

RCI asked a White House spokesperson why the administration was withholding the strategic plans. RCI also asked if the Biden administration would share details about agencies’ coordination with third-party groups, and how the administration would respond to concerns raised by critics that the order codifies a de facto Democrat get-out-the-vote effort. The White House did not respond. 

What is clear, based on the details that have emerged about the order, is that the Biden administration is proceeding with its implementation, undeterred by critics. 

In March, near the two-year anniversary of the order, the administration released a characteristic summary statement noting that agencies as diverse as the Department of Education, Defense, and the Indian Health Service have carried out efforts ranging from making voter registration information and materials more readily available on agency websites, in documents, and across their offices, to successfully designating themselves as voter registration agencies.  

Previously, agencies from the Departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture disclosed generally some of the ways they were working to comply with the order, including seeking to drive voter registration via job training centers, public housing authorities, and child nutrition programs.  

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Education, and the Department of Agriculture are exceptions in having provided cursory responses to the many questions posed by lawmakers regarding the order. 

Much of what little is known publicly about the directive has been captured in “progress reports” released by its left-leaning champions aimed at persuading the administration to accelerate and broaden its efforts to implement it.  

Myriad left-leaning organizations are urging the administration to more fully implement it in the run-up to the 2024 election. They propose, for example, that the U.S. Marshals Service provide eligible individuals in federal pre-trial detention “access to high-quality voter registration services and assistance voting”; that the Department of Education incorporate voter registration opportunities into the federal student aid process; and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offer voter registration services “at or immediately after all naturalization ceremonies.”  

Republicans have recently advanced legislation to combat the executive order. The Republican-led House is seeking to neuter the executive order via appropriations.  

As currently drafted, the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill would defund the order. Perhaps more significantly, the House Administration Committee recently introduced the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act, which it touts as “the most conservative election bill to be seriously considered in the House in a generation.”  

Among the almost 50 bills contained in the legislation is the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act. That bill, sponsored by New York GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, co-chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, would nullify the Biden executive order.  

Progressive supporters of the directive panned the provision. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote that it “strongly object[s] to the ACE Act’s attempt to thwart implementation” of the Biden executive order.

“Voter registration remains a hurdle for many eligible voters, particularly people of color,” the group said. “Real confidence in elections comes from ensuring that all Americans have the freedom to vote unimpeded by discriminatory rules.”  

Notwithstanding such opposition, the ACE Act would seem poised to pass the House given the support shown by leadership, including its sponsorship by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and its more than one hundred other co-sponsors. But, as Roll Call noted, “its outlook is bleak in the Democrat-controlled Senate.”  

There, Republican Sen. Ted Budd or North Carolina has introduced companion legislation to Rep. Tenney’s. Any such efforts are likely to prove fraught in a divided government. Republicans’ majority in the House, however, does arm them with subpoena powers. RCI asked several relevant committees whether they might use such authority to compel the executive branch to respond to their requests.  

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Bryan Steil, Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, told RCI that he “will continue to demand answers from the agencies on how they are implementing the [executive order]” while touting the ACE Act.  

A spokesperson for the committee told RCI its members were “not satisfied with the responses [to oversight requests] we’ve received so far” – noting that in some instances it had not received responses from agencies at all – and that the committee was planning to send a battery of follow-up requests in the near-term.  

Whitson believes that such oversight efforts could hold the key to halting the executive order irrespective of what happens with pending litigation. He argues that “Congress should use its subpoena and oversight power to gather evidence, including sworn testimony and documents” that can be leveraged by state attorneys general – many red state officials having already indicated their aversion to the order – to sue the Biden administration and seek a permanent injunction blocking it. “[I]t’s up to the states and Congress to work together to stop this unprecedented scheme before time runs out,” Whitson says. 

As we observed earlier this week, the yen has seen a surge in volatility and been on a rollercoaster ride in recent weeks following a rise in speculation that – as a result of spiking transitory inflation – the BOJ may tweak its Yield Curve Control beyond the current +/- 0.50bps band on the 10Y (everyone still remembers the catastrophic consequences of the last such “tweak” when the BOJ had to spend hundreds of billions in US dollars to avoid a collapse in the JGB market).

