One day after Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. was hit with a billion-dollar fine by the People’s Bank of China, the fintech giant announced a surprise share buyback on Saturday that values it at around $78.54 billion. That is 75% below its value of $315 billion, touted ahead of a scrapped initial public offering in 2020.  

A much-needed liquidity event is opening up for early Ant investors after the abandoned IPO and following Beijing’s multi-year crackdown on the fintech company and the tech sector. 

Reuters said Ant has “proposed to all of its shareholders to repurchase up to 7.6% of its equity interest at a price that represents a group valuation of approximately 567.1 billion yuan ($78.54 billion).” That represents a massive 75% discount versus the $315 billion valuation, which was set to be the world’s largest IPO. 

“The repurchased shares will be transferred into Ant Group’s employee incentive plans to attract talent. The repurchase proposal will also provide a liquidity option for the company’s investors,” Ant said.

Ant said that Hangzhou Junhan Equity Investment Partnership and Hangzhou Junao Equity Investment Partnership, some of Ant’s top shareholders, have decided not to participate in the repurchase. These firms collectively hold half of Ant’s shares for the company’s executives and employees. 

“While Ant buys back shares at a valuation much lower than the $150 billion figure in the company’s last fundraising round in 2018, the plan provides some liquidity to its existing investors.

“Liquidity might be more important than valuation for some investors that look to exit,” said Zhang Zihua, chief investment officer at Beijing Yunyi Asset Management which is an investor of Ant’s affiliate, e-commerce titan Alibaba.

Allowing some early investors to exit could ease pressure before another attempt to go public. 

“The buyback price is higher than the valuations made by many institutions internally … so I believe that some institutions will choose to participate in the buyback,” said Hanyang Wang, an analyst at 86Research.

Jack Ma’s empire of Alibaba and Ant has been under fire by Chinese regulators for 2.5 years. Regulators slapped Alibaba with a $2.8 billion antitrust fine in 2021. On Friday, regulators hit Ant with a $985 million penalty — some see this as a resolution to the fintech’s regulatory woes.  

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

The assault on enterprise of the last few years — meaning not the biggest politically connected businesses but smaller ones reflecting vibrant commercial life — has taken very strange forms.

Ever since The New York Times said the way forward was to “go medieval,” the elites have been attempting just that. But this medievalism has not come at the expense of Big Data, Pharma, Ag or Media.

It mainly hits products and services that impact our freedom to buy, trade, travel, associate and otherwise manage our own lives.

What began in lockdowns mutated into a thousand forms. That continues with daily new outrages. Maybe it’s not random.

It was never really about health care. It was about the exercise of power over the whole population by a tiny elite in the name of science.

The government locked down society, and then tried to make us get the shots through hook and crook, an experimental medicine we did not need and which was proven neither safe nor effective.

Since those days, other strange things have been unleashed: the campaign to eat bugs, end fossil fuel, abolish wood-burning pizza ovens, impose all-electric ovens and cars, stop air conditioning, own nothing and be happy with your digital consumption and even block out the sun, while indulging in every farce such as pretending that men can get pregnant.

Many cities are falling apart, abandoned by well-to-do residents and consumed by crime. It’s all madness but maybe there is rhyme to the reasons for all this?

‘We Must Remake Society!’

In August of 2020, Anthony Fauci and his long-time co-author wrote a piece in Cell that called for “radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.”

They wanted social distancing forever but that was only the start of it. They imagined the dismantling of cities, mass social events, the end of international travel and really all travel, no more owning pets, the end of domesticated animals and a strange non-pathogenic world that they imagined existed 12,000 years ago.

We can’t go back, they said, but we can “at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction.”

There we have it. Preserve “essential” services (and people) but get rid of everything else. The lockdowns were merely a test case of a new social system. It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism as we’ve come to understand it.

It feels like corporatism but with a twist. The big businesses that gain favor are not heavy industry but digital tech designed to live off scraped data and power the world with sunbeams and breezes.

There’s nothing new under the sun. So where did this strange new utopianism come from?

The Counter-Revolution of Science

Three years ago, Matt Kibbe and I recalled that in 1952, F.A. Hayek wrote what became The Counter-Revolution of Science. The idea is that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new conception of science was born, which reversed a previous understanding.

Science was not a process of discovery by research, but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite.

This elite would impose its view on everyone else. Hayek called this “the abuse of reason” because genuine reason defers to uncertainty and discovery while scientism as an ideology is arrogant and imagines it knows what is unknown.

I did not have time to reread the book but Kibbe did. I asked him if Hayek said anything that touched on our current problems. His response: “This book explains everything.”

