Biden administration and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed the media on Monday, asking in so many words that pretty please would journalists not report on the trove of highly classified documents which were leaked online. 

“This is information that has no business in the public domain… It has no business… on the front pages of newspapers or on television.” But Kirby is a bit late, given already days ago major outlets from the NY Times to Washington Post to foreign outlets like The Guardian and RT have widely reported on them. They classified reports have circulated widely on English-language and foreign social media as well.

John Kirby warns journalists not to report on leaked Pentagon documents.

“This is information that has no business in the public domain…It has no business…on the front pages of newspapers or on television.” pic.twitter.com/625CxNIarI

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 10, 2023

Independent media outlets have also widely shared images of the documents, which Pentagon officials claim could have been altered by the Kremlin to make the US look bad.

Kirby took the opportunity to reiterate this as well in a briefing: “We don’t know who is behind this. We don’t know what the motive is . . . we don’t know what else might be out there.” He emphasized: “We know that some of them have been doctored . . . we are still working through the validity of all of the documents that we know are out there.”

Some observers have speculated that given the high number of documents marked SECRET/NOFORN, which literally means Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals (and thus it can’t be shared with even close allied services of the US), this points to the leak originating within the US chain of command. Others have said the leak may have come from the Ukrainians, given the high numbers of Ukraine-related battlefield assessments that were part of the trove that appeared online.

The Pentagon and DOJ meanwhile says they are still “working around the clock” to assess the source and scale of the massive breach of highly classified data. New bombshell documents have continued to trickle out in media stories into Monday and Tuesday, likely with more revelations to come throughout the week.

Assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs Chris Meagher told reporters Tuesday, “We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue.” He explained: “There have been steps to take a closer look at how this type of information is distributed and to whom.” A criminal investigation has been opened, he confirmed.

Classified Pentagon documents containing info about US-NATO plans for a Ukrainian offensive and key details of the ongoing war have leaked.

The Biden administration is reportedly demanding they be scrubbed from the internet.

By @RealAlexRubi https://t.co/rnlIvun5NI

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) April 7, 2023

FT and others have called the breach the “most significant since Edward Snowden released a trove of classified documents about US intelligence activities a decade ago — included apparently highly classified documents.” Officials have also noted they “appear mostly authentic”. 

“These photos appear to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on Ukraine and Russia-related operations as well as other intelligence updates,” Meagher explained, though agreeing with other officials that some of them appear doctored.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Russia’s crude oil exports by sea plunged last week, the most since December 2022, to below 3 million barrels per day (bpd), the lowest level in eight weeks, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.

In the week to April 7, crude oil shipments from Russia’s export terminals plummeted by 1.24 million bpd, to an eight-week low of 2.89 million bpd, according to the data cited by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee. 

The drop in crude oil exports, the steepest decline since storms affected loadings at ports in December, suggests that Russia’s production cuts may have started to affect its crude shipments.

Still, a four-week average measure of exports showed that total Russian crude oil shipments fell by 108,000 bpd to 3.34 million bpd for the four weeks to April 7, per the data compiled by Bloomberg.

Before last week, Russia’s crude oil exports by sea had held above the 3 million bpd mark for weeks, even after the EU ban on fuel imports from Russia took effect and after Moscow said it would lower its production by 500,000 bpd.  

This week, Russia claimed it had cut its production by 700,000 bpd last month, more than the 500,000 bpd pledged earlier this year.

As several OPEC+ members announced in early April that they would make additional voluntary cuts in their output between May and December this year, Russia extended the 500,000 bpd cut until the end of 2023, too. 

In the past four weeks, as in previous weeks, most Russian exports set off for China, India, or “unknown destinations” in Asia, which, history shows, usually means that the cargoes end up in one of the two biggest Asian importers of crude.

Russia was the single largest crude oil supplier to China in January and February, overtaking Saudi Arabia , which was the number-one oil supplier to China last year. Russia remained India’s top oil supplier for a fifth consecutive month in February, beating Iraq and Saudi Arabia, India’s traditional suppliers from the Middle East.

