President Joe Biden on Thursday ratcheted up the pressure on holdout nations Turkey and Hungary by saying that Sweden will join NATO “as soon as possible”. The former two countries have blocked Sweden’s entry, but recently approved Finland. 

Biden hailed NATO unity in a speech before the US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs. “NATO is more energized and more united than it’s been in decades. It’s now even stronger with the accession of our newest ally, Finland – and soon Sweden – to the alliance, as soon as possible. It will happen. I promise you,” President Biden said. 

Biden’s strong words came immediately on the heels of Blinken’s trip to Sweden wherein he said that “the perspective of the United States” is that “the time is now to finalize Sweden’s accession.”

Especially since Finland’s formal membership acceptance in April, European and US officials have been pushing for Sweden’s entry as well – but again, Turkey has been adamant in maintaining its rejection, based on accusations that Swedish authorities allow ‘terrorist’ and Kurdish ‘dissident’ groups and individuals in its country.

“Welcome to NATO, Finland! I hope we will welcome our Swedish friends very soon, too,” French President Emmanuel Macron said soon after Finland’s accession.

As for Biden’s Air Force graduation speech, his important remarks on NATO or really any of the speech content for that matter were immediately overshadowed by what happened the moment he began to walk off stage…

BREAKING: Biden takes a big fall on stage just now at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation pic.twitter.com/GxkMbpyoNo

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) June 1, 2023

The fall looked like a hard one, in a dangerous moment for the 80-year old Commander-in-Chief.

Below is another angle:

Another angle of Joe Biden’s fall on stage today. Watch the reactions. pic.twitter.com/74ChFqPafI

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 1, 2023

Below is how The New York Times described the significant fall: 

President Biden tripped and fell after delivering a speech and handing out diplomas to graduates of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old, was helped up and appeared to recover quickly.

Mr. Biden’s fall was captured on video and spread on social media. He appears to trip, fall to his knees and catch himself with his hands on the floor of the stage. He was helped up by several Air Force officials and Secret Service agents, and he walked back to his seat.

Mr. Biden had just delivered an energetic speech to the Air Force graduates before helping to hand out the diplomas. He fell after he distributed the final diploma and was headed back to his seat.

The White House issued an official statement via its communications director Ben LaBolt, who said in a tweet quickly after the incident, “He’s fine, there was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands.”

Biden declined to talk with reporters on the tarmac before boarding AF1 to fly back from Colorado after he fell on stage. https://t.co/S47Nv2Hr06

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 1, 2023

Just as Biden declined to speak about the matter, mainstream media also shied away from commenting. Things were a little different a few years ago when President Trump walked slowly down a ramp (without falling)…

And here’s Joe Biden mocking Trump for walking carefully on the ramp, to avoid a fall

**Notice the covid pandemic death ticker on the side** pic.twitter.com/Dg9yRRVRJi

— The Real Brandon (@BluecollarBran) June 1, 2023

At a moment there’s a war in Ukraine and dangerous showdown between nuclear armed superpowers the United States and Russia, certainly Moscow is going to see Biden’s serious fall on stage as a sign of weakness and frailness from an ageing president. 

* * *

Meanwhile, this is likely to have significant impact on the domestic front as well, as the Democrats decide whether to go all in on Biden in 2024…

Open the Democrat primaries and debates. This isn’t fair to anyone. https://t.co/KcW67BaR7z

— jack (@jack) June 1, 2023

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via ‘Public’ substack,

Governments around the world are cracking down on free speech. What they are demanding includes the ability to read private encrypted text messages and invade homes in search of wrongspeech. Their demands thus go far beyond what the Censorship Industrial Complex was able to get away with over the last six years.

And things are getting worse. Last week, the European Union announced it would punish Twitter for withdrawing from its supposedly “voluntary” censorship laws. “Twitter leaves EU voluntary code of practice against disinformation,” said the EU’s top censor, Thierry Breton, “You can run, but you can’t hide. Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation under [the Digital Services Act] DSA as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement.”

Politico begs to differ. The Censorship Industrial Complex, it wrote last week, is an “unproven conspiracy theory that a group of left-leaning academics, think tanks, tech workers and government employees coordinated to silence right-wing voters ahead of nationwide votes. To be clear (looking at you, Twitter Files), none of this has been proved, and there’s evidence that right-leaning voices have a larger, not smaller, presence online compared with those on the left.”

But it’s not unproven. In fact, the existence, funding, and actions of the Censorship Industrial Complex are extremely well-documented at this point. Across thousands of pages of Attorneys’ General lawsuits, thousands of pages of Congressional reports and testimony, and hundreds of pages of Twitter and Facebook files themselves, it’s clear that here was a highly coordinated campaign by top White House officials, government agencies, and government-funded contractors to demand Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies censor, in their own words, “often-true” content, including about drug side effects, both to prevent the public from seeing it but also to spread misinformation on behalf of a political agenda.