That’s quite the recommendation. So I dug in. Yes, I had read it years ago but every book from the before times has a different feel and message in the after times.

It is indeed prescient. Hayek explores in great detail the thinkers of the early 19th century — successors to and reversers of the original French Enlightenment — and its origin in the writings and influence of Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825).

Simply put, Saint-Simon dreamed of a world without privilege of birth or inherited wealth. The aristocracy can be damned for all he cared.

He imagined a world of what he called merit but it was no merit by means of hard work and enterprise as such.

It was a world run by geniuses or savants with unusual intellectual gifts. They would comprise the managerial and ruling elite of society.

The Council of 21

His preferred system of government would consist of 21 men: “three mathematicians, three physicians, three chemists, three physiologists, three men of letters, three painters, three musicians.”

The council of 21! I’m sure they would get along great and not be corrupt in the slightest. And they would surely be benevolent!

We would find out who these people are by having votes placed at the grave of Isaac Newton (Saint-Simon’s god of choice) and eventually the consensus concerning the elite council would be chosen.

They would not be a government as such, at least not as traditionally understood, but elite planners who would use intelligence to shape the whole society the same way that scientists understand and shape the natural world.

You see, to his way of thinking, this is far more rational than having an hereditary aristocracy in charge. And these men would in turn deploy their rationality in service of society, which would be enormously inspired by it, just as MSNBC is so enthused for Dr. Fauci and his friends.

Saint-Simon wrote:

Men of genius will then enjoy a reward worthy of them and of you; this reward will place them in the only position which can provide them with the means of giving you all the services they’re capable of; this will become the ambition of the most energetic souls; it will redirect them from things harmful to your tranquility. By this measure, finally, you will give leaders to those who work for the progress of your enlightenment, you will invest these leaders with immense consideration and you will place a great pecuniary power at their disposition.

So there you go: The elite get unlimited power and unlimited money and everyone will aspire to act like these people and this aspiration will improve the whole of society.

It reminds me of the pre-modern system in China in which only the best students could enter into the class of the mandarins, which were the nine levels of high-ranking officials in Imperial China’s government.

Governors of the Mind

Indeed, Saint-Simon invited his followers to “consider yourselves as the governors of the operation of the human mind.”

He imagined “spiritual power in the hands of the savants; temporal power in the hands of the possessors; the power to nominate those called to fulfill the functions of the great heads of humanity, in the hands of everyone.”

Saint-Simon lived a life that oscillated between wealth and poverty, and regretted that condition would befall any man of his genius. So he cobbled together a politics that would protect him and his ilk from the vicissitudes of the market.

He wanted a permanent class of bureaucrats that would be completely insulated from the liberal world that had been celebrated only a quarter century earlier by the likes of Adam Smith.

Here was the core of what Hayek called the counter-revolution of science. It was not science but scientism in which freedom for everyone is a hell, geniuses seizing control was the transition and permanent rule by savants to shape the human mind was heaven on Earth.

The best book I’ve seen that captures the essence of this dream is Thomas Harrington’s The Treason of the Experts. They turn out to be not altruists or competent overseers of society but cowardly sadists who rule with career-driven cruelty and refuse to admit when their “science” produces the opposite of their stated goal.

“Scientism” as an ideology is the reverse of science as traditionally understood. It is not supposed to be the codification and entrenchment of an elite class of social managers but rather a humble exploration of all the fascinating realities that make the world around us work.

It is not about imposition but curiosity, and not about norms and force but facts and an invitation to look more deeply.

Saint-Simon celebrated science but became the anti-Voltaire. Instead of freeing the human mind, he and his followers imagined themselves to be governors of it. Anthony Fauci followed in that tradition.

Their actual goal is to become permanent “governors of the operation of the human mind.”

Authored by Orlean Koehle via The Epoch Times,

…continued from Groups Protest at Drag Story Hours in California Part II

On the evening of July 5, about 30 concerned parents and grandparents showed up at the Sonoma County commissioners meeting held at the Rohnert Park Library. About 20 of us spoke and stated why we were so opposed to their sponsoring and paying for the recent four drag story hours held on Fathers’ Day weekend.

The story hours were sponsored and paid for by the Sonoma County Library Commission using our tax dollars to the tune of $500 per hour, thus $2,000 in total.

By attending the meeting, we learned that, for the most part, the 10 commissioners agreed that the drag story hour performances went well and they are proud of themselves for holding them; they are pleased that they were able to “affirm” the LGBT community. They were happy that a total of 322 parents and children attended them.

One commissioner, who is an attorney, was able to attend the story hour held at Petaluma. He borrowed a friend’s 11-year-old child so he could sit in on it. (You had to have a child with you, or you were not allowed in, even as a commissioner.)