So despite very clear messaging from both Reuters…

… and Bloomberg…

… that despite the heightened drama (thank you momentum chasing Mrs Watanabe) potential leaks and heightened speculation, the BOJ would do absolutely nothing, moments ago – at 2am local time because that’s how BOJ “sources” roll – Japan’s Nikkei reported that the Bank of Japan “will discuss tweaking its yield curve control policy at a policy board meeting Friday to let long-term interest rates rise beyond its cap of 0.5% by a certain degree” in “what would be a shift toward a more flexible policy approach.”

The more flexible approach is, of course, necessary assuming Japan’s inflation – which is now above that of the US – remains sticky.

The only issue is that it won‘t: Japan has seen inflation spikes on many previous occasions only to fizzle quickly thereafter courtesy of the country’s demographic doom loop.

To that point, just before the BOJ decision tonight we will get the latest Tokyo inflation data (Friday morning Japan time), and is forecast to have risen at a slower rate than in June. The headline and core rate, which excludes fresh food, are both predicted to decline to 2.9% from 3.2% prior. If reality meets expectations it would be the first time since September both have fallen below 3%. That would bolster Governor Ueda’s case that the central bank should stick with its stimulus settings until it sees signs of more sustainable inflation.

It’s not just Ueda though: earlier this morning, Japan’s top government spokesman also said he hopes the central bank continues to conduct appropriate monetary policy in order to achieve its 2% inflation target in a sustainable and stable manner (that said, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno declines to comment on what will be discussed at the Bank of Japan’s 2-day policy meeting from Thurs).

So in what appears to be a bizarre attempt to stop out yen bears before the Yen resumes its plunge again after the BOJ announcement, the Nikkei decided to telegraph what (according to its anonymous, FX trading sources) will be discussed today… even though we already knew that.

Recall, last week Bloomberg reported that since a portion of the BOJ board is in favor of acting early on YCC, “a discussion of the matter is likely” even if it won’t lead to anything. Furthermore, it won’t be the first time: “the BOJ also discussed the need for any change to YCC at the previous meeting, they said.“

And then there are the practical considerations: the BOJ in early July surveyed major banks about how much they would expect long-term rates to increase if yield curve control were adjusted or scrapped, according to sources familiar with the discussions. The banks see 10-year yields as likely to top 0.5% if the policy were dropped, pointing to the risk of a surge in market rates if the central bank abandoned its controls entirely. Translation: the BOJ has learned its bond market lesson from the January YCC disaster and will only act when it absolutely has to, not when inflation has peaked and is already declining.

But leaking the BOJ was hardly the intention of the Nikkei article: rather, it was to stop out traders who were getting a little too complacent (don’t be surprised if we learn in a few months that Powell had called Ueda this week) and the moment the 2am local time Nikkei report hit, 10Y TSY yields (which will be dragged sharply higher should JGBs implode which they will if YCC is tweaked again) spiked and were this close to breaching the key 4% psychological level…

… while the USDJPY tumbled anew as the yen surged on what is another clear attempt at stopping out yen bears.

And then there were stocks which promptly reversed much of the day’s gains…

… while sending the Dow deep in the red for the day and in danger of ending what would otherwise be a record streak of 14 uninterrupted green closes, the longest in DJIA history. In any case, even if we do have a red close today, after the BOJ does nothing tonight, the stupid meltup will resume on schedule.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Mitt Romney argued against an amendment proposed by Rand Paul to make it illegal for government to use social media and big tech companies to censor the views of Americans.

Paul put forth the case that “the First Amendment really isn’t about protecting the speech of government workers the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law it’s about limitations on government involvement with speech.”

Paul continued, “if Twitter says bad things about me and puts up bad things and takes me down I have no recourse against Twitter, same with Facebook. I’m mad, I hate that YouTube has taken my speeches down I don’t do business with them anymore, because I think they’re bigoted, biased and wrong-headed on this.”

“As far as threats, what we do know from the Twitter files is that the government was making threats,” Paul continued, adding “there were threats of Anti-Trust action against the companies if they didn’t take the material down, there was also threats of we will remove your 230 protection. Section 230 gives them liability protection and there were overt threats and threats in writing basically saying if you don’t take this down you know your 230 protection of liability could go away.”

“I think the government should be absolutely prohibited without question. I think it should be as Draconian as you probably can make it,” Paul continued, adding “things that are an opinion, the government has no business in this.”

Romney disagreed with him, claiming that individuals within the government should have the right to stop social media companies or legacy media companies from putting out content that is “wrong”.

Romney stated “To say that no employee of the government from the president on down to that millions of people who work in the government can speak with a social media company or a Legacy Media Company and express their point of view that an article is wrong or that Avenue they’re going down is wrong, that would shut off free speech.”

