President Joe Biden on Sunday said he plans on running for a second term in 2024, but isn’t ready to make a formal announcement.

During the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Sunday, Biden told the TODAY Show’s Al Roker: “I plan on at least three or four more Easter Egg Rolls. Maybe five? Maybe six?” adding “I’ll either be rolling an egg or being the guy who’s pushing them out.”

He then told Roker, “I plan on running, Al. We’re just not prepared to announce it yet.”

Biden confirms he intends to run in 2024

Biden: “Well, I’ll either, I’ll eith—I’ll either be rolling egg or, uh, being the, the gu—you know, the guy who’s pushing them out…I plan on running Al, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet.” pic.twitter.com/oUaM6bFOV1

— The Conservative Read🇺🇸 (@theconread) April 10, 2023

Speculation over Biden’s 2024 plans began in earnest in late December, after the president traveled to the US Virgin Islands for New Year’s, after which he began what appeared to be an early campaign to tout Democrats’ $1 trillion Infrastructure package and Job Act that were signed into law in November. 

Biden, who’s already the oldest president in US history at 80, would be 86 at the end of his second term.

Even after classified documents from his time as Vice President were discovered at his Delaware homes earlier this year following the classified materials that were found at the Washington-based Penn-Biden Center in November, Biden has continued to drop hints that he would run again.

Following a meeting with Senate Democrats in early March, Biden was asked by reporters about his 2024 plans. He responded that he would announce his campaign “when I announce it.”

In early March, The Washington Post reported that the president is enlisting a team of high-profile Democratic figures who could emerge as rivals to travel across the country and promote his accomplishments during his first term. –Epoch Times

Helping the Biden effort is a hand-picked team of at least 20 notable Democratic public officials, including Democratic Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gavin Newsom of California, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) as well as U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) are also part of the effort, the Epoch Times continues.

Biden is now traveling the country on a so-called “Investing in America” tour to highlight the infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The Fed has conducted a “pilot climate scenario analysis exercise”. Let’s take a peek inside this laughable event…

On January 10, Fed Chairman said the Fed ‘will not be a climate policymaker’. 

Under guise that it’s just a stress test model and not a policy setting model, the Fed announced details on its Pilot Climate Scenario Risk Analysis Program on January 17.

As described in the instruction document released today, the six largest U.S. banks will analyze the impact of scenarios for both physical and transition risks related to climate change on specific assets in their portfolios. To support the exercise’s goals of deepening understanding of climate risk-management practices and building capacity to identify, measure, monitor, and manage climate-related financial risks, the Board will gather qualitative and quantitative information over the course of the pilot, including details on governance and risk management practices, measurement methodologies, risk metrics, data challenges, and lessons learned.

“The Fed has narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks – to ensure that banks understand and manage their material risks, including the financial risks from climate change,” Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr said. “The exercise we are launching today will advance the ability of supervisors and banks to analyze and manage emerging climate-related financial risks.”

Climate Results Are In

Please consider the WSJ report The Fed’s Climate Studies Are Full of Hot Air by David Barker.

This year the Fed is forcing big banks to produce complex reports on their climate vulnerability in a “pilot project” that is sure to expand and might lead to lending restrictions. A query of the Fed’s listing of recent publications returns hundreds of research papers, press releases and policy statements related to climate change.

With all this effort, one might hope the Fed would produce high-quality research on climate change. But I took a close look at two Fed studies on the subject and found shockingly poor analysis. These studies on the effect of temperature on U.S. and world economic growth are cited without a hint of skepticism and widely lavished with media attention. 

Recently I published a critique of a study from the Federal Reserve Board claiming that a year of above-normal temperatures in countries around the world makes economic contraction more likely. The original study used sophisticated statistical techniques but failed to report that its primary finding was statistically insignificant. My request to the study’s author for computer code to reproduce the paper’s results went unanswered.

I managed to write the code from scratch and exactly replicate the results, allowing me to run additional tests that the author didn’t report. The author’s primary result—that temperature has a bigger effect in bad than in good economic times—turned out to be statistically insignificant. Additional analysis showed that there is no reliable effect of temperature on growth at all.