Politico did not, notably, provide any source or link to support its claim that “there’s evidence that right-leaning voices have a larger, not smaller, presence online compared with those on the left.” The reason might be that such “evidence” is a single highly selective study attempting to generalize about the whole of the social media experience through the lens of an outdated and simplistic Left-Right framework.

Emails from pro-censorship journalists to Twitter demanding the de-plaforming of another reporter, Alex Berenson.

The picture many of us have of journalists is Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in “All The President’s Men,” or the journalists in “Spotlight,” “She Said,” and “The Post.” They are dogged seekers of the truth, determined to overcome any obstacle in their way of discovering it and reporting it to the world. They advocate giving voice to the voiceless and uncovering secretive and dangerous abuses of power by everyone from senior government officials to powerful corporate executives to religious leaders.

But the real-world behavior of many journalists today at top news media companies is the exact opposite. They plot secretly with the Aspen Institute, each other, and social media executives about how to kill stories damaging to the president. And they help former CIA Directors and “Fellows” spread ridiculous conspiracy theories, including that Russians stole the 2016 election, controlled Donald Trump through a video of prostitutes urinating on him, and had somehow stolen Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Rather than quote from different sides, these journalists denounce their enemies. They dismissed as “racist” and as a “debunked conspiracy theory” that COVID-19 might have escaped from a Chinese lab while insisting that it was somehow less racist and far-fetched to believe the virus traveled 1,000 miles from the countryside before sickening someone at a “live wet market.”  And they demanded that Twitter de-platform disfavored voices like Twitter Files reporter Alex Berenson. 

Why do so many journalists participate in the war on free speech, including the freest social media platform, Twitter? Last summer, Berenson released documents showing reporters from CNN and Axios, urging Twitter to suspend Berenson for criticizing vaccines. “It’s like librarians burning books,” he told Public yesterday. “Why are journalists attacking journalists?”

…

The picture we had of mainstream news reporters speaking truth to power is no longer accurate. More frequently than not, reporters from those same institutions speak power against the truth. The evidence for the Censorship Industrial Complex is abundant, and they know it because they are part of it. The media’s problem is not that the censorship conspiracy is unproven. It’s that we proved it.

As such, Public is happy to announce a gathering of free speech leaders, journalists, and attorneys from around the world in London on July 22 – 23. At 7 pm on July 22, Matt Taibbi, Russell Brand, and I will speak on stage at Central Hall Westminster in London.

The next day, a small group of free speech leaders from around the world will gather to form an anti-censorship alliance aimed at defunding and dismantling the Censorship Industrial Complex, fighting new government censorship efforts, and pushing for First Amendment-level free speech protections worldwide. Email us to find out more information and get involved.

It’s time for freedom lovers to go on the offense. The problem isn’t that America is too free with its First Amendment free speech protections. It’s that other countries are too censorious. People around the world would love to enjoy the freedoms we take for granted in America, which is a big reason so many people want to live here. We are confident that when the peoples of the world, or their representatives, are forced to vote on free speech, they will tend toward the First Amendment, away from the totalitarian speech restrictions being pushed globally.

Governments are cracking down, but we are fighting back. The regime media won’t cover the news, so we will. After all the Congressional histrionics and media denials have passed, a worldwide grassroots citizen’s free speech and anti-censorship resistance movement will be left in their wake. It is notable that the main U.S. censorship groups, which are now being sued, are trying to deny that they were, in fact, censoring anyone.

But such lies are belied by their allies in the EU and elsewhere in the world trying to expand their censorship powers. In cracking down on speech, governments display their own lack of trust in the people, an attitude that will be increasingly reciprocated.

…

Subscribers can read Shellenberger’s full note here…

A few years back, San Francisco’s Mayor, London Breed, responded to demands from Black Lives Matter protesters by defunding the police. Fast forward to today, the crime-ridden city with out-of-control theft has experienced a business exodus and a shaky recovery. Breed’s decision to defund the police has backfired. In an about-face, she plans to boost police funding to attract businesses back to the downtown area. 

Mayor Breed’s new $6.85 billion budget highlights the challenges faced by San Francisco as the city grapples with sliding tax revenue, some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country, and a growing number of business leaders and residents urging officials to clamp down on crime. Bloomberg said the mayor unveiled the two-year budget that increases funding for police and expands the police force by 200 officers. 

“We have been forced to make some really challenging changes to our budget,” Breed said while she announced her budget this week. She added: “How we get people and businesses back on their feet is exactly what this budget is proposing to do.”