Watch:

The debate comes on the heels of a Federal Judge issuing a recent injunction to put a stop to the Biden Administration acting like an “Orwellian Ministry Of Truth” by colluding with big tech to censor opinions it doesn’t like, much to the disliking of the establishment media.

*  *  *

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Moments ago, the Treasury conducted the week’s final coupon auction when it sold $35BN in 7 Year paper in what was another mediocre auction following this week’s just as medicore sales of 3Y and 5Y paper.

The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.087% which was the highest yield in the history of the 7Y auction; it also tailed the When Issued 4.074% by 1.3bps, the 7th tail in the past 10 auctions.

The bid to cover of 2.479 was below last month’s 2.653 and also below the six-auction average of 2.542, if smack in the middle of the long-term range over the past decade which has been between 2.25 and 2.75. 

The internals were also on the soft side, with Indirects awarded 69.75%, below last month’s 75.31%, but just above the recent auction average of 69.6%. And with Directs awarded 15.9%, Dealers were left holding 14.3% of the auction, well above last month’s 8.1%.

Overall, this was a mediocre, forgettable auction in line with this week’s average offerings. As for the spike in 10Y yields just after the auction priced, it had nothing to do with the auction results and everything to do with a Nikkei report that a report from the Nikkei that the Bank of Japan will discuss tweaking its yield curve control policy at a policy board meeting (spoiler alert: it will discuss it and do nothing about it, since it still remembers vividly just how catastrophically the market reacted to its latest YCC tweak at the end of 2022 when the BOJ had to spend hundreds of billions to avoid a collapse in the JGB market.

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to develop and test a nuclear-powered spacecraft under a project called Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO).

DARPA partnered with NASA on the DRACO project, as both agencies will benefit from nuclear thermal rocket engines in space, which will one day allow NASA crewed missions to Mars. The in-space flight demonstration of the next-generation rocket engine is slated for 2027 at the latest. 

“These more powerful and efficient nuclear thermal propulsion systems can provide faster transit times between destinations. Reducing transit time is vital for human missions to Mars to limit a crew’s exposure to radiation,” said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lunar Exploration Campaigns at Lockheed Martin Space. 

Shireman continued, “This is a prime technology that can be used to transport humans and materials to the Moon. A safe, reusable nuclear tug spacecraft would revolutionize cislunar operations. With more speed, agility and maneuverability, nuclear thermal propulsion also has many national security applications for cislunar space.”

Lockheed explained the engines would use a “nuclear reactor to quickly heat hydrogen propellant to very high temperatures and then funnels that gas through the engine nozzle to create powerful thrust. The fission-based reactor will use a special high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, to convert the cryogenic hydrogen into an extremely hot pressurized gas.” The new engines are expected to be used while in orbit. 

Bloomberg said, “To date, there has been no in-space demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion.” However, NASA conducted ground-based nuclear thermal rocket engine tests more than a half-century ago. 

This comes as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hinted in 2022, a crewed mission to Mars could happen in 2029. 

2029

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2022

Will the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship utilize such technology for future long trips to Mars? 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Economic issues are some of the most politically abused issues often because the data politicians exploit is easy to present out of context. The vast majority of the public doesn’t spend their time immersed in the intricacies of monetary policy, unemployment stats and the processes of inflation vs deflation. They hear a soundbite on the news or social media once in a while, assume it must be true and then go on with their day.

This is how economic crisis events always seem to take the population by surprise – The establishment tells people all is well and no one questions the narrative in the face of numerous warning signs. Sometimes, the populace continues to believe that everything is fine despite the financial framework burning down around them, all because the “experts” continue to convince them that recovery is “right around the corner.”

There are numerous incentives for government officials and mainstream economists to mislead the citizenry with tales of imminent prosperity in the midst of instability. Primarily, the goal is to keep the middle-class population as docile as possible so that they don’t revolt until it’s too late (the middle class being predominantly conservative, and the greatest threat to any corrupt regime). Understand that economics is the root of power, and economic perception is the key to influencing the masses.

Hidden Indicators And Rampant Money Printing

The reality is that the US was hurtling towards stagflationary disaster ever since the crash of 2008, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden (with the help of the Federal Reserve) oversaw the near doubling of the national debt from $10 trillion to almost $20 trillion – The most egregious abuse of monetary policy that the US had ever seen.