By Donovan Choy of Bankless

Consider how it’s been used across the political spectrum. Black Lives Matter activists have embraced the immutability of the blockchain to raise awareness of police brutality, Canadian right-wingers turned to Bitcoin in their protests against the Trudeau government, rogue nations have used it to evade the Western sanction regime and libertarians of course, love it.  

That’s why it’s been weird to see crypto getting so politicized by one party or another.

In her run-up to a third Senate election, Elizabeth Warren is erecting an anti-crypto position as a central plank in her policy platform. A tweet from her official campaign account last week referenced that she was “building an anti-crypto army” for the sake of “working families”.

I’m in this fight to put our government on the side of working families. Join our re-election campaign today: https://t.co/KuZwvrwkqT pic.twitter.com/fCUcqE9PZM

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 29, 2023

Anti-crypto? For the working family? It’s a deeply puzzling position considering Warren’s history as a progressive icon.

Warren rose to national prominence as an ardent crusader against Big Finance corruption. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, Warren made her name as a cheerleader for increasingly stringent banking regulations, serving as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the 2008 bank bailouts.

With such an anti-Wall-Street streak, one might have presumed a natural alliance between Warren and the crypto sector. What better way to revolt against Big Finance than to join hands with an industry that’s sole purpose has been to design a new financial system out of Big Finance’s control?

Prior to her foray into politics, Warren the academic also strongly opposed bankruptcy laws that would favor big corporations over small businesses and families. What better way to level the legal playing field and hold creditors accountable than in the world of the EVM, where the concept of bankruptcy is moot?

When Celsius was hit by its bad loans to Three Arrows Capital last year, the crypto lender rushed to pay down $400M+ of DeFi loans across Maker, Aave and Compound before they were automatically liquidated by code. We saw the same thing play out in the FTX fiasco, when Alameda quickly resolved its stablecoin loans on the Abracadabra protocol before liquidation.

In DeFi, “a deal is a deal” – you can’t back out.

Celsius was forced to prioritize paying down its $400mm+ loans on Maker, Aave, and Compound to avoid liquidation.

There is no ability to “re-structure”/renege on smart contracts.

Why DeFi works great: https://t.co/F5q70gBc84 pic.twitter.com/Q3rF0e3EeR

— Dan Morehead (@dan_pantera) July 13, 2022

In both cases, debts from loans to CeFi institutions were relegated to the legal system to be sorted out, and they’re still being hashed out by lawyers a year later. It’s not hard to understand. You can spend millions of dollars and years fighting for a better deal in a court of law, but there’s no arguing with a DeFi smart contract. The rules are efficient, transparent and egalitarian.

Despite all of the benefits that crypto might lend to Warren’s professed causes, she’s sought to cast crypto as universally bad. For Warren, crypto might just be the very spawn of the devil itself. It is used to finance terrorism, scam consumers, and is burning down the planet. In her mind, there’s nothing useful about crypto – buying Bitcoin is equivalent to “buying air”.

But fret not – she believes the above are all problems that can be fixed with the stroke of a legislative pen. Warren’s proposed Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act is a draconian bill that, if passed, would introduce KYC requirements for all blockchain validators and crypto wallet providers, ban institutional use of Tornado Cash, and mandate reporting of transactions from offshore bank accounts.

I argued last week why most regulatory fears around crypto are misplaced, but I also know how little facts matter in the realm of public policy.

The truth is crypto has a PR problem. When the average person hears crypto, they aren’t thinking about the potentials of the tech for financial inclusion. They’re thinking about million dollar hacks and scams, and overpriced JPEGs of monkeys as a plaything of the rich. The open nature of crypto transactions and market maneuverings presents a ripe political opportunity for anti-crypto politicians like Warren to misrepresent.

And misrepresent the industry Warren has. Positioning herself as crypto’s public enemy number one makes sense for Warren. For one, the optics are picture-perfect. She gets to throw potshots at financebros and techbros (the amalgamation of which form the grotesque “cryptobro”), boogeymen that she has been vocally critical of.