He said that there was nothing sexual about the presentation and there were no sexual movements. The storyteller just read her books and led the children in songs and dances. Another commissioner stated that he was pleased that the protests were peaceful on both sides.

The 20 of us who were part of the protests spoke and gave a whole different view. We told of the disrespect shown to us, especially at the Santa Rosa downtown library, where someone from the pro-trans group used a loud mega horn and called us every derogatory name she could think of: bigots, fascists, hateful, fascist grandmothers, etc. Our signs were blocked by big black umbrellas, or large people stood in front of us so no one could see us or our signs.

The commissioners only gave us two minutes each to speak, so I made copies of what I wanted to say and gave them each a copy after I spoke. I spoke briefly about the history and purpose of drag story hours and my concern that many of the people telling stories to our innocent children are anything but good role models for them.

The following is part of the content of the handout that I gave to the commissioners. I had also given it to people at the drag story hour events, but most of the people of the LGBT community refused to take it.

History

According to Wikipedia, the idea for a drag queen story hour was started in San Francisco in 2015 by author Michelle Tea, who identified as “queer.” She came up with the idea after attending children’s library events with her young son and finding them welcoming but not really “affirming” of LGBT families.

Tea wanted a library hour that would be inclusive to LGBT families. Her first event was held at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco. It featured several drag queens who were all well received.

The idea quickly spread, and Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) chapters formed across the nation and some internationally.

As of February 2020, there were 50-plus official nonprofit chapters, and drag storytellers were holding events at libraries, schools, bookstores, and museums. In October 2022, the name was officially changed to Drag Story Hour (DSH) to be more inclusive and “reflect the diverse cast of storytellers,” since there are both “queen and king” presenters now.

Wikipedia states that DSH aims to “capture the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”

DSH leaders actually admit that they want children to have “queer role models.”

Attack on the Family

Christopher Rufo, who writes for City Journal, believes the real purpose of DSH and the transgender movement is far more subversive than just creating queer role models. He stated, “The drag queen [or king] might appear as a comic figure, but he/she carries an utterly serious message: the deconstruction of sex, the reconstruction of child sexuality, and the subversion of middle-class family life.”

Not only are many of these “drag queen” or “king” readers also performers in striptease bars and nightclubs (as Vera, our reader, was), some are even pedophiles.

Newsweek reported in 2019 that the drag queen storyteller in Houston, Texas, who had been performing at the public library from 2017–2019, turned out to be a registered sex offender, a pedophile. The National Pulse reported in 2021 that Brette Bloome, the head of the drag queen story hour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested for multiple possessions of child pornography.

Is that the kind of person you want your child to be around or to someday become?

Notice the choice of books. They all have something to do with transgenderism—to affirm to a small child that the transgender, gay, or lesbian lifestyle is perfectly normal and acceptable. Experts call this “grooming” the child. The more grooming that occurs, and the more exposure to such presentations, the more the child will accept the indoctrination that he or she is receiving.

What effect did our protests and words have on the library commissioners? None at all, it seemed.

We noticed on the agenda that their next story hour will be the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence coming to Guerneville on July 29. This will not only endanger innocent children; it will be a total mockery of Catholic nuns and the Catholic religion. Some of the Catholics in our group of protesters are threatening a lawsuit.

Who Is Funding the Presentations?

Much funding comes from taxpayer dollars. Some of the story hours have been held on military bases, supported by our taxes. Some funds come from public libraries themselves (as in the case of our Sonoma County libraries), who invite the presenters in the spirit of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The funds buy books; some DSH events give books away for free. Of course, all the books are promoting their agenda.

The funds also pay the “queens” and “kings” for their performances and for the training they receive to ensure they can “talk effectively to children and parents about gender identity and drag,” according to Wikipedia.

Funding also comes from big foundations and corporations. Much money comes from wealthy billionaires like George Soros and his Open Society Foundation and from the Warren Buffett Foundation.

Both of these men believe the world is overpopulated and the population must be drastically reduced. What better way than to make sure young people cannot reproduce? They know that transgender children who have had body parts cut off will never be able to have children of their own.

The Federalist reported in 2018 that another big billionaire family that is giving much money to drag story hours and other transgender causes is the Pritzker family. This family created the Hyatt Hotel chain with its leader Jennifer Pritzker, who identifies as transgender. Mr. Pritzker used to be named James and even served in the military. Now as a transgender woman, he is very supportive of transgender causes.