And, keep in mind this was only the officially reported cash. Because of pressure brought by people like Ron Paul in 2011, the government was forced to pursue a limited audit of the Federal Reserve bailouts at that time. This revealed at least $16 trillion created from nothing by the Fed to prop up the failing system.

In 2006, right before the derivatives collapse, the Federal Reserve conveniently and abruptly ended their M3 money supply report. They now only report the M2 money supply, which does not include the vast assets held in corporate coffers, large time deposits in banks, institutional money market funds, short-term repurchase agreements (repo), and larger liquid assets. It was as if they knew an inflationary event was about to take place and they needed to obscure the evidence.

In other words, in economics there is the “official government data” and then there is the REAL data, which is sometimes so hidden it is impossible to quantify.

Even if we only go by the M2 report, the money supply skyrocketed starting in 2020, and rose exponentially through 2021 and 2022 – It jumped by 40% in only two years. This is why the cost of most necessities has risen 25% or more.

I’m sure most readers have noticed that inflation is not going away despite Joe Biden’s claims that he has “cut inflation in half” under his “Bidenomics” plan. This is because inflation is cumulative. The CPI might fluctuate, but the effects of inflation remain as prices tend to increase and stay high perpetually.

There Is No Such Thing As “Bidenomics”

The supposed financial progress that Biden is trying to take credit for has nothing to do with Biden’s policies. Not a thing. Unless, of course, you count market manipulation as a positive.

For example, the reduction in CPI is directly related to the continuous interest rate hikes of the Federal Reserve, which Biden has zero control over. The Fed is autonomous and makes its decisions independent of the White House or government. This is a fact openly admitted by former chairman Alan Greenspan. When the fed raises rates, debt becomes more expensive, lending slows down and thus the economy slows down.

One of the only ways that Biden can influence CPI is through artificial deflation of energy prices. The Biden Administration has been dumping US strategic oil reserves on the market for the past year as a means to suppress oil prices, thereby directly and indirectly keeping the CPI numbers down. This is not progress, it’s economic fraud.

The misuse of stats extends to other sectors, such as Biden’s attempt to take credit for the recent reduction in the US deficit. Again, this has nothing to do with Biden; the Fed’s interest rate hikes make it more expensive for the government to take on debt, therefore, debt spending drops.

It’s also not a situation that signals a recovery in the economy – The Fed continues to hike rates supposedly to stall inflation, but higher rates in a debt heavy environment lead to inevitable deflationary upheaval. As I predicted a year ago, the Fed is continuing to increase interest rates until this happens.

Employment Miracle Or Employment Scam?

This issue has been brought up by many analysts but I’ll touch on it again here because Biden is relentless in his falsehoods when it comes to employment data. FACT: 72% of all “new jobs” Biden takes credit for were originally lost during the pandemic lockdowns. The very lockdowns which Democrats avidly enforced and tried to keep in place perpetually. You can’t take credit for “creating” jobs that you are responsible for destroying.

In terms of higher labor demand, the pressure is in low wage service sector jobs and these are the majority of jobs added since Biden took office. And, this rush into retail/service was purchased with $8 trillion+ in covid stimulus cash along with a moratorium on rent and student loan payments. That much extra money in circulation buys at least a few years of consumer spending, propping up jobs numbers.

Throughout history, such gains from inflationary actions and government interventions are always short term, and they always end with a dramatic plunge in employment once the effects subside.

Biden’s Fake Manufacturing Boom

Biden has recently touted a jump in US manufacturing as the latest achievement of Bidenomics, but like every other claim he makes, you have to look at the context. These are not free market manufacturing facilities built according to market demand. Rather, Biden is pumping billions of taxpayer dollars into green tech, once again artificially engineering a “manufacturing boom” through government subsidies for products that have limited demand.

Biden wants to rig the demand, too, by enforcing climate laws which make gas, oil and coal sources too expensive and solar panels and wind turbines cheaper by comparison. For example, Biden is increasing costs for oil and gas exploration on federal lands, while greatly lowering the prices for building solar farms on federal lands. In other words, the government uses your money to create factories for green tech and then creates laws which force people to use that green tech.

In the meantime, Joe’s manufacturing “boom” paid for with tax dollars also comes at the cost of America’s oil, gas and coal industries, not to mention less energy freedom for the general public. It’s socialism, not a revolution in domestic manufacturing.