At the same time, she gets to prop up her brainchild, the anti-corporate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that she formed in 2011 alongside Barack Obama — one that’s funding scheme is currently undergoing legal scrutiny. The CFPB’s regulatory powers covers the entire gamut of American consumer finance, but it is now treading into speculative advocacy and branding itself as opposed to crypto, wanting to shield teens from crypto and even taking issue with marketing spend by private companies on Super Bowl crypto ads. New CFPB chair Rohit Chopra singled out stablecoins as used purely for speculative purposes and as “a risk to the financial system”.

Going full anti-crypto is nearly costless for Warren. It’s unlikely to hurt her electoral chances in her home state. Massachusetts is one of the most well-off states in the U.S., coming up on top with highest median household incomes in 2019 and highest GDP per capita in 2020. Warren’s campaign rhetoric panders to the proverbial “working family”, but Massachusetts holds a disproportionately small number of the 7.1 million unbanked U.S. households that might benefit from new DeFi pathways and products.

Ultimately, Warren’s anti-crypto platform is disingenuous, because it nitpicks the worst of crypto, and tries to present it as “business as usual” to an unknowing public. There is of course nothing wrong with calling out crypto’s problems, of which there are many. But Warren’s fixation on crypto’s worst amounts to nothing more than populist fear mongering for political profit, and all the while traditional finance stakeholders cheer on the sidelines.

What can the crypto industry do?

The industry will always have political enemies; that’s by design. But crypto, shouldn’t be losing the support of “progressives” who are frustrated by the status quo financial systems. Warren’s message that crypto is merely another plaything for the wealthy has resonated with her base, in part, because of our industry’s own blindspots in broadcasting its strengths and successes.

We’ll have to realistically assess what we choose to dignify, celebrate or condemn as metrics of industry success. How can we market what we believe to be a once-in-a-lifetime technology responsibly to the mainstream, in a way that doesn’t reek of “have fun staying poor” extravagance? The defeat of anti-crypto political populism like Warren’s will depend on how well the industry can resolve its own PR problems.

The IMF trimmed its global-growth projections in its latest World Economic Outlook report (link), warning of high uncertainty and risks as sticky inflation and financial-sector stress adds to pressures emanating from tighter monetary policy. GDP will likely expand 2.8% this year and 3% next year, each 0.1% less than forecast in January, the fund said in its latest forecast; That compares with 3.4% expansion in 2022. In a plausible alternative scenario with further financial sector stress, to which the IMF assigns a 25% probability, the IMF warns that global growth could decline to about 2.5% in 2023 with advanced economy growth falling below 1%.

Some highlights from the report:

• The fund raised its 2023 growth forecast for advanced nations marginally to 1.3%, 0.1% point higher than in the January forecast, boosted by strong labor markets. But that’s less than half the 2.7% expansion in 2022.
• The US is expected to grow 1.6%, 0.2% point more than in the prior projection
• The eurozone is expected to grow more slowly at 0.8 per cent this year as member states deal with last year’s energy price increases before recovering to a 1.4 per cent rate in 2024.
• China’s forecast growth rate of 5.2 per cent in 2023 from the IMF is in line with the Beijing government’s target, although the fund expects it to slow to 4.5 per cent in 2024.
• Japan’s forecast was cut to 1.3%, 0.5% point lower than in January, after a disappointing fourth quarter that’s expected to have carried into this year
• The IMF cut its growth expectations for emerging markets and developing economies — which have a bigger weighting than advanced nations based on purchasing-power-parity — to 3.9%, 0.1% point lower than its last projection
• The largest reduction among major economies was for South Africa, seen growing just 0.1%, down 1.1% point from the previous estimate
• The biggest upgrade was for Saudi Arabia, which the fund now predicts will expand 3.1%, 0.5% point higher than seen in January, boosted by large investment projects.