But could it be more because of financial interests than ideological ones? Some of the organizations Mr. Pritzker owns and funds are especially noteworthy, for they are all promoting the rapid induction of transgender ideology into medical, legal, and educational institutions.

Mr. Pritzker owns Squadron Capital, an acquisitions corporation with a focus on medical technology, medical devices, and orthopedic implants; and the Tawani Foundation, a philanthropic organization with grants that focus on gender and human sexuality.

Other wealthy people who have invested a lot of money in the transgender movement are Martine Rothblatt (a male who identifies as transgender and transhumanist), Tim Gill (a gay man), Drummond Pike, Jon Stryker (a gay man), Mark Bonham (a gay man), and Ric Weiland (a deceased gay man whose philanthropy is still LGBT-oriented). Most of these billionaires fund the transgender lobby and organizations through their own organizations, including corporations.

According to the Federalist, many other wealthy donors use other foundations to hide their names—such as the Tides Foundation.

Then there is Big Pharma. Who stands to make the most money if children fall for all the indoctrination that they hear and decide they, too, were born in the wrong body and end up transitioning themselves?

According to PJ Media, Big Pharma companies are also pouring money into the transgender movement because they know they will get that money back with all the puberty blockers and hormones that the transitioning persons will need for the rest of their lives to keep them in their transgendered state.

The transgender business is very lucrative, bringing in lots of money for the hospitals and doctors performing the surgeries, plus the cost of expensive hormones and the cost of counseling.

According to the Daily Wire, it is expected that the money earned will be $5 billion at the end of 2023 and maybe $11 billion in future years.

Concerned Parents

We who protested the story hours are a group of concerned parents and grandparents. Some of us even have children who have suddenly—seemingly out of the blue—decided they identify strongly with the opposite sex and are at various stages in their transitioning.

This is a new phenomenon that has only recently been identified. Researchers are calling it “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD), and it is becoming an epidemic among our most vulnerable youth.

We are horrified at the growing number of young people whose bodies have been disfigured and whose physical and mental health have been destroyed by transitioning, only to discover—too late—that it did little to relieve their dysphoria.

Contrary to popular opinion, data shows that the highest rate of thoughts of suicide is among transgender youth (82 percent) who realize there is no going back—they cannot regrow those body parts that were removed. They will never be able to have children of their own.

Our children are young, naïve, and impressionable. Many of them are experiencing emotional or social difficulties. They are strongly influenced by their peers and by the media, and these sources promote the transgender lifestyle as popular, desirable, and the solution to all of their problems.

And they are being misled by authority figures such as teachers, doctors, counselors, and librarians who rush to “affirm” their chosen gender without ever questioning why.

We concerned parents do not hold any hate for the LGBT community. We just love our children and do not want them indoctrinated into making decisions at an early age that can harm them for the rest of their lives.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared on MSNBC last week, where she took a clear stance against the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of Asian Americans who sued Harvard over racial discrimination in their affirmative action-based admissions system.

Speaking with host Ari Melber, the self-described ‘historic figure‘ said the conservative-majority court had made “unprecedented” rulings regarding abortion, and that last week’s ruling on affirmative action was again “taking away important constitutional rights that have been in place for a long time.“

“Let’s not forget this… the president was, when he was a Senator, he was the chair of Judiciary Committee. He is an expert on this. He understands how this works a lot of these uh you know a lot of these unprecedented decisions that this SCOTUS has made, they have been held up in the past by Republicans, by democrats, right? And so there’s so much changes that have happened in the past year and it is it is you know unheard of it is really wrong what we’ve seen…”

Melber then asked her about preferential treatment for legacy admissions, to which KJP bizarrely pivoted to nominating ‘diverse’ judges.

“As I mentioned, the president takes this very seriously he’s an expert at this when it comes to judges and getting judges through… as we’re nominating judges and getting them through … we’ve done about 136 federal judges who are diverse and represent this country and that is also important so we’re going to keep that afoot make sure that we continue to focus on that.”

Watch and enjoy the word salad:

Yes Karine, it’s an ‘important constitutional right’ to keep the top performing students – who gave up a social life in High School for straight A’s so they could attend America’s (formerly) most prestigious institutions – from achieving their dreams.

How insane did Harvard’s affirmative action policies get?

An African American student in the 40th percentile of their academic index is more likely to get it than an Asian student in the 100th percentile.

Black students in the 50th percentile are more likely to get in that… pic.twitter.com/9vvBuQXA24

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 29, 2023

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

The IMF is warning that with all these CBDCs about to launch, there need to be global inter-operability standards between them all, and they’re working on a global platform to facilitate just that.

