While President Donald Trump is indicted and arrested related to $130,000 in alleged hush money he paid Stormy Daniels more than half a decade ago, Hunter Biden is roaming the streets of Manhattan selling his art for a cool $85,000 per piece.

A group exhibition called “Bridging the Abstract,” a show at Georges Bergès Gallery in SoHo, is displaying three pieces of Biden’s that are priced at $85,000 each, CNN reported last week. 

And despite the growing number of investigations into Biden’s conduct, led by the Republican majority House of Representatives, his gallerist and friend, Georges Bergès, has defended showing and selling his art.

“It’s been challenges unique to him that no other galleries would have with an artist, so you almost have to be passionate about this to continue … really believe in him as an artist on many, many different levels,” he told CNN. 

When asked about the hefty price tags on the pieces, Berges responded: “You could buy a politician for a lot less than that.”

Well, there you have it. Case closed, right?

CNN reports that there is a sales arrangement in place for the artwork between Berges and Biden that keeps the purchaser of the artwork anonymous to both Biden and the public. The report continued with this air tight compliance plan the gallery has put in place:

If there was any unusual behavior – such as the offer price being too high or a collector who doesn’t appear interested in the work – the gallery is expected to turn down the offer, the sources said. However, there was no clear enforcement mechanism for the standards agreed upon by the gallery and the prospective purchasers.

No specifics were given on what constitutes “unusual behavior”, or a “price being too high”. It wasn’t made clear who determines those variables and what plan is put into place for such instances.

A spokesperson for Biden told CNN: “There is no reason for Mr. Biden’s legal team to be notified of what is standard practice for galleries representing artists – selling their art. The gallery sets the pricing and handles all sales based upon the highest ethical standards of the industry.”

Last month, Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer of the House Oversight committee, requested more information: “Mr. Bergès has refused to provide any information regarding who is buying Mr. Biden’s art. He has chosen to obstruct in an apparent effort to shield Mr. Biden and/or the purchasers’ of Mr. Biden’s art from congressional oversight.”

Authored by Jean Hatchet via TheCritic.co.uk,

Dylan Mulvaney’s mimicry of women is absurd…

If a man seeks to humiliate a woman he encounters, nothing is easier than reducing her appearance to a mere caricature. Men do this directly in front of the woman they are targeting: lifting their voice to a squeak, exaggerating hand gestures, pushing out pretend breasts, wiggling their bum, pouting and fiddling with their hair. Most of these men confine the taunt to the woman in front of them, and the woman often feels and displays a righteous rage. However, when it comes to Dylan Mulvaney, the Tik Tok user who has become famous for his grotesque parody of women, women are not supposed to react critically. They are seen as cruel or “transphobic” if they express annoyance at being so grossly insulted. 

In March 2022 Dylan Mulvaney saw a way to take his barely-concealed disdain for women up a level, with predictable success. After his career as a musical actor had stalled due to the Covid pandemic, with people finding solace daily on Tik Tok, wily Dylan invented a new role that guaranteed his future wealth and success. He announced he was embarking on a journey of “being a girl” and began a series of videos documenting this ludicrous notion. 

Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks. At this point Mulvaney must have been delighted to glimpse a potential new career path. It was a very savvy move for him to extend and develop this caricature of a 1950s woman. Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships” with a number of companies including Budweiser, Kate Spade and — during the past week, to great objection — the Sportwear giant Nike. 

In an inflammatory paid partnership video with Nike, an inanely grinning, barefoot Mulvaney wears a Nike sports bra and leggings. He performs a series of ridiculous moves including comedic side stretches, a theatrical run kicking his heels up nonsensically and failed chorus-line high kicks. He almost runs backwards into a hedge at one point and pulls a comedy expression of shock. It all looks ridiculous and slapstick. It mocks women by suggesting they exercise trivially and ineffectively, but smiling throughout. 

The media seems unwilling to focus on the actual reasons many women are angry about this. It has focused instead on stating that objections to the sponsorship are because Dylan is trans. This is not why women are outraged. When a man “performs woman” in front of women to such a humiliating degree, when he waggles and jiggles and implies that weakness and silliness are inherent to being a woman who plays sport, women appropriately see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is. Ria Chapman, a London PE teacher, told me why she finds this act so irritating and offensive:

“Girls are still routinely bullied and mocked for being sporty and or breaking stereotypes, their achievements and ambitions not being celebrated and valued like those of their male peers. For a sports company the size of Nike to use a male performing a parody of what he believes women behave like during sport only adds to the ammunition that boys will use to put girls down.”

Utilising female stereotypes is the foundation of Mulvaney’s role. On his “Day 1 of being a girl” video debut, he said:

“I’ve already cried three times, written a scathing email I didn’t send, ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford and when someone asked me how I was, I said “I’m fine” but I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies?”