While the latest cuts in the 2023 forecast isn’t large, Bloomberg notes that the report showed the IMF is more subdued about the outlook than in January, when it saw this year as a “turning point” for the global economy and risks were more balanced.

Last week, the IMF warned growth over the next five years will be limited. That’s based on risks from economic fragmentation caused by geopolitical tension — including the escalating US-China rivalry that’s reinforced by the war in Europe — as well as slower labor-force growth and decelerating long-term rates of expansion in China and South Korea.

Additionally, in a new addition to the report, the IMF is now forecasting inflation; it projected that global headline inflation is set to fall from 8.7% in 2022 to 7.0% in 2023 but 0.4% higher than the January projection, on the back of lower commodity prices but underlying (core) inflation is likely to decline more slowly. Inflation’s return to target is unlikely before 2025 in most cases.

Here is a snapshot summary:

The unexpected failures last month of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the collapse of Credit Suisse Group roiled markets and ignited financial-stability concerns, complicating central banks’ quest to tame inflation while maintaining growth and the health of the banking system, sparking IMF concerns about financial sector instability.

“The risks are weighted heavily to the downside, in large part because of the financial turmoil of the last month and a half,” said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the fund’s chief economist. “That is under control as of now, but we are concerned that this could result in a sharper and a more elevated downturn if financial conditions were to worsen significantly.”

To that end, in one forecast scenario which it calls a “plausible alternative,” financial instability remains contained but impacts conditions more than in the IMF’s base case and banks reduce lending. That would cause growth to slow to 2.5% in 2023, the weakest pace since 2001, excluding the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the global financial crisis of 2009.

In a severe downside scenario, to which the IMF assigns a 25% probability, there could be significant credit disruption, and the pace of global expansion could slow to less than 2% — something that’s only happened five times since 1970. There’s also about a 15% probability of growth at just 1%.

Gournichas told the Financial Times that, while the banking system was far more resilient than during the 2008 crisis, policymakers had to “think about what could go wrong”.

“We can all remember the long time between the failure of an individual institution, whether it was Bear Stearns or Countrywide,” he said, referring to institutions that failed more than a decade ago. “Every time, this was treated like an isolated incident, until it wasn’t.”

In its twice-yearly full forecasts published on Tuesday, the IMF said the turmoil in the UK government bond market last autumn and last month’s US banking turbulence showed the “significant vulnerabilities [that] exist both among banks and non-bank financial institutions”.

“Risks to the outlook are heavily skewed to the downside, with the chances of a hard landing having risen sharply,” the IMF said.

Additional risks beyond the financial sector include inflation taking longer than expected to slow, China’s reopening faltering, or a worsening of the Russia-Ukraine war. “We’re seeing a lot of downside risk going forward,” Gourinchas said.

Hinting that central banks are caught between a rock and a hard place, while on one hand it warns of financial stability risk brought on by sharp rate hikes, the IMF has also warned of a “hard landing” for the global economy if persistently troublesome inflation keeps interest rates higher for longer and amplifies financial risks.

Although the fund left its overall economic forecasts largely unchanged from January in its latest World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday, it stressed that signs of resilience alongside lower global energy and food prices masked a darker reality. Gourinchas warned that “Below the surface . . . turbulence is building, and the situation is quite fragile”.

“Inflation is much stickier than anticipated even a few months ago,” he said. “More worrisome is that the sharp [monetary] policy tightening of the past 12 months is starting to have serious side effects for the financial sector.”

So long as financial markets remained relatively stable, central banks should do everything they can to beat inflation, the fund said. Gournichas warned price pressures could continue to prove more persistent, which would result in a “harder landing scenario”.

“There is a concern out there that we may not have enough tightening in the system at this point and more will be needed,” he said. “That would certainly increase the odds that output would come down further compared to our projections.”

However, a credit crunch, which some economists are predicting in the wake of the recent US banking turmoil, could act as a disinflationary force, he said. “As long as it is orderly, some of this lending contraction may actually be beneficial in terms of bringing down inflation and may substitute for further interest rate hikes,” Gournichas said.