Speaking at a conference of African central banks in Rabat, Morocco, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that there needs to be agreement among CBDC implementations,

“on a common regulatory framework for digital currencies that will allow global interoperability. Failure to agree on a common platform would create a vacuum that would likely be filled by cryptocurrencies”

Not to be outdone, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) worked with seven central banks to publish YARP (Yet Another Research Paper) on CBDC policy, entitled “Central Bank Digital Currencies: ongoing policy perspectives”… (*yawn*).

The central banks involved were: Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, England, the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

The paper is mostly a snoozer:

“Development of CBDC work requires careful consideration and engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, including the private sector and legislators”… 

“To successfully meet its public policy objectives, a CBDC ecosystem should allow a wide range of private and public stakeholders to participate and, in doing so, deliver services which benefit end users.”…

“The complex design questions and the potential risks arising from the implementation of any CBDC require careful consideration.”

Until you get to the rather innocuous sounding Annexes, like “Box 2: Legal Considerations”.

This is where it starts to get interesting.

What are retail CBDCs, exactly?

The paper wonders: Are they cash? Deposits? Or something else entirely?

This is quite the question, because if CBDCs aren’t cash, there has to be a reason why they wouldn’t be. When you start to see where CBDCs are going: expiry dates, programability, social credit scores – what we’re talking about is almost a kind of anti-cash (my observation, not the paper’s).

Further, the paper wonders, would there need to be changes to banking charters, legislation or even the constitutions of the countries issuing them:

“Legislation may need to be enacted or adjusted to specifically authorise the issuance and distribution of a retail CBDC (eg changes to central bank charters/statutes, legislation in other areas related to payments or to the constitution itself)”

Who had “new Constitutional convention” on their bingo card for the roll-out of CBDCs? We do now.

Box 3:  What tools may be needed to manage stressed conditions?

Here we truly get a peak behind the curtain – and it’s all dressed up in that Davos-dialect of benign-sounding euphemisms that belie a Brave New World (like how “recontextualizing food chains” basically means banning the peasants from eating meat).

They get right to it:

“When considering potential tools and policies to manage stressed conditions (eg limiting or managing fund outflows from bank deposits), there are price and quantity control approaches, with a mix of the two also being possible”

Those would be your bank deposits. In this section they’re gaming out how to contain bank runs. 

“Quantity holding limits have the advantage of directly limiting the extent of potentially harmful levels of disintermediation (eg structural changes resulting from CBDC adoption that increase the cost or availability of credit across the economy), and being relatively simple to implement.

However, they also have disadvantages, such as potentially impacting adoption; this may happen if holding limits increase the risk of failed transactions occurring, or make CBDC transactions less convenient, especially if alternative forms of digital money (eg stablecoins) do not present similar limits.”

Translation: We can cap how much money SerfCoin you’re permitted to hold, so we don’t blow up the system with too much SerfCoin issuance, but if we do that, you may not want to hold SerfCoin, opting for stablecoins (and cryptos) instead – where no such limits would apply.

Implementing limits may also have knock-on effects on the potential functionality of CBDC. 

Technical solutions such as “waterfall” or “cascade” functionality, whereby CBDC holdings or payments that would breach a limit would automatically be transferred into other deposits, could be considered to ease the effects of being close to any holding limit/threshold. 

Translation: We can build in safety valves that would automatically move your money SerfCoin into other accounts, and even make such transfers obligatory. But that could get tricky, because that might technically be, well… theft. 

When I read what comes next:

Price-based measures like fees and tiered remuneration have the advantage of being more flexible by allowing for any size of transaction or holdings, albeit at increasing costs.

In principle, the decision about the amount of CBDC transferred or held above a certain level is influenced via incentives but still relies primarily on each user’s preference. However, price-based measures may permit larger inflows into CBDC in stress situations compared with holding limits as the fee or scale of negative remuneration required to dissuade runs may be very large.

Those are again quite benign-sounding terms, however if you look into it, it becomes apparent that terms like  “tiered remuneration” have very specific meanings within the body of academic thought around CBDCs.

Tiered Remuneration: eliminating cash, privacy and the ability to save

The ECB’s Ulrich Bindseil discusses this at length in a 2019 paper “Controlling CBDC through tiered remuneration” (in fact my money is on Bindseil being the main author of this BIS paper; only the central banks involved are cited on the cover page).

In his paper, the tools of “two-tier remuneration” are examined to mitigate “risk of facilitating systemic runs on banks in crisis situations”.

The paper acknowledges the CBDC role in the elimination of cash (banknotes) and that they effectively end anonymity in transactions and prevent both “illicit transactions” and “store of value”, because CBDCs – through tiered remuneration – “Allows overcoming the ZLB as one may impose negative interest rates on CBDC”.