All of this encapsulates the stereotype of women as emotionally fragile, frivolous spendthrifts, imprudent around clothes and financially inept. In the stereotype Dylan performs, women routinely suppress our emotions and focus on being polite at all times. It is an archaic depiction of requisite female behaviour which was seared into women’s consciousness over decades in the past. This view of “girlhood” took further decades for feminist women to dismantle. Dylan Mulvaney is building it back up before our eyes and we refuse to stay quiet about it. 

In other videos Mulvaney is seen running feebly through a forest and falling down in high heels, the suggestion being that women are unstable, weak and pathetic characters frightened of flies. This barely disguised message pervades many of his videos. In another he is referring to his “boobies” as his “gal pals” and advertising the shea butter he will rub into them. He refers beneath this video to “taking care of my new girls this season”. This is all deeply offensive to women. Breasts are part of our sexed bodies, not a cute pet or an accessory like a new handbag. 

Along with these grotesque parodies of womanhood, he promotes products with zero shame, grifting whilst gurning and gaslighting women. Shortly before he began this career-saving venture of “being a girl”, Mulvaney can be found mocking a female cheerleader in a sketch where he pretends to break his leg. He has honed and perfected these earlier attempts to portray women as weak and stupid, and he deflected attention from them by declaring himself a woman. Gender identity is once again the smokescreen for misogyny, and negative criticism leads to an award-worthy performance of his being hurt and bullied. Mulvaney simply reverses the victim and offender. Women are bullies, he is the target. Many women recognise this pattern from relationships with abusive men. 

The insult for women comes not from the fact that Mulvaney is given vast sums of money or attention, but that he is given it whilst performing an insulting version of what a woman is or how she experiences the world from birth. Mulvaney has avoided the many perils of “being a girl”, because he was safely behind the shield of being a boy — and a wealthy one at that. Mulvaney has a very privileged background of successful financier male ancestors. Nothing says patriarchy more clearly than a man being offered huge sums of money by companies to pretend to be a woman, whilst actual women sit at home fretting how to feed their children during an economic crisis. A man “womanning” is feted, whilst a woman at times barely survives the experience. 

As the final part of his “365 days of girlhood”, Mulvaney undergoes very expensive facial feminisation surgery. This is suggested as the very epitome of ensuring he is seen as female. Conveniently little mention is made of the penis he retains. Shaved forehead bones might whisper and suggest “woman” more effectively, but a penis roars “man” at a deafening pitch. 

The elaborate “reveal” video is highly produced, and none of the earlier amateur style is evident. Dylan really has come a long way in a year. Whilst he is still no further towards being a woman, I don’t believe that was really the aim. On the contrary, the heights he sought were to become famous, powerful and wealthy. He has had chats with the President, and Drew Barrymore knelt at his feet and cooed adoringly. Wearing “woman” as a costume works for him in a way it works for few women for whom it is a reality. 

By contrast women having plastic surgery often do it in the knowledge that without it they would be invisible and, past a certain age, ignored and dismissed. Women don’t seek to become, but to remain women when they undertake anti-ageing procedures. Victoria Smith writes succinctly in her new book Hags:

“You are not hated because you are an older woman — for that would be wrong and regressive — but because you have failed to remain a young one.”

One of the most galling aspects of Mulvaney’s act is the passive-aggressive suggestion in some videos that women are hateful, spite-filled creatures who simply won’t allow him to be the woman he claims he is. When women objected to a potential sponsorship with Tampax, Mulvaney claimed he was the victim of women bullying him:

“It feels like high school and feels like you want me to endure the pain and trauma you had as a girl.”

In a sinister ending to this video, Mulvaney says he is “nervous for you” and suggests ominously that women will be punished in the future for their “transphobia”. It is an emotionally manipulative attempt to protect lucrative sponsorship and secure his brand from appropriate scrutiny. 

Mulvaney breezes through his videos with a permanent rictus grin. The subconscious irritation women feel at this stems from the very real experience of our female socialisation. From the time we are commanded to smile as toddlers and for the million times afterwards, women are aware that our “smile” is an expectation, a command and a danger. If we forget to smile, men who are complete strangers will remind us. If we refuse, we may regret it. If a woman stops smiling, she can be accused of having “resting bitch face”, and she has failed in her duty to please and humour men. When Mulvaney performs this forced joy apparently emanating from “being a girl”, women feel the lie through to our bones, because we have lived with the reality. 

Women aren’t any of this performed “girlhood” of Mulvaney’s. We don’t like being reduced to it.

We object when large companies pay hefty sums of money to the man treading on our heads to tell them what it’s like to be a woman. 

Dylan Mulvaney is an actor and a competent manipulator of the media. Large companies should take note that women will not be mocked by a man or the companies that support him. Learn who we are, or learn how to cope without our cash. 

Just don’t do it. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

An FBI dossier says that signs of ‘online extremism’ include terms such as “based,” “Chad” and “Stacy,” the use of which could end up putting someone on a watchlist.

Doesn’t take much these days, does it?