More in the full report here.

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times,

Russia is using space weapons in the Ukraine war by jamming GPS signals from American GPS satellites used by Ukraine’s armed forces, according to a leading general in the U.S. Space Force…

However, Russia has stopped short of attempting to destroy space hardware, in part because its space capabilities are not fully developed and could not sustain a conflict with a major power, one expert believes.

Russia has Earth-based lasers capable of attacking satellites, electronic jamming equipment, and anti-satellite missiles, according to Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force.

“They have shown no qualms about testing these systems,” Saltzman told attendees at an April 5 forum on space defense conducted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“And they have every intention of using counter-space weapons in conflict, as we see in the war in Ukraine. We’ve seen cyberattacks against satellite internet providers as well as persistent SATCOM and GPS jamming.”

Russia has targeted the Navstar GPS system, which is operated by the Space Force and made available to a number of other countries.

“Space is … undeniably a contested warfighting domain,” Saltzman said.

The Space Force has been aware of the jamming since at least April 202. “Ukraine may not be able to use GPS because there are jammers around that prevent them from receiving any usable signal,” Space Force Gen. David Thompson said in an interview at that time.

Signals from the SpaceX Starlink system have also been jammed, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. “Some Starlink terminals near conflict areas were being jammed for several hours at a time,” Musk wrote on Twitter in March 2022. “Our latest software update bypasses the jamming.”

The Russians conducted a major test of its anti-satellite weapons in November 2021 but have not so far moved to destroy satellites. That caution is likely due to a risk calculation, according to Anne Maruin, a researcher in geopolitics for the French Air Force.

“From the conflict in Ukraine, the results in space reveal that Moscow is currently adhering to a form of pragmatism that carefully considers the escalation risks at hand, should either US or European spacecraft indirectly serving Ukrainian forces be destroyed,” Maurin wrote in the spring 2023 edition of Aether: A Journal of Strategic Airpower & Spacepower.

Such a move would likely be seen as a cause for war, Maruin said, which Russia is unlikely to risk.

Russia has fewer space assets than either the United States or China, according to Maurin. She cited a 2022 statement by the head of Russia’s space agency, who said: “In a situation where it is necessary to aid our armed forces, we have rather modest resources at our disposal. This worries me personally.”

Distributors for Belgian-owned Anheuser-Busch are reportedly ‘spooked’ over the reaction to the company’s Bud Light transgender ad campaign featuring Dylan Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood,” according to Beer Business Daily.

In what many thought was an April Fool’s joke, the transgender activist whose act consists of mocking women with exaggerated stereotypes that the left is too stupid to pick up on, revealed that the company had begun featuring Bud Light cans featuring his face, which Mulvaney said was his “most prized possession.” The ad campaign includes a video of Mulvaney drinking Bud Light in a bathtub.

Dylan Mulvaney has become the new brand ambassador for Bud Light. 🍺

The beer brand even made a special edition Dylan Mulvaney Can 🥤celebrating his 365 days of girlhood.

(This is not April Fools, it’s actually real)

🍺🍻🍺😒🍻🍺🍻 #dylanmulvaney #trans #transgender pic.twitter.com/xuu87WxrvZ

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 1, 2023

According to the trade publication, which viewed the situation “purely from a marketing and sales perspective,” Mulvaney’s target audience of Gen Z and TikTok viewers is a demographic that the beer company is “desperate” to reach.

“We reached out to a handful of A-B [Anheuser-Busch] distributors who were spooked, most particularly in the Heartland and the South, and even then in their more rural areas,” the beer publication wrote, adding that according to preliminary data, “it appears likely Bud Light took a volume hit in some markets over the holiday weekend,” with the caveat that rural customers are also most likely to celebrate Easter.

“Whether it lasts or whether the publicity sparks incremental off-setting demand from over the ideological divide in metro areas, remains to be seen,” the report added, while noting that it’s hard to “appeal to the sensitivities of a new generation of drinkers” without pissing off their existing customers.