Breed’s policy U-Turn is embarrassing — because defunding then refunding the police — is one of the biggest admittance of any metro area that progressive policies have flat-out failed to make cities safer. These disastrous policies have transformed San Francisco and many other metro areas into hellholes. We must add business leaders and residents must hold the mayor and other Democrats accountable for implementing failed policy — just as the people did when they voted out the Soros-backed progressive district attorney last year. 

As we’ve pointed out, “Downtown San Francisco Becomes A Ghost Town As Major Retailers Flee” and “A Record 30% Of San Francisco Office Space Is Vacant.” There’s also a growing list of businesses that have closed up shops in the downtown area because of soaring crime. 

Bloomberg pointed out, “Looming over San Francisco’s budget fight is the prospect that city finances could worsen in the coming years as a tech exodus and downtown’s sluggish recovery metastasize into deeper cuts to city services.” 

In addition to plans to refund the police, she is addressing the homelessness and addiction crisis by providing hundreds of new treatment beds. Maybe Democrats are figuring out that allowing these folks to roam the streets like a zombie movie is terrible for business. 

Bloomberg also said budget forecast in March revealed that the 2025 single-year deficit would grow to $724 million. Then by 2026, it’s expected to exceed $1 billion. 

“It’s really bad in San Francisco,” Mark Ritchie, a commercial real estate broker with decades of experience in the metro area. He said, “Nobody knows what the solution is.”

Reversing disastrous progressive policies that have transformed the city into a dump is a start. Companies may want to come back. But something tells us that with high living costs, many firms who’ve shifted operations to other areas and or states are never returning. 

Failed progressive policies have led to the implosion of San Francisco. 

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

Everyone knows that the US government is bankrupt and has been for many years.

Whenever the chattering classes talk about cuts, it’s only about cuts over the course of 10 years. Which is a dodge, a fraud. Partly because most of the supposed cuts will be scheduled for the end of the period, but also because new programs, new emergencies and hidden contingencies are guaranteed to creep in, offsetting any announced cuts. The anticipated $2 trillion deficit for 2024 isn’t a temporary worst case; it’s the rosiest possible scenario.

People thought I was joking when, asked how bad the Greater Depression was going to be, I answered that it would be worse than even I thought it would be. But I haven’t been joking.

To sum up the situation, given its financial condition and the political forces working to worsen it, the US government is facing a completely impossible and irremediable situation.

The problems we face are one hundred percent caused by the US government – not by bankers or brokers, although they have been complicit.

Recall what government is: an organization with a monopoly of force within a certain geographical area. Its purpose is, ostensibly, to protect the inhabitants of its bailiwick from the initiation of force. That implies three functions: an army to protect against aggressors coming from outside of its borders, police to protect citizens from aggressors inside its borders and a court system to allow citizens to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force.

Assuming you’re going to have a government, it’s important to limit it strictly, lest it get completely out of control – it’s got a monopoly of force, after all – and overwhelm the society it’s supposed to protect.

Here I want you to distinguish government from society. They are not only two totally different things, but are potentially antithetical to each other. This is because the essence of government is force, not voluntary cooperation. Everything that people think the government provides (beyond some forms of protection) is really provided by society, or with resources the government has taken from society. It’s critical to understand this, or you won’t see the slippery slope the US is now sliding on.

Is there any chance that the US government can reform and go back to a sustainable basis at this point?

I’d say no.

Past is Prologue

Its descent started in earnest with the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it acquired its first foreign possessions (Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc).

It accelerated with the advent of the income tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913. It accelerated further with World War I, when the government took over the economy for 18 months.

The New Deal and World War II made the state into a permanent major feature in the average American’s life.

The Great Society made free food, housing and medical care a feature.

The final elimination of any link of the dollar to gold in 1971 ensured ever-increasing levels of currency inflation.

The Cold War and a series of undeclared wars (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others) cemented the military in place as a permanent focus of the government. And since 9/11, the curve has gone hyperbolic with the War on Terror.

It’s been said that war is the health of the state. We have lots more war on the way, and that will expand the state’s spending. But the Greater Depression will be an even bigger drain, and it will likely destroy the middle class, as an unwelcome bonus.

In all that time, from 1898 to today, there have been no substantial retrenchments of the US government, and the situation is getting worse, on a hyperbolic curve. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until a genuine crisis changes them, and this trend has been gaining momentum for over a century.

The Death of the Middle Class

Let’s divide people into three classes – rich, poor and middle class.

• Rich people are going to be okay. They can bribe the politicians to change the laws, hire the lawyers to interpret the laws, the accountants to limit their liabilities, advisors to help them profit from distortions and travel agents to get them out of Dodge. They may get eaten later, but for the moment, don’t worry about them.

• The poor don’t have much to lose, and the government is going to keep throwing benefits at them to keep them happy. That’s a shame because it cements them to the bottom as poor people – but that’s a topic for another day.