The glossary was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

Using terms like “looksmaxxing”, “Chad”, and “Stacy” will get you on an @FBI list for “Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism.” pic.twitter.com/VoIegyoUby

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) April 3, 2023

Words or phrases that fit the definition of “Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism” or “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism,” according to the FBI, include the following;

• Based (to mean something that is agreeable or cool and generally considered to be anti-woke), but according to the FBI a sign that someone has been converted to ‘racist ideology’.

• Red Pill (taken from the Matrix movies meaning someone uncovering hidden truths), but according to the FBI indicating someone who has adopted racist, anti-Semitic, or fascist beliefs.

• Chad (an attractive, strong male who is successful with women), but according to the FBI a “race -specific term used to describe the idealized version of a male.”

• Stacy (a confident, sexually attractive female), but according to the FBI an extremist misogynistic term used by incels.

• Looksmaxxing (defined by the FBI as the “process of self-improvement with the intent to become more attractive), which is apparently another sign of ‘extremism’, although the federal agency doesn’t explain why.

The belief “that society is corrupt, and that the believer is a victim of this corruption,” is also a sign that someone has entered a dark, dangerous rabbit hole, according to the FBI.

Given the wave of violence carried out by supporters of far-left groups such as Antifa and BLM over recent years, one would expect the FBI to have carried out a similar investigation into rhetoric used by those groups.

However, they appear to be more concerned about right-winders using naughty words to express agreement with each other.

*  *  *

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Both the content and timing of French President Emanuel Macron’s statements to the press coming off his China trip wherein he urged Europe to step aside from US-China quarrels over Taiwan is driving anger among some Western officials and pundits. As we highlighted yesterday, the statements were widely seen as very ‘China-friendly’, causing fury especially in Washington at a moment Chinese PLA jets and warships have again conducted encircling drills threatening the democratic-run island.

Macron’s articulating a concept of strategic autonomy for Europe was ‘enthusiastically endorsed’ by Xi and the CCP, who have been focusing on the notion that the West is in decline while China rises, and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will accelerate this trend. “The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” said Macron. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

Some pundits were quick to call Macron’s remarks “spineless and naive” – while others pointed out that what was articulated has always fundamentally been the French position.

One analyst who pointed out the many ways Macron’s positions will be taken as a slap in the face and distancing from core US-allied policies is Eurasia Group’s Mujtaba Rahman. The below is Rahman’s Twitter thread reacting to the fresh interview statements of Macron [emphasis ours]…

* * *

Emmanuel has angered many people (again) by urging Europe to stand aside from US-China quarrels over Taiwan. “We don’t want to get involved in bloc v bloc logic,” he said. The EU should eventually aim to become a “3rd bloc”, strategically independent of BOTH China & US. But his timing is poor. To make these remarks as Chinese military exercises encircled Taiwain – and just after his state visit to China – was a mistake. It will be interpreted as appeasement of Beijing and a green light to Chinese aggression.

The remarks were made to selected journalists on the Presidential plane. Most of the angry reactions – especially in the US – have been to the truncated (but accurate) version published by Politico. The full interview in Les Echos is more nuanced – but will doubtless still anger many people.

.@EmmanuelMacron has angered many people (again) by urging Europe to stand aside from US-China quarrels over Taiwan. “We don’t want to get involved in bloc v bloc logic,” he said. The EU should eventually aim to become a “3rd bloc”, strategically independent of BOTH China & US 1/

— Mujtaba Rahman (@Mij_Europe) April 10, 2023

Macron presents his three day state visit to China as part of a long game in which Europe – if it wishes to retain its prosperity and independence – must assert its strategic and economic independence from BOTH China and the US. He claims that he has won the “ideological battle” for this idea – “European strategic autonomy – which was mocked when he first floated it six years’ ago. (Has he won? In some respects maybe. Not all).

He says that Europe will always have many values in common with the US but cannot rely on Washington to preserve Europe’s long-term interests. The top US priority is the US. The number 2 US priority is China. If EU countries follow the US on all things, they will become “vassals”, Macron said.  “We don’t want to be drawn into a bloc v bloc logic…We must instead ‘de-risk’ our model by not depending on others while preserving where possible a considerable unity in our values.”

On Taiwan… Macron said Europeans should avoid being “followers” and fall in with an American “rhythm and a Chinese over-reaction”. “The risk is that this strategy is self-fulfilling …We Europeans should wake up. It’s not our priority to adapt to other people’s agendas…”

“If the (US and Chinese) confrontation accelerates, we will not have the time or means to develop our strategic autonomy  and we will become vassals instead of the third pole (of global power) that we could become in a few years.”

On China, Russia and Ukraine… Macron rejected suggestions that his six hours of talks with President Xi had made no progress. “The Chinese think, as we do, that we are in a military phase, not a time for negotiations,” he said. “But we were able to consolidate common approaches… on respect for the UN charter and on use of nuclear weapons… on desire for a negotiated and lasting peace. I believe our dialogue tempered the suggestions you hear that there is Chinese indulgence towards Russia.”

In the video Macron says: “I feel at ease with [Xi], including on substance. There’s a mutual attraction between France and China, a fascination, a friendship, a singular journey.