There are two main reasons why the Fed study appeared at first to show a statistically significant effect of temperatures on economic growth. First, each country in the sample had equal weight in the analysis. China had the same weight as St. Vincent though China’s population is 13,000 times as large. Equal weighting means that some small countries with unusual histories of economic growth greatly influenced the results.

The paper’s results disappeared when countries like Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea—which had economic catastrophes and bonanzas unrelated to climate change—were omitted. Omitting similar countries representing less than 1% of world gross domestic product was enough to eliminate the paper’s result. 

The only thing to learn from the Fed’s research is that climate propaganda is spreading fast, and when it comes to climate, academic economists are no more deserving of trust than are other supposed scientists and experts. The Fed’s time would be better spent on more urgent matters, like improving its botched regulation of the banking system.

The author, David Barker, has taught economics and finance at the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa and worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Hoot of the Day

The Fed cannot even model US Treasuries. Its stress-free test would have failed to identify the imploded Silicon Valley Bank as a problem

Yet, for political reasons, the Fed is now attempting to stress test the weather.

To get the desired results, the Fed study gave St. Vincent the same weight as China. 

I suggest the Fed should throw this nonsense in the garbage and stress test commercial real estate, interest rates, accelerated QT, and things that it has clearly neglected. 

For further discussion, please see The Next Bank Crisis Is Coming Right Up, Commercial Real Estate Implosion

*  *  *

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A new rocket attack has reportedly taken place against an American military base at the Conoco gas fields in eastern Syria, near the city of Deir ez-Zor on Monday.

US occupation forces have been coming under increased pressure and sporadic attacks from likely Iran-backed militant groups. It’s also possible that forces linked to the Syrian government are seeking to force the Pentagon out of sovereign Syria territory.

Few details were issued in the immediate aftermath, but the fresh attack comes after the biggest flare-up in tit-for-tat attacks between “Iran-backed” fighters and the US which took place at the end of March. 

Those March rocket attacks left one US contractor dead and at least six injured with that defense officials described as “traumatic brain injuries” which resulted from the blasts.

⚡️#BREAKING A missile attack targets the American base in the Koniko gas field, east of Deir Ezzor.

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) April 10, 2023

It seems that ever since China brokered a restoration of ties deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the rocket and drone assaults on US positions have intensified. 

For years US forces have occupied the major oil and gas installations in Syria’s east, as part of broader Washington efforts to choke the Assad government into submission. Syria and Iran have remained defiant, however, and could be seeking to impose enough of a cost on US forces so as to pressure Washington and the American public to desire a pull-out from the region.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

A lot of people seem shocked that the fabric of our society is steadily unraveling all around us, but the truth is that this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.  What we are witnessing is simply the law of cause and effect in action.  We have discarded the values that this nation was founded upon, and we have replaced them with new “values” that are diametrically opposed to the old values.  So now we live in a hellhole of our own making.  Just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is exploding in our society, and crime rates have been rapidly rising all over the nation.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.  Earlier this week, CashApp founder Bob Lee was brutally stabbed to death as he walked through one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods…

Father-of-two Lee, 43, was knifed multiple times in the chest early Tuesday as he strolled through the progressive city’s well-heeled Rincon Hill neighborhood while on a business trip.

He probably assumed that it was still okay to walk through the “safe” parts of San Francisco late at night.

Unfortunately, the entire city is now teeming with predators, and so far in 2023 violent crime is even more of a problem than it was last year…

Since the pandemic, crime has spiraled in the Golden City. Homicides are up 20 percent in the last year, robbery has climbed 14 percent, arson is up 6 percent and assault ticked up by 2 percent.

At this point, nobody can deny the truth.

San Francisco is one of the most prosperous cities in the entire country, but even though the city is swimming in mountains of cash violent crime is completely out of control.

In fact, Twitter CEO Elon Musk says that he personally knows “many people” that have “been severely assaulted”…

Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was among a host of tech leaders hitting out at the lawlessness in the wake of Lee’s slaying, writing on Twitter: ‘Many people I know have been severely assaulted.

‘Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.’

I have no idea why so many politicians believe that putting violent criminals back into the streets is a good idea.

In Los Angeles, an incredibly foolish plan to “decarcerate” L.A. jails is currently being considered…

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering a plan to “decarcerate” jails by citing and releasing anyone with bail at $50,000 or less, city documents show.