• The real danger is to the middle class, and it’s a serious matter because the US is a middle-class society. These are people who try to produce more than they consume and save the difference, in order to grow wealthier. That formula has worked well up to now – but almost everybody saves dollars. What happens, however, if the dollars are destroyed? It means that most of what they saved disappears, and most of the middle class will disappear with it, at least for that generation. They’ll be very unhappy, and they’ll be up for some serious changes.

What Happens Next

My point is that there really is no conventional solution to the US government’s financial crisis. It’s reached a stage where it will either have to start defaulting on some of its obligations, or vastly increase its rate of money printing. You decide which. The only questions are political; the economics are quite clear. Money printing it is. Especially since the Jacobins who now control Washington are believers in Modern Monetary Theory.

It won’t be the end of the world when the US government goes bust, although it will certainly have plenty of inconveniences and unpleasantness. Lots of governments have gone bankrupt before, some of them numerous times – like all of them here in South America, where I am at the moment.

In fact, there’s a temptation to look forward to it, since the state is the enemy of any decent human. One might hope that when they bankrupt themselves, we might get to live in a libertarian paradise. But that’s not likely the way things will come down; rather, just the opposite. Not all State bankruptcies are just temporary upsets. Most of the great revolutions in history have financial roots.

Great revolutions are more than just unpleasant and inconvenient; they’re extremely dangerous.

The French Revolution of 1789 was brought on by the financial collapse of the French government. It was a good thing to depose Louis XVI, but things didn’t get better – they got much, much worse with Robespierre and then Napoleon.

The collapse of the Czar’s regime in Russia in 1917, bankrupted by WW1, seemed to be good news at first – but then things got worse under Lenin, and stayed worse for a long time. In Germany, the destruction of the German mark in 1923 set the stage for the Nazis – and then the depression ushered them in.

The fact is that when a government collapses, especially when the government is providing all the things the US government does today, people want somebody to fix it; they want their goodies back.

It’s well known that over 50% of the US population are net recipients of state largesse. And the degree of state support and involvement in the US today is far, far greater than it was in France, Russia or Germany. After a period of chaos, it’s always the people who are most political, who have the most rabid statist ideas, who get the public’s attention and rise to the top.

It seems highly likely that the US will get a savior, someone full of bravado, who assures the booboisie that he can straighten things out – if he is given sufficient power. Perhaps it will be an arrogant windbag, perhaps some narcissistic general. The government won’t wither away; it will reassert itself. I don’t see any way around it, actually.

We are already moving into a police state. But, on the bright side, it’s a police state with a fairly high standard of living, one with Walmarts, McDonalds, and SUVs – at least for the time being.

But rest assured that if the situation evolves the way I expect, the standard of living will drop steeply, financial markets will become chaotic, and the US will become quite repressive. I’ll bet you money on this. In fact, I am betting money on it.

But what can you do about it? Well, actually, there is nothing you can do about it. At least as far as changing the course of history is concerned. The best you can do is to speculate intelligently on new distortions that will be cranked into the system, as well as others that will be liquidated.

It seems to me that this trend can no longer be reversed. The US government’s budget is, in fact, the biggest thing in the world. It won’t be turned around, because it is like a gigantic snowball rolling down a hill. It will only stop when it smashes into the village at the bottom of the valley.

The best thing you can do is capitalize on it as best you can. And get out of its way while you do.

*  *  *

We’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming… That’s precisely why bestselling author and legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this urgent PDF report on how to survive and thrive in this chaotic environment. Click here to download it now.

Amazon employees protested by the hundreds during a lunchtime demonstration in Seattle on Wednesday after the company brought back in-person requirements for three days a week. 

Truly, having to drive to work for three days must be a harrowing experience with much struggle and hardship, but not long ago Americans were actually expected to go to the office for at least five days a week.  Is three days of responsibility really too much for Seattle progressives?  

Some footage from yesterday’s protest at Amazon HQ, if I worked at the spheres I’d feel safer with this person working from home. pic.twitter.com/TmiqsKzo4m

— James Bulltard (@jamesbulltard7) June 1, 2023

Seattle workers say the change is a “step backwards,” arguing that driving to work puts employees at risk and also harms the environment with extra carbon emissions.

“I’m out here because I refuse to just sit idly by while mandates are dictated from above down that don’t make sense and hurt the planet, hurt families and individual lives,” one quality assurance engineer said. “And just to get us into a seat at the office for their tax incentives.”

The irony of this statement is obviously mind boggling.  Progressives were overjoyed to have government officials and corporate CEOs micromanage the lives of the American public with mandates only a couple years ago.  Now, they’re pretending to be victims of oppression as normal work requirements return.  Activists went on to sing protest songs to display their unity and admonish Amazon for “greenwashing.”

HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of Amazon employees are protesting outside HQ in Seattle for being “forced” to return to work in-person.

Amazon mandated employees to return to the office last month. They have been working remote since the start of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/XOVSk20fhS

— Katie Daviscourt (@KatieDaviscourt) May 31, 2023

The bottom line in this debate is simple – No one is forced to work at Amazon.  They can leave at any time. 

Many conservatives would be happy to see the company go down the drain along with its extensive financial support of woke media and ESG projects, and their first reaction might be to say “Good, Amazon made their bed, let them wallow in it.”  However, it’s also important to acknowledge that no company owes any employee anything other than the wages outlined in their contract.  Employees dictating operating policies of businesses violates the fundamentals of the free market.  Workers don’t get a say, only owners and customers as a whole get a say.  Workers are only free to quit.

The carbon emissions angle is a convenient ploy.  With covid no longer the great terror to be exploited, progressives are moving on to climate change as a means to gain leverage.  And though fear and virtue signaling can sometimes sway the business world to placate certain groups for a time, the pursuit of profits and growth will always win in the end.  Amazon is fine with playing woke when it’s to their advantage, but once their margins are at stake they will gladly look elsewhere for a new workforce.   

Around 93,000 tech jobs were lost in 2022, and there has been 168,000 layoffs so far in 2023. Given the rapid decline in profits and the rise of job losses the past year, many of the Amazon workers protesting against three days in the office today will be begging for any hours in the office tomorrow.        

Is the resistance to in-person work in progressive cities across the US really about fears of covid, saving the planet from scary carbon, or is it just childish entitlement?  Three years after the covid pandemic was used as an excuse to shut down large swaths of the American economy and put millions of people out of work, certain groups, particularly in the tech sector, have actually benefited from the restrictions and they want to keep it that way.

In the early months of the work-from-home dynamic productivity remained stable, perhaps because many people were going above and beyond in order to make extra money or ensure job security in uncertain times.  However, it did not take long for some employees to get comfortable and suddenly productivity plummeted for five consecutive quarters.  It was the first instance of such a decline since 1948 and the illusion of the work from home Utopia was dashed.  

Companies realized that remote work was a pipe-dream and that most people need to be outside the home environment in order to focus on their tasks.  But, they still could not pressure employees back into the office after joining in the hysteria over covid.  Now, with Joe Biden officially calling an end to the pandemic this year there isn’t any reason to give employees a free pass to lounge at home.  Or is there?

After Friday’s deposits data hinted – on a seasonally-adjusted and pre-revision basis – that outflows had stalled, we note that regional bank stocks have gone nowhere and, as we just found out, money market fund inflows have continued to soar.

The last week saw a $31.7 billion inflow into money market funds to a new record high of $5.42 trillion – the 6th week in a row (and 11th week of the last 12)

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, in the last 14 weeks – since SVB’s panic began – money-market funds have seen an aggregate $600 billion in inflows.

Institutional funds saw $19.77 billion in inflows while retail funds added around $12 billion…

Source: Bloomberg

This continued surge in money market fund inflows strongly suggests tomorrow’s H8 deposit report will show the bank walk/run is continuing…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s balance sheet shrank a dramatic $50 billion last week, almost back to pre-SVB-bailout levels…

Source: Bloomberg

And as far as QT is concerned, after last week’s very small drop, Total Securities Held Outright tumbled around $43 billion to its lowest since Aug 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

The US central bank had $97.6 billion of loans outstanding to financial institutions through two backstop lending facilities, up again from last week (the drop was FRC’s removal)…

Source: Bloomberg

…with the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program rose by $1.7 billion to a new record high of $93.6 billion…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s H4 table breakdown is as follows:

• QT decline of $43BN, of which TSYs drop $33BN and MBS drop $12BN (TIPS +3BN)

• Discount Window down $0.2BN from $4.2BN to $4.0BN

• BTFP up $1.7BN from $91.9BN to $93.6BN

• Other Credit Extensions (FDIC loans) down $4.6BN to $188.1BN

US Bank reserves at The Fed rose last week, catching up to equities’ over-exuberance…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, as we noted late last week, this is far from over as former Dallas Fed head Robert Kaplan dropped some uncomfortable truth bombs on the US banking system:

Phase one was an asset/liability mismatch at several banks

Phase two began with the stock market deciding to do its own supervisory scrubbing

We are now heading into the third phase.

Bank leadership at small and midsize banks are considering how to shrink their loan books in order to address the mark-to-market loss of capital, as well as to guard against potential deposit instability in the future.

Bank leadership is very aware that the economy is slowing, and that we are likely about to enter a challenging credit environment.