We need to work to avoid any escalation and at the same time preserve and reinvent an… https://t.co/FS7g0HB2Y0

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) April 10, 2023

At several places, Macron appears to equate US & Chinese threats to future EU independence. He especially emphasized the dangers to EU of the IRA (inflation reduction act) & “extra-territoriality of the dollar” – US attempts to enforce financial laws outside its territory. Asked if Joe Biden is a politer version of Donald Trump, Macron praised Biden’s attachments to democracy, diplomacy and Europe. But he said Biden was enmeshed in the “bi-partisan logic which puts America as the number 1 priority, China as No 2 and the rest as less important.”

Macron’s interview is being interpreted as a parting gift to Xi – another doomed attempt (after Putin) to sweet-talk an autocrat. He may also have hoped that “doing a De Gaulle or a Chirac” would improve his popularity in France – although the arguments are all ones that he has made before. More likely, it was just Macron being Macron, thinking ahead in an interesting way but not measuring the immediate political impact of his words.

By Dhaval Joshi of BCA Research

Executive Summary

• The world we inhabit, physiologic systems, and even the healthy functioning of markets are all founded on complexity.

• The complexity arises from the number of crucial interacting drivers that are driving the system.

• When this complexity collapses, it is warning that some of the crucial drivers are not working sympathetically.

• Therefore, the collapsed complexity of a heartbeat is a warning of cardiac risk.

• In the financial markets, the collapsed complexity of price action is an excellent predictor of market turning-points – rebounds after depression, and reversals after euphoria.

• Right now, some rebound candidates are USD/CZK, TSN and CVS.

• And some reversal candidates are Gold and GE.

The world we inhabit, physiologic systems, and even the healthy functioning of markets are all founded on complexity. So, when this complexity collapses, it is a warning of impending tail-events, heart attacks, and reversals in the markets. But what is complexity, and how do we know when it has collapsed?

Measuring Complexity, And Its Collapse

Intuitively, the complexity of any structure can be measured by the length of its shortest description. This intuition was codified as long ago as the 14th century in the principle of Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is the shortest one. Hence, if the shortest description is long, it indicates complexity. But if it is short, it indicates a lack of complexity. Consider the following three patterns of daily returns:

-4, 1, -2, 0, 5, 4, 1, 5, -2, -3, 1, 4, -1, 1, 5, 1

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, -1

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

The first pattern we cannot describe in any shorter way than writing out the string in full. The shortest description is long,  signifying complexity.

The second pattern we can describe as ‘14 1s, then 3, then -1.’ A much shorter description, signifying low complexity.

The third pattern we can describe as just ‘16 1s’. The shortest possible description, signifying no complexity.

Can we go one step further and formalize this complexity more precisely? The answer is yes. The so-called ‘fractal  structure’ or ‘fractal dimension’ of a structure or pattern is the mathematical measure of its complexity, with 1 indicating no complexity and a number higher than 1 indicating increasing complexity (Box 1).

The first pattern has a fractal dimension of 1.34, confirming its complexity. The second pattern has a fractal dimension of 1.04, confirming its low complexity. And the third pattern has the lowest possible fractal dimension of 1, confirming it has no complexity.

What do these dimensions 1.34, 1.04, and 1 represent? The answer is they measure how much extra information you see by looking at the whole pattern through a magnifying glass. In the first pattern, zooming in on the differing daily returns  provides 1.34 times more information. Thereby, it exhibits some complexity. By contrast, in the third pattern, zooming in on the 16 consecutive ‘1s’ provides no extra information. It exhibits no complexity (A fractal dimension is a scaling rule comparing how a pattern’s detail changes with the scale at which it is considered. This is what we mean by complexity).

Collapsed Complexity Predicts Heart Attacks

If all this sounds like abstract mathematics, think again. It is a matter of life or death. A collapsed complexity of your heartbeat is a warning sign of an impending heart attack. Medical researchers point out “the output of healthy physiologic systems reveals complexity, as measured by a high fractal dimension. This complexity appears to degrade with ageing and disease. Further, this collapse in complexity may be quantified, with applications for diagnosis and prognosis.”

What is the source of this complexity? The answer is that it arises from the number of distinguishable interacting drivers that are driving a system. A healthy heartbeat exhibits high complexity – a high fractal dimension – because the heartbeat is the output of many interacting parts of the heart working sympathetically. The result is complexity (Figure 1).

Unfortunately, when this complexity collapses, it is warning that some of the crucial drivers are not working sympathetically, and therefore presages cardiac risk (Figure 2).

For subjects at high risk of sudden death, fractal organization breaks down. Application of fractal analysis may provide new approaches to assessing cardiac risk and forecasting sudden cardiac death, as well as to monitoring the ageing process.

So, the best piece of advice you get from me may not be investment advice. It may be medical advice. Get a fractal analysis of your heartbeat.