For Biden, The Key Is To Create As Many Government Cash Injections As Possible Until 2025

You want to know why Democrats are so angry that the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s plan to make taxpayers cover student loan debts? It’s not because they care about naive college kids who paid too much money for garbage degrees – It’s because student debt relief would immediately add trillions more in spending in the short term to the US economy.

An interesting side effect of the college loan moratorium is the surprising credit boost – As soon as college loan payments were put on hold, millions of former students had their credit ratings increase by default. Meaning, they could now hike their credit limits and spend MORE money they don’t have. It’s an incredibly sneaky way to artificially prop up the system WITHOUT using direct stimulus measures that rely on the central bank. This false boost will disappear by October of this year.

Biden’s constant attempts to introduce infrastructure programs are another way the government can create the illusion of recovery by using debt spending as a means to mitigate the signals of greater fiscal decline. Without Fed stimulus it’s the only option Biden has, and as rates rise it becomes costly.

The bottom line is this – The US economy is on a short timetable as long as the Fed continues to raise interest rates into weakness as a means to suppress inflation. As we witnessed in the spring, higher rates are already breaking the back of mid-tier banks across the western world and the Fed’s backstop funds are only enough to stall the debt crisis for a time. I continue to predict that once the Fed Funds Rate is raised to 6% or more, we will once again see a banking calamity similar to the 2008 crash, but this time if the Fed steps in with a bailout hyperinflation will be the immediate result.

Bidenomics is a sham in every respect. Anything that could be considered an economic improvement is due to the Federal Reserve playing the odds with interest rates. A massive 40% increase in the money supply sure helps in obscuring fiscal weakness as well. Luckily, nearly 60% of Americans in recent polls say they aren’t buying the Bidenomics fairytale – They see the dangers around them every day.

The covid event was a catalyst that revealed all the weaknesses of the US system that many of us in alternative economics have been warning about for years. And now it seems as if the establishment is trying to drag things along for just a little while longer. The reason why is up for speculation, but the fact remains that a broken structure cannot be propped up with stop gaps. I’m doubtful that Biden will be able to ride the wave created by covid stimulus until the end of 2024. Something has to give.

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Emma-Jo Morris, editor at Breitbart and former editor at the New York Post, testified before the House Weaponization Committee about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, including the coordinated nature of the social media blackout as well as the potential collusion with federal agencies working with media outlets like Politico to derail the story as “Russian disinformation” right before the 2020 election.

It should not be easy to forget the level of mass censorship on display in 2020-2022, with widespread violations of free speech rights by government’s using Big Tech as a corporate hitman.  From the blatant spin in favor of BLM’s “fiery but peaceful” riots, to the attempted deplatforming of websites like Zero Hedge in retaliation for coverage of covid’s potential Wuhan Lab origins (In light of congressional investigations, we now know it was Anthony Fauci that organized the suppression of the lab leak theory), to the complete erasure of the Hunter Biden laptop from public view – Social media has been a tool for controlling public perception rather than a means of free communication. 

However, the populace has been bombarded with so many crises and scandals in the past few years they may need reminding of the numerous trespasses that took place not long ago.    

It is of course now absolutely and undeniably confirmed that the Hunter Biden Laptop is real.  The data on the laptop is the centerpiece of an investigation and impending impeachment against Joe Biden, specifically in regards to the exploitation of his office as a means to secure foreign business deals for his family members.

The Twitter Files, released by Elon Musk after his takeover of the platform, detail numerous instances in which federal agencies and politicians asked for censorship measures against individuals and groups in violation of the 1st Amendment, including the censorship of the laptop story.  The Biden campaign routinely requested tweets be deleted in 2020, and while some requests also came from Republicans including Donald Trump, the majority of accounts actually censored by Twitter were in fact conservative or anti-establishment.

The relationship between the FBI and the old regime at Twitter was disturbingly direct. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan testified in a lawsuit against the Biden administration brought by Republican attorneys that he organized weekly meetings with Twitter and Facebook in San Francisco for as many as seven Washington-based FBI agents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The FBI is also noted as paying out at least $3.4 million to Twitter for their “help” in “processing legal requests” regarding censored accounts.  Musk revealed that a crucial player in Twitter’s censorship of The Post and the Biden Laptop story was former FBI general counsel James Baker, a central player in the Russia collusion hoax, who had become Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel.

Thus far, no individual or agency has yet been punished for constitutional violations related to social media censorship of the American people, and establishment journalists have spent the better part of the last six months attempting to dismiss the Twitter Files and any government partnerships with Big Tech as nothing more than “conspiracy theory.” 