While asset/liability mismatches are relatively easy to spot, assessing the quality of loan portfolios is much more complicated.

CEOs of many small and midsize banks are in a tough position.

They can’t easily raise equity because their stock prices are down.

As a result, they are turning to shrinking their loan books, finding places to pull back on existing loans and future loan commitments.

This is making it much harder for small and midsize businesses to get and keep their bank loans.

It is a quiet phase that won’t make headlines but is nevertheless relentlessly going on beneath the surface.

Read the full interview here…

Free to speak his mind, Kaplan concludes rather ominously, “the recent banking turmoil has highlighted the disparity between too-big-to-fail banks and smaller and midsize banks. I worry that increasing the Fed funds rate from here may create further strains on the deposit base for those smaller banks. I’m concerned that, as the Fed raises rates, it is tightening the vice on small and midsize banks and the small and midsize businesses that rely on those banks for funding.”

We will find out more details of this phase of the banking crisis tomorrow after the close.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via RealClearPolitics.com,

Conservatives and traditionalists are often exasperated at the ongoing woke cultural revolution in their midst.

How can America be turned upside down, as it is, when there is little public support for the things happening around us?

They don’t see much backing for the current border policy and illegal immigration, yet it continues.

Conservatives feel that most Americans reject the trend of biological men dominating female sporting events.

They fear American jurisprudence has become now vastly weaponized and warped.

Certainly, former President Donald Trump will be more likely indicted by a politicized New York City prosecutor for supposedly overvaluing his net worth over a decade ago than would be a current violent street criminal clubbing a subway commuter.

In 2020 torching a federal courthouse or massing at the White House grounds, in efforts to get at the president, earned either few arrests and little or no jail time. In 2021, if one entered the Capitol and illegally paraded around like a buffoon, he could get a five-year prison sentence.

Traditionalists feel that sky-high energy prices, out-of-control urban crime, a depressed economy, high interest rates, and a politicized FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and Pentagon are all needlessly self-created messes.

How then did these extremist policies that have little popular support become institutionalized?

Conservatives, by their nature and unlike the Left, are more inclined to accept existing institutions rather than to radically alter or destroy them.

They were asleep at the wheel in 2020, when left-wing-funded lawsuits radically transformed Election Day in many states into a mere construct. Some 70 percent of the electorate in key precincts voted by mail or early, with far fewer ballot audits or authentication.

They focus on nominating more conservative judges, not packing the court itself. They work to take back the Senate, not to end the filibuster or bring in two new states with four new senators.

Traditionalists often feel they have no time for politics. They prefer to focus on their families, jobs, communities, and churches. Until recently they shunned organized boycotts. They abhor massing outside the homes of left-wing politicians and judges.

They shrug and concede that universities, teachers, government unions, the corporate boardroom, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, entertainment, and professional sports are hopelessly activist and left-wing.

The environmental, social, governance (ESG), diversity, equity, and inclusion, and LGBQT+ agendas were unfathomable acronyms to Middle America and thus mostly ignored.

So conservatives often slept through the woke revolution.

Yet suddenly they realize their apathy allowed the country to descend into something the nation’s founders never imagined or intended, and antithetical to what most knew as America just a couple of decades ago.

So conservatives are awakening from their slumber. And they are discovering that they too can boycott, agitate — and roar.

The woke Target corporation in just a few days has suffered a more than $10 billion loss in its stock value.

Millions of shoppers shunned its 2,000 stores after the chain showcased its “pride” apparel. The displays featured “tuck pieces” — veritable codpieces — that are intended to facilitate “women’s” male genitalia.

Anheuser-Busch came up with the bright idea that it would highlight Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender performance activist, to hawk its Bud Light brand. But beer seemed incidental to the self-absorbed Mulvaney’s fixation on promoting transgenderism. So Bud Light-drinking, red-state America got turned off by Mulvaney’s in-your-face-advocacy.

An ensuing informal boycott cost the company nearly $16 billion in lost stock value. Hundreds of millions of dollars of unsellable light beer stagnated. Stores can’t even give it away. Meanwhile, Bud Light’s competitors coped with meeting record Memorial Day consumer demand.

Ditto the defiantly woke Disney Corporation.

The now politically activist entertainment corporation insisted on pushing woke agendas down the throats of its family-centered audience.

The result? Its online entertainment services are bleeding millions of subscribers. Disney stock has lost $16 billion in value. Its overpriced theme parks no longer count on continual increased attendance.

Sometimes traditionalists prefer simply to drop out rather than boycott wokeism. One result is that the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards now have a fraction of their previous televised audience.

In 1998 — when the United States had a population of 275 million — the NBA finals earned on average 29 million television viewers. This year the NBA bragged its finals averaged a pathetic 4 million viewers in a contemporary America of 335 million.