Collapsed Complexity Predicts Market Reversals

Just as the output of healthy physiologic systems reveals complexity, so does the output of healthy financial markets. And just as physiologic complexity arises from the sympathetic output of interacting parts, so does financial market complexity. But what are the interacting parts in the financial markets?

The interacting parts in the financial market are the different investment time-horizons.

A healthy market exhibits high complexity – a high fractal dimension – because the price action is the output of more than one investment time-horizon working sympathetically. This creates the price action’s complexity. Hence, when complexity and the fractal dimension collapse, it is a red flag that the time-horizons are no longer working sympathetically, and therefore presages a potential price rebound or reversal.

Essentially, a fractal dimension of a price action quantifies the relative contribution of the longer-term investor versus the shorter-term investor in driving that price action. For example, the 130-day fractal dimension compares the contribution of the 130-day investment horizon relative to the 1-day investment horizon in driving the 130-day price action. The lower the fractal dimension and complexity, the lower the contribution from the longer-term investor.

It follows that when the fractal dimension has collapsed to its lower bound, the longer-term investor is no longer driving the price action. It has become a pure short-term momentum market, characterised by a complete loss of complexity.

So just as fractal organization breaks down for the heart ahead of a sudden cardiac event, fractal organization also breaks down for investments ahead of a sudden reversal.

This is because if the short-term momentum is upwards and a shorter-term investor wishes to get off the trend, there are no more shorter-term investors left to sell to. The buyer must be a longer-term investor, who will buy only at a value-based lower price, catalyzing a price reversal.

Of course, there is the alternative possibility that the longer-term investor joins the mania (or depression), continuing the momentum market. But this is both theoretically and empirically a lower likelihood outcome.

Therefore, the collapsed complexity of price action is an excellent predictor of market turning-points – rebounds after depression, and reversals after euphoria.

Using this approach, recent successes include pinpointing the sharp rebounds in USD/HUF (Chart 1) and USD/SGD (Chart 2). And pinpointing the sharp reversal in Rio Tinto after the ‘China reopening’ induced euphoria (Chart 3). In fact, the approach has generated a 77 percent success rate over the past six months and a 68 percent success rate over the past year.

A full and evolving list of current investments exhibiting collapsed complexity – and therefore vulnerable to reversal or rebound – is available on our website: BCA Research – Counterpoint.

Right now, some rebound candidates are USD/CZK, TSN and CVS (Charts 4-6).

And some reversal candidates are Gold and GE (Charts 7-8).

Out of these, our chosen structured trade is to go long USD/CZK, setting a profit-target and symmetrical stop-loss of 5 percent.

But I will finish by repeating the much more important message. Get a fractal analysis of your heartbeat. It might save your life.

By Hideyuki Sano, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

Amid all the scrutiny on the massive amount of debt the Bank of Japan owns, the new governor’s stance toward the 48 trillion yen ($364 billion) of stocks it holds is coming into focus too. Those shares, held through ETFs, have acted as an overhang in the market amid speculation that Kazuo Ueda will embark on policy normalization.

The ETFs, which had unrealized gains of 11 trillion yen in the six months to September, may stay his hand though by acting as a hedge against potential losses from bonds, says Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

Also at play is the rich dividends the holdings provide, almost quadrupling to more than 1 trillion yen through September from the same period five years earlier, according to the BOJ’s earnings reports.

Japanese stocks are hardly expensive either. The Topix index is trading at 12.7 times earnings, about one standard deviation below its average over the past 10 years. That compares with 18.3 times for the S&P 500.

“The income from ETFs has become a pillar for the BOJ, substituting paltry incomes from JGBs with low coupons,” said Sayuri Kawamura, chief economist at think tank Japan Research Institute. “But that’s possible only when stock prices are firm,” she said. “If share prices tumble, the BOJ could suffer losses.”

Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida said last month that the BOJ’s unrealized losses on bonds would reach 50 trillion yen if the 10-year yield rises to 2%, from 0.46% currently. On paper, the BOJ’s losses on JGBs amount to 875 billion yen, the latest reports show.

Japan’s inflation reached a 41-year high of 4.2% earlier this year, a particularly pertinent problem for the central bank, which owns half the country’s sovereign notes.

The BOJ’s mission isn’t to maximize its own profit though, and it isn’t the only central bank whose portfolio is suffering. But many analysts think it would want to avoid the embarrassment of gigantic losses which may undermine confidence, draw public criticism of its policy and ultimately limit the central bank’s flexibility.

“The BOJ will need to take its portfolio management more seriously to a certain degree now,” said Hiromichi Shirakawa, a former Bank of Japan official who was until recently chief Japan economist at Credit Suisse Group AG. “It makes sense for the BOJ to hold stocks.”

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The House Judiciary Committee announced on April 10 it will hold a field hearing in New York City on April 17 to discuss Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, just weeks after the unprecedented indictment and arraignment of former President Donald Trump in Bragg’s district.

The hearing is titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan.”

Bragg has come under fire, mainly from conservatives and the GOP, for what those critics say are “soft on crime” policies. The hearing, according to the committee, “will examine how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies have led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents.”