So much for the Fed’s attempts to slowdown the US economy.

US GDP growth in the second quarter was much stronger than expected as activity proved resilient in the face of the Federal Reserve’s campaign of aggressive interest rate rises (or at least Biden’s persistence to paint the economy as stronger has never been this articulate).

The world’s largest economy grew an unexpectedly strong 2.4% between April and June, so-called “data” just released by Biden’s Commerce Department showed. This marked a rebound from an also stronger than expected 2% growth rate in the first quarter, and was a strong beat to the 1.8% rate predicted by economists.

Economists had an unusually wide range of predictions for Thursday’s growth data, with forecasts gathered by Refinitiv ranging from 0.3% to 3% growth rates. Economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics said forecasting this quarter was complicated by the fact that several pieces of data on international trade and durable goods orders, which are normally released in advance, are this month being published at the same time as the GDP figures.

Looking at the component breakdown, consumer spending growth slowed after an unusually strong start to the year but the reduction was more than offset by strong business investment in both inventories and fixed assets.

Compared to the first quarter, the acceleration in GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private inventory investment and an acceleration in business investment. These movements were partly offset by a downturn in exports, and slowdowns in consumer spending, federal government spending, and state and local government spending. Imports turned down.

Some more details:

• The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both services (led by housing and utilities; health care; financial services and insurance; and transportation services) and goods (led by recreational goods and vehicles as well as gasoline and other energy goods).
• The increase in business investment reflected increases in equipment, structures, and intellectual property products.
• The decrease in exports primarily reflected a decrease in goods (led by industrial supplies and materials; consumer goods, except food and automotive; and foods, feeds, and beverages) that was partly offset by an increase in services (led by travel).

In terms of bottom line contribution:

• Personal consumption resulted in 1.12%, or roughly half, of the 2.420% bottom line GDP print, a big drop from Q1’s 2.79%. Still, on an annualized basis Personal Consumption came at 1.6%, beating estimates of 1.2%.
• Fixed Investment added 0.83%, a sharp increase from the -0.08% subtraction from GDP growth in Q1.
• the Change in private inventories was neutral: it contributed 0.14% to the bottom line number, which however was a big improvement from the -2.14% in Q1.
• Net trade (exports less imports) subtracted -0.12% from the Q2 GDP print, as a slowdown in exports detracted more from growth than the slowdown in imports (an add to GDP).
• Finally, government consumption added another 0.45% to GDP, down from 0.85% in Q1.

The data comes a day after the US central bank lifted its benchmark interest rate to the highest level in 22 years as part of its ongoing efforts to tame inflation. Clearly, Powell isn’t doing enough to crush the US economy. Either that, or the Biden apparatchiks are simply doing everything in their power to reverse the optics of the ongoing economic slowdown, which according to the inverted yield curve, means the biggest recession this century is imminent.

Turning to prices, gross domestic purchases prices increased 1.9% in the second quarter after increasing 3.8% in the first quarter. Excluding food and energy, prices increased 2.6 percent after increasing 4.2 percent.

Personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices increased 2.6% in the second quarter after increasing 4.1% in the first quarter. Excluding food and energy, the PCE “core” price index increased 3.8% after increasing 4.9%, coming below the 4.0% estimate.

Finally, real disposable personal income (DPI) — personal income adjusted for taxes and inflation—increased 2.5% in the second quarter after increasing 8.5 percent in the first quarter.

Current-dollar DPI increased 5.2% in the second quarter, following an increase of 12.9% in the first quarter. The increase in the second quarter primarily reflected increases in compensation, personal income receipts on assets, rental income of persons, and personal current transfer receipts. Personal saving as a percentage of DPI was 4.4% in the second quarter, compared with 4.3% in the first quarter.

The unexpectedly strong recent data, which a growing number say is grotesquely manipulated (just compare the record delta between GDP and GDI) by the admin, has raised hopes that the Fed can achieve the rare feat of a “soft landing” — bringing inflation under control without major economic damage. But others are concerned that the economy’s resilience will make it harder to bring inflation all the way to the Fed’s 2% target.

On Wednesday, Fed chair Powell said his “base case is that we will be able to achieve inflation moving back down to our target without the kind of really significant downturn that results in high levels of job losses”. He also noted the risks: “At the margins, stronger growth could lead over time to higher inflation and that would require an appropriate response for monetary policy, so we’ll be watching that carefully.”