The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team reinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — a self-identified performance art “queer” group — to headline the team’s “pride night.”

The all-male “sisters” usually put on anti-Catholic pornographic skits that mock Jesus Christ and sexualize Christian rituals.

That Dodger indulgence is not going over well with its fan base, especially the city’s millions of Catholic Latinos.

The woke Left still enjoys enormous advantages over the Right.

The bicoastal elite has far more money, controls all the major American institutions, and dominates the dissemination of knowledge through the media and Silicon Valley.

But the Left does not enjoy majority public support. And now it has managed the impossible — to goad the normally comatose conservative dragon to awaken.

And it is just starting to breathe fire.

The labor market continued to show resilience today (claims and ADP solid) ahead of tomorrows payrolls print (but wage growth slowed) but job gains were fragmented. At the same time, the manufacturing side of the economy continued to deteriorate significantly (along with prices), productivity was revised ugly, but construction increased more than expected. So take your pick on that smorgasbord.

FedSpeak continued to push the idea of a skip/pause in June with Phily Fed’s Patrick Harker saying “I do believe that we are close to the point where we can hold rates in place and let monetary policy do its work to bring inflation back to the target in a timely manner.

But St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard commented that interest rates are now “at the low end of what is arguably sufficiently restrictive given current macroeconomic conditions” in an essay posted on his bank’s website.

Putting all that into the bowl and the market adjusted dovishly with rate-hike expectations for June/July fading and rate-cut expectations for year-end rising fast…

Source: Bloomberg

Stocks were in the mood to party and it was one-way traffic higher led by Small Caps and Mega-Cap tech. Some late-day profit-taking wiped some of the lipstick off this pig (but Nasdaq and Small Caps managed 1% gains on the day still). The Dow was the smallest winner…

The Nasdaq is now on pace for its longest weekly win streak since 2020.

Stocks soared thanks to a massive short-squeeze that hit shortly after the cash open…

Source: Bloomberg

The morning saw almost no selling pressure at all but the late-day saw a big sell-program hit with around 30mins to go…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, the squeeze was initiated by several positive delta impulses from 0-DTE traders, but at around 1200ET, 0-DTE puts were aggressively bid reversing the flow dramatically (slowing the uptrend in stocks), but the market’s continued rise prompted covering of those puts and call-buying which prompted another leg higher to the short-squeeze…

Source: SpotGamma

Banks were up – perfectly recovering yesterday’s plunge…

AI stocks soared intraday with NVDA up another 5% and even c3.AI bounced significantly after its overnight pukefest…

Treasuries were bid today with the short-end outperforming (2Y -6bps, 30Y -3bps), extending gains this week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bear in mind that 2Y yields are 50bps higher than they were at the last payrolls print…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar suffered its biggest daily drop since January today

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin legged lower again overnight, but bounced back up to hold around $27,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold futures rallied today, topping $2000 briefly intraday…

Oil prices also soared today, with WTI topping $71…

Finally, Target stock started the day ugly for the 10th day in a row – the longest losing streak since the peak of the dotcom bubble in Feb 2000. A buying panic wave stepped in around 1200ET lifting it green. Then the machines battled to keep it green as selling pressure took it back into the red…

Consumer weakness? Or Conservative backlash? Ask JPM, they downgraded the giant retailer.

And then there’s this…

Mission Accomplished?

Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

At roughly 8:30 a.m. ET this morning, Jeremy Boreing, co-founder and co-CEO of the Daily Wire, posted a lengthy thread on Twitter outlining what appeared to be a major reversal on speech issues on the Elon Musk-owned platform. “Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman? for free on the platform because of two instances of ‘misgendering,’” Boreing wrote, adding, “I’m not kidding.”

Noting the film would be labeled “hateful conduct,” the thread detailed a months-longer roller-coaster dispute between the producers of What is a Woman?, a controversial documentary by Matt Walsh released a year ago today, and the current incarnation of the bird site.

In celebration of the release anniversary Walsh, Boreing, and the Daily Wire began making plans to partner with Twitter for a 24-hour livestream today, June 1, 2023. Twitter at first responded with enthusiasm, offering the chance to buy “a package to host the movie on a dedicated event page” and “a chance for us to promote the event to every Twitter user over the first 10 hours.” The initial exchange came roughly a month ago, and the Wire team planned a significant ad buy and other promotions.

Weeks later, Twitter ominously asked the Daily Wire for a review copy of Walsh’s movie. Boreing said the firm then found out Twitter would not only “no longer provide us with support,” but bluntly told them they would “limit the reach” of the film if the Daily Wire went ahead with the event on its own. In one of many odd twists to this story, the problem involved two alleged instances of “misgendering,” a category of offense Twitter controversially removed from hate speech guidelines in April.