Shortly after taking office, Bragg issued a memo to his staffers stating that the district attorney’s office will not prosecute, among numerous offenses, marijuana misdemeanors, public transportation fare evasion, most trespassing violations, resisting arrest, and prostitution. Bragg also announced the downgrading of certain offenses including possession of a non-firearm weapon, both residential and commercial burglaries, and drug cases.

Republicans have pointed out the incongruence of Bragg’s leniency for these crimes versus his prosecution of Trump for allegedly falsifying business records.

Trump was arraigned on April 4 on a 34-count indictment, to which he pleaded not guilty, over his alleged role in the payment of hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. On his social media site, Truth Social, Trump has called Bragg’s prosecution a “WITCH HUNT” and said that the district attorney should “INDICT HIMSELF.”

“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” said Bragg in a statement released by his office.

“Manhattan is home to the country’s most significant business market. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” he continued. “As the statement of facts describes, the trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic and fundamental business laws.

“As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.”

Holding Bragg Accountable

A field hearing occurs when a committee holds a hearing outside of its committee room on Capitol Hill. The House Judiciary hearing is scheduled to be held at the Javits Federal Building in Manhattan.

Read more here…

Just before Bud Light became entangled in the trans-TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney controversy, the beer company’s Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid discussed in an interview 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

About a week later, likely directed by Heinerscheid and or her office, trans-TikTok influencer Mulvaney, celebrating “365 Days of Girlhood,” released a short video about promoting Bud Light. The promotion garnered tremendous backlash as “Boycott Bud Light” trended on Twitter for days. 

And perhaps she’s just implementing ‘woke’ advertising to boost Bud Light’s Corporate Equality Index — social credit score. 

If Heinerscheid learned anything from the Wharton School of Business, it appears to be how to destroy an iconic brand with woke ideology. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

We fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve…

The last few weeks, the world had been writing off the United States as either crazy or irrelevant as it watches America cannibalize itself. 

Friends tremble at our sudden decline. Enemies rejoice. Neutrals make the necessary adjustments to join the ascendant non-American side.

The symptoms of our decline abroad appear everywhere. The more Joe Biden brags about the crippling oil sanctions on Russia, friends like India and allies like Japan ignore them. And why not, when Biden has no idea how long the war in Ukraine will last, or how much wherewithal the United States can, should, or will give Kyiv, or how its on-to-Red-Square blank check will finally end?

Big Biden talks about more solar and wind farms, and green new deals won’t fill the gas tanks in Munich or heat the homes of Kyoto, or lower the price of imported oil in the United Kingdom. Claiming the Afghanistan mess was a success fools no one.

Allies ask who are our leaders.

• An impaired Joe Biden who never is quite sure where he is, what he is doing, or whom he is with?

• Kamala Harris, whose only interests appear to be demagoguing racial and social tensions with a shrinking vocabulary? 

• Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.), who was elected on the argument it was unkind not to vote for a candidate who was physically and mentally impaired?

• Energy Department kingpin Sam Brinton, the cross-dresser in lipstick, now charged with felonies for stealing women’s luggage at airport carousels?

• Pete Buttigieg, our transportation secretary, who virtue signals melodramas of the past when he is clueless how to fix crises in the present?

• Our Pentagon brass who fixate on saying the correct thing now to ensure the lucrative defense contractor billets later? 

Allies fear that after abandoning billions of dollars in weaponry in Kabul to the terrorist Taliban, and pumping billions of dollars more of arms into the Ukrainian meat grinder, and failing to increase U.S. armaments production, Washington simply does not have the resources to match China in either a looming proxy or head-to-head war.

Browse through any media account of the U.S. military, and the storyline is one of racial, gender, gay, or transgendered wokeism, or a looming manpower shortage—not a new lethal weapon, a new division of veteran soldiers, or a new program to up the level of training, physical prowess, and mental attitude among the ranks.

The men and women, whom Russia and China most fear, feel that they are unwelcome in the U.S. military and so no longer join. Those whom our enemies hope do enlist, sign up to the delight of their quota-driven, identify politics recruitment officers—and our enemies as well.

NATO member Turkey is calling for an ecumenical Islamic effort combining Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and the Arabs, Middle Easterners and all Muslims—to unite against Israel. And why not when Biden had gratuitously insulted and yet begged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf exporting states, ignored the Abraham Accords, ostracized Israel, radically cut back on U.S. energy production capability, and groveled to Iran to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal?

China now openly talks of war with the United States. Beijing claims the Taiwan Strait as its own de facto territorial waters. It partners with Russia to add to a growing alliance of Iran, and North Korea, and beckons Turkey, ostensibly a NATO ally. 

After refusing to come clean about its birthing in Wuhan of the gain-in-function, engineered COVID-19 virus that killed 1 million Americans, China is unapologetically defiant about sending a spy balloon over key classified sites throughout the continental United States—part of the continual, humiliating follow-up to its inaugural smack down of Biden’s diplomats at the Anchorage mini-summit.