“I’ve never seen the country so hotly divided, sadly,” the author continues, according to Fox News.

The beer company has doubled down on its ad campaign, saying in a statement to Fox News Digital “Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics. From time to time we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Dylan Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”

The campaign has led to endless parodies (viewer discretion is advised)…

Day 6 of girlhood sponsored by Bud Light💄 🍺 pic.twitter.com/HH6Ml67F3B

— Tyler Fischer (@TyTheFisch) April 6, 2023

Last week a VP for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid, explained how the company wants to become the King of ‘Woke’ Beers, and the need to shift away from the “out of touch” frat party image to one of “inclusivity.”

Heinerscheid, a middle-aged, upper income highly-educated white woman, was interviewed on the podcast “Make Yourself At Home” on March 23. 

“I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light,'” she said.

Heinerscheid stressed a need to “evolve and elevate” the Bud Light brand away from the “fraternity/out of touch humor” brand of the younger generation. She expanded on that idea:

“What does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity… It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different. And appeals to women and to men. And representation is sort of the heart of revolution.”

Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.

How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023

Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, where is all this woke advertising coming from?

Why many big corporations, like Anheuser-Busch, do seemingly insane things. They’re being pressured to do it. From @nypost: https://t.co/DUwkC40Ytw pic.twitter.com/YzKRdpzX8Q

— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 10, 2023

Dear Women,

Tampax pays this man $10,000’s to MOCK YOU.

Don’t buy Tampax. pic.twitter.com/WuopDV7K2n

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 9, 2023

Submitted by Ryan Ortega, founder of Third Line Financial Planning and the Jelly Donut Podcast.

In 2012, David Einhorn penned a piece titled, “The Fed’s Jelly Donut Policy.” Now, over a decade later, we’re living with the results of past decisions of disastrous Fed policies.

Interest rates are the most important price in the world and the Fed has distorted them for well over 10 years.

In his original piece, Einhorn wrote:

“A Jelly Donut is a yummy mid-afternoon energy boost. Two Jelly Donuts are an indulgent breakfast. Three Jelly Donuts may induce a tummy ache. Six Jelly Donuts — that’s an eating disorder. Twelve Jelly Donuts is fraternity pledge hazing.”

“My point is that you can have too much of a good thing and overdoses are destructive. Chairman Bernanke is presently force-feeding us what seems like the 36th Jelly Donut of easy money and wondering why it isn’t giving us energy or making us feel better. Instead of a robust recovery, the economy continues to be sluggish.”

After Bernanke set the course, Yellen continued, and Powell followed. Even after the Fed tries to get us off ZIRP, it didn’t last long.

In 2019, as rates started to rise, many doubted it could last, predicting the Fed would have to reverse course. I launched a show called “Jelly Donut Podcast” to explore this and other macro issues. Einhorn appeared on the show to give his thoughts.

Federal Funds Effective Rate

Einhorn recently appeared on the Invest Like the Best podcast with his current thoughts.

“The jelly donut theory is that the relationship between monetary policy and the economy is nonlinear. At some point, the sign flips from positive to negative. The analogy to jelly donuts is the first jelly donut tastes great. The second jelly donut is pretty indulgent, but by the 12th jelly donut, you’re just making yourself sick, so you really shouldn’t do that anymore.”

“And I think the same is true somewhat with easy monetary policy. If rates are 10%, let’s just say, which is pretty high and you lower them to 8%, you’re reducing borrowing costs. You’re lowering the cost of capital in a material way, but you get to a point where rates are low enough…lowering rates is not any longer going to be the key decision maker to what they’re doing…if the factory doesn’t make sense with the 2% rate of interest, it’s not going to make sense with a 1% rate of interest because it probably just doesn’t make sense. Once you get to the point where rate policy has helped as much as it’s going to help, then it begins to hurt.”

“…What’s actually happened is, is for a number of years, when they bring rates to really, really low levels, they were actually depressing incomes, and they were actually slowing the economy.”