To wit,

if digital cash is used to completely replace physical cash, this could allow interest rates to be pushed below the zero-lower bound…By allowing overcoming the zero-lower bound (“ZLB”) and therefore freeing negative interest rate policies (“NIRP”) of its current constraints, a world with only digital central bank money would allow for – according to this view – strong monetary stimulus in a sharp recession and/or financial crisis. 

This could not only avoid recession, unemployment, and/or deflation but also the need to take recourse to nonstandard monetary policy measures which have more negative side effects than NIRP.

However,

Opponents of NIRP will obviously dislike this argument in favor of CBDC, and will thus see CBDC potentially as an instrument to overcome previous limitations of “financial repression” and “expropriation” of the saver.”

Wow.

Later in the paper we get to what tiered remuneration means: the more SerfCoin you have, the lower your interest rate, even going negative beyond a certain point. It’s like a built-in wealth cap and tax at the same time, where the only way to avoid it, presumably, would be to spend it – thus shoring up money velocity.

It overlooks the obvious: that those with any meaningful amount of wealth would have the incentive to avoid storing any of it in a CBDC at all.

The BIS paper dropped around the same time a copy of the EU’s “Digital Euro Bill” was leaked and details published by Coindesk; notable in that is the provision that any digital Euro must function in an offline mode, protect privacy (i.e. be like cash) and must not be programmable.

It will be interesting to see which vision of CBDCs prevails (although the proponents of the BIS model could profess that tiered remuneration is more structural than programmable, but automatic and obligatory swaps of deposits to other accounts seems harder to rationalize)

That said, Christine Lagarde also clarified in April that “programability” will be done at the retail banking level:

“For us [central banks], the issuance of a digital currency that would be central bank money would not be programmable […] Those who can associate the use of digital currency with programmability would be the intermediaries — would be the commercial banks” 

…which gives us a hint at something else we’ve been pondering in our monthly coverage of CBDCs in The Bitcoin Capitalist (“Eye On EvilCoin” section): how will the big banks avoid being disintermediated out of existence when central banks create CBDC accounts directly to the consumer?

Maybe they’ll be the ones enforcing the expiry dates, negative interest rates, social credit scores and personal carbon footprint quotas and that will become the raison d’être of the Too Big To Fail Banks.

*  *  *

Today’s post is an excerpt from the my premium newsletter The Bitcoin Capitalist. Try it for a month here.

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AccuWeather meteorologists say massive dust clouds from Africa’s Sahara Desert will traverse the Caribbean and the southeastern US this weekend. 

“Saharan dust is common most years across parts of the Atlantic basin and sometimes spreads as far west as the Caribbean and Florida,” said AccuWeather Director of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin.

NOAA’s weather satellites have spotted two dust plumes. The first is over the eastern Caribbean Sea and the southern Gulf of Mexico. There’s an even larger one behind it. 

7/7: A plume of Saharan Dust will arrive across our region late this weekend into the upcoming work-week. Strong upper-level winds carry these small sand particles originally from the Saharan Desert far across the Atlantic ocean. More info on how this affects air quality below! pic.twitter.com/jCY0WSfMWZ

— NWS Miami (@NWSMiami) July 7, 2023

AccuWeather meteorologists forecast coastal areas of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama will be impacted by the dust and worsen air quality. 

Saharan dust makes its way into the Lower 48 over the next few days.

In addition to suppressing tropical activity over the Atlantic, dust may impact air quality, slightly lower temperatures, and allow for brilliantly colored sunrises/sunsets.https://t.co/JQwv4VoIiL
MG pic.twitter.com/EnEUxXh8vC

— Weather.us – Weather Forecasts For Professionals (@WeatherdotUS) July 8, 2023

Simultaneously, forecast models from The Weather Channel show the possibility that the third round of Canadian wildfire smoke will blanket parts of the Northeast. 

Dust clouds in the southern US, while smoke invades the northern US. Prepare for a continuation of corporate media pushing climate apocalypse headlines, some of which have been labeled as ‘nonsense’ even by a Wall Street Journal editorial titled, “Hottest Days Ever? Don’t Believe It.” 

By Alex Wu of The Epoch Times

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping urged the regime’s military to deepen war and combat planning, as Sino-U.S. relations continue to sour and the tension in the Taiwan Strait intensifies.

Xi inspected the Eastern Theater Command on July 6 and met with representatives of officers and soldiers when he made the comments, according to state media Xinhua. Xi claimed that the world has entered a new period of turmoil and change and China’s security situation has become more unstable and uncertain. He required the military to “deepen war and combat planning to increase the chances of victory in actual combat.”