An agenda item has been added to the board’s Tuesday meeting titled “Los Angeles County to Take Actionable Next Steps to Depopulate and Decarcerate the Los Angeles County Jails,” Fox News has learned

The measure was introduced by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis, both Democrats, and only has one public comment attached to it.

What do you think this plan would do to violent crime rates in Los Angeles?

The answer is obvious.

Every decision has consequences, and our society has become a nightmare because of countless decisions that we have collectively made over the decades.

Right now, law and order is breaking down all over the country, and criminals are becoming more brazen than they have ever been before.  For instance, just check out what a team of burglars just pulled off in the Seattle area…

Burglars who got away with more than 400 electronics from the Apple retailer at Alderwood Mall made their entry point by cutting through the bathroom wall of the neighboring espresso machine store, the Lynnwood Police Department (LPD) confirmed.

The owner of the neighboring business says he’s grateful no one was hurt because the $500,000 theft happened while the store was closed.

Needless to say, crime has become a massive problem on the east coast as well.

In the Big Apple, auto theft was “up a stunning 32% last year”…

Car theft spiked during the pandemic and hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, the report says. Grand larceny of vehicles in New York was up a stunning 32% last year, more than any other felony. According to Sewell, most thefts are taking place in the Bronx and northern Manhattan.

Wasn’t Eric Adams elected to get crime under control?

Obviously it isn’t working so far.

But of course this crisis is not going to be solved by kicking out one group of corrupt politicians and bringing in another group of corrupt politicians to replace them.

Sadly, our problems go much deeper than that.

The truth is that millions upon millions of young Americans have a completely twisted view of reality at this point.  Most of them spend multiple hours every single day on their phones, on their computers or watching television.  Virtually all of the “programming” that they are consuming has been training them to view the world a certain way, and often that has extremely tragic results.

Just days after the horrific mass shooting that we witnessed in Nashville, another young person was planning “to attack three schools and churches in Colorado”…

A transgender teen is in custody after authorities say they recovered a manifesto detailing her plan to attack three schools and churches in Colorado just four days after Audrey Hale murdered six people at the Covenant School in Nashville.

William Whitworth, 19, who goes by the name Lilly and is referred to with female pronouns in arrest documents, was arrested on March 31.

We should be thankful that the police were able to intervene in time.

But overall, during the first three months of this year violent attacks on churches in the United States were up 288 percent compared to the same three months in 2022…

In all, assailants attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, compared with 24 such acts during the same period last year, a 288% increase. The rising tempo of anti-Christian assaults—which includes arsons, bomb threats, vandalism, and sacrilege—has affected places of worship in 29 states.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

As the “values” of our society continue to be transformed, more chaos is inevitable.

And the biggest killers are not the violent predators that are roaming our streets.

As I will detail in a bombshell article that I will post later today for my paid subscribers on Substack, the biggest killers of all are those that roam the halls of power all over this nation.

From the very top to the very bottom, our entire society has become infused with great evil.

Let us hope that America chooses to reverse course soon, because if we stay on the path that we are currently on things will not end well for us.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

As Goldman consumer discretionary trader Scott Feiler writes over the weekend, all year, a consumer spending slowdown has been a theory (if one which became far louder in the last week of March when we showed a sharp drop in the post-bank crisis consumer spending). Feiler lists that among the rising headwinds on the horizon listed have been

i) reduced SNAP benefits (end of February),

ii) lower tax refunds by double-digits y/y (mainly a March impact),

iii) revolving credit up to all-time highs, and

iv) unseasonably cool weather in March impacting home, outdoor and apparel.

Additional recent concerns have been the jobs angle (finally slowing) and the end of the student debt moratorium in June. Until very recently, these were only listed headwinds, with no notable slowdown to speak of. But, as the Goldman trader warns, “the slowdown moved from theory to reality the last 2 weeks, with the Costco update Thursday night which feels like a big focus, given they were the first major bellwether to call it out”, and then others quickly joined:

• COST: Provided an update on March sales Thursday night. They said total March comps in the US were +0.9% This was about 200 bps below consensus and their weakest comp in over 6 years. The weakness is being led by discretionary, with their non-food sales down mid to high-singles vs down MSD in February and, down LSD in January and slightly positive in December.