Oil producers, China, hostiles like Russia and Iran, and opportunists like Turkey and India all foresee the end of the dollar as the international currency. After the American humiliation in Afghanistan, the Islamic world, particularly on the West Bank and in Syria, all see the United States as increasingly weak. 

The Biden Administration brags that it has saved NATO by pouring weapons into European Ukraine. But Europe is starving for fossil-fuel energy, about exhausted with emptying its arsenals in aid to Ukraine, and terrified that Biden is just enough a multilateralist to lead the alliance into a confrontation with Russia, but also so incompetent as to ensure either an economic depression or nuclear standoff. 

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador basks in the publicity of helping an ailing Biden mount stairs, as he brags that 40 million Mexican nationals have entered the United States—the majority of them illegally. He prods Mexican expatriates to vote for Democrats to ensure the border is wide open and a perpetual vehicle for Mexican, not U.S. interests, in ensuring billions of dollars in remittances, defusing social tensions at home, and encouraging them abroad in the United States. Do we help defend the borders of Ukraine because we cannot defend our own? Are 100,000 dead Americans due to imported fentanyl mere collateral damage from open borders? 

The more our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of defense tour the world, sound off on contemporary strategic issues, or weigh in on domestic politics, the more apprehensive our allies become, wondering how the once-vaunted U.S. Armed Forces have descended into some bizarre woke commissariat.

The international financial community is terrified of $33 trillion in aggregate U.S. debt, a record 130 percent of annual American GDP. It was aghast as the Biden Administration blundered ahead printing money to encourage labor non-participation during a supply chain crisis, inciting inflation, inviting high interest rates, and all but ensuring bank collapses.

The world abroad will tolerate no more lectures from American grandees about the evils of tribal hatred or the benefits of democracy—not when race relations in America are regressing to Balkan-like venom. Anti-democratic rogue regimes indict their former presidents; they put on trial their current political rivals; and they let criminals go free if they serve ideological ends. Now the United States does the same, driven by the Left’s paranoid and irrational hatred of Donald Trump, and its eagerness to destroy all customs and traditions to vent its antipathy to all things Trump.

Foreigners assume that downtown  Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Memphis, San Francisco, or Washington are medieval—filthy, unsafe, vacant, and malodorous. Western civilization discovered 2,500 years ago how to remove excrement from its city cores; now it has either lost or forgotten that ability along with the knowledge that crime and disease thrive amid sewage and garbage. 

The U.S. media was once the world’s gold standard. The New York Times claimed it was the paper of record. Network news was liberally slanted but often fair. Crusading independent journalists often kept government honest. But all that has now become a global laughingstock: ridiculously wrong about “Russian collusion,” predictably partisan about “Russian disinformation” and Hunter Biden’s laptop, egging on Alvin Bragg’s pathetic indictment of candidate and former president Trump, and giddy when an ex-president’s home is raided by FBI, or he is tried as a private citizen by a partisan Senate.

So as the military, political, financial, economic, and cultural status of the United States reaches a nadir, what is the reaction of a blinkered America? 

What remedies are Americans preparing, as they totter on the abyss of disasters comparable to the U.S. Civil War, Great Depression, World War II, or 1960s-style cultural madness?

Marshall Plans to balance budgets? A 600-ship navy? Two more crack army divisions? A continental missile-defense system? A restoration of the cores of American cities? Plans to secure the border? To ratchet up oil and gas production? To drop the racial and sexual tribalism and restore a meritocracy? To reform higher education? To begin charging criminals with the felonies they have committed? A cleaning of the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and IRS?

Hardly.

• Instead Americans are wondering why a local prosecutor has charged with felonies the first president in history, and currently the leading 2024 presidential candidate, for having a purported liaison 16 years prior and concluding a non-disclosure agreement supposedly to hide it.

• A man pretending to be a woman is cashing in on his media-created persona, winning million-dollar advertising contracts from woke corporations for hawking their beer and sports bras. Do these corporations believe that America’s women are so un-endowed that CEOs must hire a man without bosoms to become their national spokesperson for best accommodating cleavage he doesn’t have in a competition he doesn’t enter?

• America’s downtowns are reaching a breaking point of vacancy, vagrancy, and violence that makes life there unsustainable, while the country argues over gender pronouns. As violent crime soars, especially hate crimes, interracial crimes, and inner-city crime, a mostly black woman’s championship basketball team stages a media psychodrama of pouting and hurt feelings—as it claims it was “disrespected” by left-wing First Lady Jill Biden and will not go to the White House but prefers instead to be hosted at one of the Obamas’ three mansion estates—a duo not heretofore known for welcoming in strangers, especially of the poorer sort.

What else rises to America’s fiddling attention as the world burns up abroad?

Students in American universities, whether at Stanford Law School or San Francisco State University, shout obscenities at federal judges or seek to beat up invited speakers. Their disruptions are encouraged by their own deans’ silence or active encouragement. The common denominator in both cases is that the disrupters and attackers freely admit they violate university rules and/or the law, and yet assume their ideology and their claims on victimhood exempt them from any consequences for their atrocious conduct. And they are proven right on both counts.