The Eastern Theater Command was established in February 2016 after the CCP’s military reform. It mainly governs the armed forces in East China (Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Anhui provinces). Headquartered in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, it’s responsible for the security of eastern China, including the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the Pacific Ocean. In the past 7 years, the Eastern Theater has performed many military exercises and cruises targeting Taiwan.

Aiming at Taiwan

Chang Yanting, former deputy commander of Taiwan’s Air Force and visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times on July 7 that Mr. Xi’s emphasis on military readiness and preparation for war is closely related to the current international environment. “It’s including the military tensions between the United States and mainland China, as well as economic wars, financial wars, trade wars, technology wars, and so on. The CCP is now emphasizing ‘deepening war and combat planning,’ which is envisioning the United States as its opponent, intending to deter the United States from intervention in the Taiwan Strait.”

Mr. Chang said, “He [Xi Jinping] wants to strengthen preparations for war, and the Taiwanese cannot take it lightly. Especially the United States believes that from 2025 to 2027 is the most dangerous time for Taiwan. I don’t think we should take it lightly, and we must strengthen our military preparations.”

However, Mr. Chang pointed out that if the CCP wages a war over Taiwan, it will face a very complicated international situation.

“Once war breaks out, the CCP is not just facing Taiwan. Warships from Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the United States, and even Europe, including France and Germany will all come to join the fight. Will they fire at these warships or not? They are in the Taiwan Strait over there. Once the CCP hit any of them, according to the North Atlantic Treaty, if one country is attacked, it will be regarded as all countries are attacked. As long as the United States has a warship attacked in the Taiwan Strait, the other 30 countries will support the United States,” Mr. Chang said.

Stabilize Morale

Military commentator Yang Wei told The Epoch Times on July 6 that Mr. Xi’s sudden visit to the Eastern Theater Command could not be ruled out to demonstrate his control of the CCP military. “After the Wagner mutiny in Russia, the leaders of the CCP seemed to be frightened. They may intend to show that [their] military power is stable and show the outside world that there will be no mutiny or coup,” Mr. Yang said.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Yao Cheng of the Chinese Navy Command told The Epoch Times on July 6 that both the Southern Theater Command and the Eastern Theater Command are responsible for the fight in the Taiwan Strait. “But the CCP’s military is not monolithic. Because Xi is now cleansing the military, the morale of the military is not stable, and he wants to win the hearts of them.”

Mr. Xi told the military officers in the Eastern Theater Command during his tour that they should “adhere to the direction and enhance the awareness of urgency,” “dare to fight and be good at fighting,” etc.

Mr. Yao said that the sense of urgency is Mr. Xi’s own sense of urgency, not the military’s. “The military and Xi Jinping are not of one mind in fighting wars. They are unwilling to fight battles that cannot be won,” he said.

Continue reading at the Epoch Times.

Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,

The Wall Street Journal published a piece heaping the blame for the military recruitment crisis on those who have served – yes, you read that right, military veterans are the problem.

Not the drag queens, not the anti-white rhetoric and policies of Lloyd Austin, not coerced participation in experimental drug trials, but those who enlisted and served.

It is appalling that our media blames low recruitment numbers on people who sacrificed and risked their lives for their country. The headline and teaser read as follows:

The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join

Pentagon scrambles to retain the main pipeline for new service members as disillusioned families steer young people away[.]

Maybe reporter Ben Kesling should have questioned whether current government policies might be causing the problem instead of just repeating the government talking points.

Maybe the veterans look at the disaster at the Kabul airport in August of 2021, and they don’t want their children to report to so many incompetents.

Maybe they’re disillusioned because they gave limbs or lost friends in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan, only to watch Joe Biden leave people and equipment behind for the benefit of the very forces against which Americans fought.

Maybe they find a commander-in-chief who fails to accept responsibility and acknowledge he is to blame for leaving so many behind, unworthy of serving.

Maybe they don’t trust a “leader” who pretends to care about the Americans who died, but can’t help from checking the time as their remains are brought home and bragging about how successful the exit was.

Maybe the veterans don’t want their children to sacrifice for a regime that seems to work so hard to appease and enrich Iran as the nation still pledges death to America and her people.

Maybe the veterans would like the military to focus on defending the country instead of focusing time and effort on DIE, pronouns, and Pride.

Maybe the veterans were unhappy that the government was using taxpayer money for drag shows, and only stopped when Republicans raised a stink.

Why have news reports on current conditions in Afghanistan essentially stopped? Could it be that the media doesn’t want to remind the voters how bad it is?