“They gave us the opportunity to edit the film to comply. We declined,” wrote Boreing.

Boreing’s tweet-storm today provoked a quick backlash on the platform, with personalities like Tim Pool promising to terminate his “enterprise Blue subscription” if the decision wasn’t reversed. As if by magic, Musk at 1:33 p.m. tweeted that it was a “mistake by many people at Twitter”:

However, as of this moment (at 2:27 p.m., an hour after Elon’s tweet), the movie is still labeled “limited,” because it “may violate Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct:

No matter how this mess turns out, it’s a significant development, in large part because What is a Woman? — a sarcastic “mockumentary” that gently tinkles in the face of transgender orthodoxies — is just the kind of content many conservatives in particular imagined would no longer arouse the ire of censors.

Walsh himself last year celebrated Musk’s “liberation of Twitter,” a fact the Washington Post considered significant enough to report at the time (though it followed the now-common habit of not linking to Walsh’s Twitter account or to Daily Wire content about the film). If new Twitter continues to labels and suppresses this movie, it will send a clear message to conservatives that the honeymoon is over. At the very least, it’s time to pack.

Even if the matter is ultimately fixed, it’s important to note that The Daily Wire was alredy forced to cancel a major promotion, and has been negotiating with Twitter for some time before today. “This was not some kind of fluke or glitch,” Walsh wrote. “It’s a very intentional decision by Twitter.” In fact, as Moreing notes, the decision was presented to The Daily Wire as a conscious expression of Twitter’s “speech not reach” policy, another way of saying Twitter considers de-amplification or suppression legitimate tools, not free speech violations.

I wrote about What is a Woman? a year ago after noticing it was driving huge online traffic and was much talked about across media (in both positive and negative ways), but was non-covered as if by universal agreement. The subject matter was so taboo, people were afraid to mention it even to denounce it. “The most prominent outlets who’ve admitted to watching it,” I wrote on June 8, 2022, “have names like the Christian Post and Spectator Australia, despite a 96% audience rating.” The movie ended up ranked as Rotten Tomatoes #1 most-watched film at home, downloaded in 70 countries, but garnered virtually zero mainstream reviews.

This was too bad, because irrespective of your take on the underlying issue, the movie was quite clever, a classic example of the satirical technique of hoisting a target on its own petard.

Subscribers to Racket news can read the rest here…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is letting his frustration and impatience over the question of entering the NATO military alliance be known. “Our future is in the European Union. Ukraine is also ready to be part of NATO. We are waiting for NATO to be ready to accept Ukraine,” he said Thursday to journalists just ahead of a summit of the European Political Community in Chisinau, Moldova.

At the summit, he demanded that Ukraine receive security guarantees “now” and emphasized the best way to ensure this is acceptance into NATO. But the idea of ‘security guarantees’ has also long been under discussion, with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday having explained that the country could be given “something between the security provided to Israel and full-fledged membership.”

Zelensky continued in his address to the Moldova summit, “In Vilnius, a clear invitation to Ukraine is needed” – which is a reference to NATO’s annual summit in Lithuania, set for July.

“Doubts must vanish. Positive decisions for Ukraine will be positive for everyone,” Zelensky stressed. “There should be no hot war or frozen conflict on our continent,” he added, telling European leaders: “When there are no security guarantees, there are only war guarantees.”

But behind the scenes the Ukrainian leader is reportedly miffed at NATO and European inaction and waffling, and his rhetoric has been more aggressive outside of public addresses. 

The Financial Times wrote Wednesday, “Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has made clear to Nato leaders that he will not attend the Vilnius summit without concrete security guarantees and a road map for accession, according to people briefed on those conversations.”

This has dialed up the pressure on the West and leaders of the most powerful NATO countries, The Wall Street Journal emphasized in follow-up reporting on Wednesday.

Macron seems the first among these leaders to be responding positively, despite the fact that NATO Article 5 could trigger certain war between Western powers and Russia if Ukraine were to be formally admitted to the alliance. According to more from the FT: 

French president Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Ukraine to be granted a Nato membership “path” next month. While he did not commit to endorsing full membership for Ukraine, it represented a potentially influential shift in Paris’ stance. Intense discussions are now under way among Ukraine’s western backers about what form security guarantees could take and how much money would be pledged towards them, said a French official. 

🚨Zelensky demands Ukraine be invited to join NATO now, before the NATO summit, or else… pic.twitter.com/E8eZeTiZ6B

— US Civil Defense News (@CaptCoronado) June 1, 2023

But Germany is among leading countries still rejecting this as a realistic approach. FT in April had cited multiple unnamed German officials who said Berlin remains against offering Kiev “deeper ties” to the alliance, and is against a potential roadmap for membership as well.