All know that a few expulsions of the elite and pampered lawbreakers would restore sanity to lectures; all know that administrators either side with the culprits or fear their own careers would suffer should they enforce the rules they are charged to uphold

As transgenderism sweeps the country and wins the attention of the White House, the media do their best to hide the facts that the transgendered mass murderer in Nashville wrote a blueprint of how and why she would soon be killing 9-year-olds, that another would-be transgendered mass killer was stopped just in time in Colorado, that another transgender would-be assassin traveled to the home of Supreme Court Justice Kavanagh to murder him. 

To speak the truth that men not just in cross-dress perform sexualized dance skits for audiences that include children, but remain both exempt from legal ramifications and are in hot demand is nearly felonious. Best-selling novelist J. K. Rowling, tennis great Martina Navratilova, and All-American swimmer Riley Gaines—they all cannot go out in public alone without assuming they will be physically attacked by the “peaceful” transgendered community. Their sin? The mere suggestion that those born as biological men cannot declare themselves women and thus assume thereby they are.

So America suffers the sins of omission—squabbling over the nonessential—and commission—losing wars, going broke, ruining its economy, flirting with civil war. We know these are all self-inflicted wounds. But apparently, we believe their remedies are worse than the original maladies. And so we fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve.

The world is terrified and stunned at the result—and increasingly looking elsewhere to non-American solutions.

Bank lending is crashing (hurting small businesses and commercial real estate the most), the labor market is starting to snap (confirmed by payrolls on Friday), and inflation expectations are re-accelerating (NYFRB’s survey today)… but apart from that, everything is awesome.

Source: Bloomberg

Since payrolls print on Friday, Treasury yields are up considerably, the dollar is surging, rate-hike odds are rising, bitcoin’s up as gold falls, stocks are broadly unchanged with big-tech is underperforming small-caps.

BoJ’s Ueda sparked the early weakness in stocks (and yen) after offering no signs of budging towards a more hawkish tone…

Source: Bloomberg

Small Caps are up solidly since payrolls, but Nasdaq, S&P and Dow are basically unchanged (with Nasdaq the laggard)…

Headlines hit around 1230ET about a drop in the amount of FHLB debt issuance (which has been an inverse proxy for bank pain). Stocks rallied on that (though ironically, regional banks were not very excited – since with both loans and deposits collapsing, banks don’t need as many backstop-measures).

Here’s Bloomberg’s take: The Federal Home Loan Bank system issued $37 billion in debt in the last week of March, a sharp drop-off from the $304 billion two weeks earlier, according to a person familiar with the matter. That plunge from an all-time peak earlier in the month is an early sign that the banking crisis has started to subside.

It did help that the headline sparked a short-squeeze: ‘Most Shorted’ stocks were squeezed off an opening drop, rallied up to Wednesday’s open and then faded back fast before the FHLB surge took it to the highs. That was a 3.5% surge from low to high today for ‘most shorted’ stocks, reminding us of JPMorgan’s warning from last week…

Source: Bloomberg

…And 0DTE traders surged in with aggressive call-buying to help with the momentum…

Source: SpotGamma

Notably the early weakness took The Dow down to its 100DMA once again… and once again it found significant support…

Cyclicals outperformed Defensives on the day…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all higher on the day (up 2-3bps from Friday’s close but up significantly from overnight lows), extending Friday’s yield surge with the short-end underperforming…

Source: Bloomberg

2Y Yields jumped back above 4.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

Fed Chair Powell’s favorite yield-curve-based recession-signal continues to plumb new depths of inversion…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-hike odds extended Friday’s hawkish rise with a May 25bps now at 75%…

Source: Bloomberg

USDJPY surged above its 50- and 100-DMAs (yen weakest relative to the dollar in almost a month)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which, of course, sent the dollar index soaring

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos rallied today, led by bitcoin, with some pointing to positive comments from Hong Kong authorities on web3 (ironic given the US’ current crackdown on anything digital)…

Source: Bloomberg

That lifted Bitcoin back above $29,000 to its highest since June 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Spot Gold prices fell back below $2000 (as the dollar spiked)…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices continued to tread water with WTI trading down to $80 but still in general holding the range since OPEC+’s surprise…

Finally, Bloomberg notes that speculators timed it just about perfectly before Friday’s strong US payrolls data, adding the most to their bets against benchmark Treasuries in just over a year. Net-short leveraged fund positions in 10-year futures climbed by almost 150,000 contracts in the week to last Tuesday, the biggest bearish shift since March 2022

Source: Bloomberg

“Although US yields bounced following the jobs report, they remain below levels from the prior week, leaving room for more upward repricing,” Goldman Sachs Group analysts including Praveen Korapaty wrote in a note.

“The mix of March data thus far should solidify the case for a hike at the upcoming May FOMC meeting.”

But today’s moves basically stalled at Friday’s highs.