Why isn’t the military able to fill the gap in recruitment with young cross-dressing wokesters, since those are the people to whom it is catering, instead of blaming veterans?

Maybe the veterans are angry that so many healthy young people were betrayed and expelled from the military for exercising their free will and inalienable rights to abstain from being a lab rat.

Maybe some veterans are angry that the military is violating federal law by using taxpayer money to pay for abortions.

Maybe the veterans are aggravated that the military, along with the entire government, is more focused on pretending they can control the climate, than in defending ourselves against real-world foes like China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea — nations that are hyper-focused on building their military power. My guess is that veterans, many who have seen combat, are more worried about unchecked evil than fabricated doomsday predictions.

Did you see Lockheed Martin’s Pride parade banner? What else can one infer except a concerted agenda by the powers that be to promote war as fun, silly, and colorful. How eco-friendly and sustainable it would be if we were to use battery-operated ships, planes, and tanks! Can we call a truce every time we have to recharge the batteries? (Afterall, our enemies are sticking with gas-powered transportation.)

It would be like America is taking a peashooter to a machine gun fight. What could go wrong?

Maybe the veterans want a commander-in-chief who doesn’t appoint so many people who can’t tell the difference between men and women.

Think of all the money we could save if we just housed everyone together and labeled all facilities for they/them since they can’t seem to tell the difference! What could go wrong?

We should also get rid of all academic and physical standards because they clearly discriminate. Our fighting force would be so much better if we didn’t have standards…wouldn’t it? Our adversaries will destroy and subjugate us, but at least we will have much higher DIE and ESG scores.

I bet China, Iran, Russian, and North Korean leaders can tell the difference between men and women, and don’t worry about “misgendering.”

Maybe it worries veterans that the military leader only acknowledges six of his seven grandchildren. If he doesn’t care for the littlest members of his own family, how much less those in whom he has no familial bond?

Joe Biden and the entire left love to blame others for their failures:

Biden and Kamala Harris blame the massive influx of illegals on President Trump instead of the fact that they refuse to enforce immigration laws and secure the border.

Biden and his cabinet of Party “economists” blame the massive inflation increase on COVID and Russia, instead of Democrat policies like the destruction of reasonably priced energy and massive spending programs (especially the supposed green energy ones).

And, Biden blamed the smackdown of his illegal attempt to buy votes with a student loan giveaway on MAGA Republicans, and a rogue Supreme Court, instead of that pesky Constitution and its stupid separation of powers requirement. Those darn founding fathers!

Now, media allies like Keslng blame the great shortfall of military recruitment on those who gave great sacrifice to our country — that is the thanks they get from leftists.

Here’s a novel concept for the media: Report the news and facts instead of regurgitating talking points…maybe your poll numbers will go up.

Last week the global warming industry and its corporate media cheerleaders made a concerted effort to declare July 3-4 the hottest days on Earth ever. Media outlets like ABC, The New York Times, Axios, and Bloomberg each cited the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer computer model, which has since been questioned. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told AP News, “Although NOAA cannot validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis, we recognize that we are in a warm period due to climate change.” 

In response to NOAA throwing cold water on the model’s unverifiable findings, environmental attorney Steve Milloy tweeted:

“NOAA runs away from ‘hottest day’ claim.” 

NOAA runs away from ‘hottest day’ claim.https://t.co/BQv0VpuE5r pic.twitter.com/IaeOIGj5xE

— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) July 7, 2023

On Friday evening, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Milloy titled “Hottest Days Ever? Don’t Believe It.” 

“One obvious problem with the updated narrative is that there are no satellite data from 125,000 years ago. Calculated estimates of current temperatures can’t be fairly compared with guesses of global temperature from thousands of years ago,” Milloy wrote.

Despite concerns about the model’s reliability, Axios’ Thursday headline read, “Earth sees three hottest days on record,” while Bloomberg ran with “The World Recorded Its Hottest Days Ever This Week.” 

Heads of the global warming industry have spent the last three decades frantically running around the globe in private jets, prophesying how the world would imminently end because of emissions from fossil fuel engines. 

Al Gore

Michael Bloomberg

In 2018, remember, climate alarmist child Greta Thunburg tweeted some ‘scientist’ who claimed “all of humanity” would be “wiped out” unless “we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” 

We’re still typing and using fossil fuels — the world has not ended. Last week, we noted, “New Month, Another Movement: Corporate Media Refocuses Energy On Climate Doom.” 

Full disclosure, we don’t discount climate change because the climate has been constantly changing for 4.54 billion years. 

Last week was a media blitz campaign by the global warming industry to push ‘misinformation’ with a model that even NOAA has warned is not dependable.