“They would think that they were stimulating, but they were actually slowing. And I think what’s happened on the other side of that, as we’ve gone from 1% to 4%, they are very surprised they haven’t slowed the economy more….and I think that’s because going from 0% to 4% has basically been a stimulus…so I think that the tightening we’ve had so far hasn’t really been effective because it’s kind of been like finally getting off the jelly donut diet, and it’s actually making the economy probably healthier and stronger.”

The Fed started to let assets on the balance sheet roll off but, it didn’t last long.

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

Now that the balance sheet has started to increase, it’s only a matter of time before the Fed cuts rates, even in the face of persistent inflation.

California homebuyers making up to $211,000 annually will be able to receive a 20% down payment, and all closing costs, at a 0% interest rate.

While the state has long-offered homebuyer assistance through the state’s Housing Finance Agency (Cal HFA), a new program, the California Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan program will give the state a proportionate interest in the property they’re helping with, according to KPBS.

“It’s available to low- and moderate-income. So the upper income limit is $211,000,” said Ellen Martin, president of the Cal HFA.

According to Scott Evans, EVP of Cross Country Mortgage, “The state of California can give up to 20% for a down payment and closing costs. It’s a 0% interest rate. The payments are deferred for the entire life of the loan,” adding “When you sell the property or refinance the loan, they take up to 20% of the appreciation. The homeowner gets to keep 80%.”

According to Evans, another consideration are tax breaks which become available to homeowners, which can be ‘significant enough to help offset the cost of mortgage payments’ (and which of course assumes the homeowner makes enough to pay taxes in the first place).

In theory, when someone sells a home financed with the HFA’s assistance, any profits made by the state will go back into the program, which will in turn fund new 0% loans.

That said, it’s not an unlimited offer – as there is only $300 million available right now. With thousands of Californians anticipated to apply, it may not last long.

All hell broke out on Sunday night in Baltimore City’s Inner Harbor district when gunshots were heard, causing hundreds of spring break youngsters to scatter through the streets. The mayhem, captured on video, resembled an apocalyptic scene. As a result, Mayor Brandon Scott has proposed a citywide curfew for minors during the upcoming summer months.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said more than 200 “young people” went running after gunfire rang out just 50 feet from police officers, according to Fox Baltimore. A 14yo and a 16yo suffered gunshot wounds.

I’m reporting live on @wbalradio this morning from the #InnerHarbor, with @C4WBAL & @BryanNehman, after an #Easter night shooting here that saw a 14 yr old boy & a 16 yr old shot while @BaltimorePolice were breaking up a “big fight” in a crowd of upwards of 200 young people pic.twitter.com/kq2WEyptGH

— Scott Wykoff (@ScottWykoffWBAL) April 10, 2023

Here’s the video of the chaos:

Just a late night run at the great Baltimore City’s #InnerHarbor #SpringBreak vibes #SpringBreak2023 #Baltimore #Maryland #น้องวินอยากเป็นพี่วิน #TAEHYUNGxCELINE #SuccessionHBO #Succession #ChaguoSmartNaAirtel #Maryland #Taiwan #TikTok #SummerMMFF2023 #INVASION #Russia… pic.twitter.com/X36btbT65g

— Daniel Barahona (@GlobalSETT) April 10, 2023

“Either they [the kids] don’t care about consequences or don’t believe the consequences, and they have no respect for human life or the sanctity of life or authority to pull off that brazen cowardly act right there in the presence of police officers,” said Harrison.

Mayor Scott said youth curfews would be implemented for the summer period. 

“I want everyone to hear me and hear me very clearly. We are going back to the old days. We will be enforcing the use of youth curfew in Baltimore as we move into the later Spring and Summer months,” the mayor said. 

None of this should come as a surprise… 

Over fifty years of Democratic leadership has steered this struggling city into a hellhole of murders, broken families, collapsing education system, and an ever-worsening opioid crisis.

… and, of course, the Biden administration remains silent on Baltimore’s rapid demise.