• LEVI: Shares were down 16% on Thursday after they spoke to increased promotions needed to clear excess inventories (gross margins missed by 100 bps). They also spoke to a slower wholesale environment in the US. They said they expect the US and Europe wholesale environment to remain constrained as retailer partners cautiously plan open-to-buy budgets. As a result, the company guided to a LSD-MSD decline in FY23 global wholesale revenues vs. flattish prior.

• On March 29th, RH guided 1Q sales to be down ~25% y/y, a 1000 bps slowdown vs 4Q.

• On March 21st, CTRN guided 1Q sales 1000 bps below consensus.

• Throughout the 2H of March, there were multiple spending trackers highlighted from the big banks pointing to much slower growth rates in March.

It wasn’t all bad news:

• WMT: Sounded very constructive at their analyst day this week, as they reaffirmed 1Q and FY, while heavily leaned into the idea that operating income could grow above their outlook on the go-forward.  One specific data point tossed around a lot this week (between COST slowdown vs WMT strength) was that WMT has just ~6% exposure to California vs COST at ~16%.

• Weather flip? Many hedge fund investors are taking the other side of the cautious retail trade as we move into April, whereas LO’s and concentrated HF’s have not. The argument from many is that weather played a significant impact on the March slowdown.   Our personal view on the desk is that while this may be a temporary trade, longer-term investors became more focused on the softening jobs picture this week, so will not underwrite a temporary bump from weather trade.

According to Goldman, the next catalyst to keep an eye on – at least until Friday’s retail sales update – KMX is the only major consumer company to report this week and Goldman thinks expectations are for them to miss comp sales by about 500 bps and speak to a slow start to 1Q.
 
Finally, Feiler asks rhetorically “what are we seeing, who will be impacted” and answers “We have seen a very defensive playbook in consumer, with names like dollar-stores (DG/DLTR) and discounters/staples (WMT, PG) outperforming, vs a reduction in discretionary plays.”

The silver lining in all this is that as the Goldman Prime Brokerage chart below show, positioning already largely reflects the consumer slowdown, with Discretionary positioning bumping along lows, vs Staples significantly net bought recently.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the Hill on the Tennessee controversy over the expulsion of two Tennessee legislators. Liberal members and pundits have lionized the two legislators who shutdown the proceedings while declaring the GOP “fascists.”

The controversy perfectly captured our increasingly amplified age of rage.

Here is the column:

Nobel Laureate Albert Camus once said, “Insurrection is certainly not the sum total of human experience but … it is our historic reality.” Those words came to mind this week when Tennessee’s House of Representatives expelled two members accused of disrupting legislative proceedings in what some called an “insurrection” or a “mutiny.”

The scene on the floor of the Tennessee House perfectly captured our “age of rage.” Protesters filled the capitol building to protest the failure to pass gun-control legislation. However, they were in the minority in both the state and its legislature. Three Democratic state representatives — Justin Jones from Nashville, Justin Pearson from Memphis, and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville — were unwilling to yield to the majority. They disrupted the floor proceedings with a bullhorn and screaming at their colleagues.

It is a scene familiar to many of us in academia, where events are regularly canceled by those who shout down others. The three members yelled “No action, no peace” and “Power to the people” as their colleagues objected to their stopping the legislative process. Undeterred, the three refused to allow “business as usual” to continue.

Nothing says deliberative debate like a bullhorn. American politics, it seems, has become a matter of simple amplification.

Many on the left lionized the three for their disruption of the legislature. President Biden denounced the sanctioning of their “peaceful protest” as “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”

There was little criticism of the members for obstructing the legislative business or refusing to accept the democratic process that rejected their gun-control demands.

Today, for many, there is no room for nuance. Instead, they live in a world occupied only by “fascists” and “insurrectionists.”

I have long been critical of the media declaring the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill as an “insurrection” in spite of my criticism of Trump’s speech on that day and the riot that desecrated our constitutional process. Many in the public agree. Despite the efforts of the House’s Jan. 6 committee and the media referring to the riot as an insurrection, some polls show that 76 percent of the public view it as a protest that went too far. Likewise, a Harvard study showed more citizens viewed Jan. 6 as motivated by loyalty to Trump than a desire for a national insurrection.

The public sees these distinctions. Most of us are supportive of the prosecution of rioters while recognizing that most of the protesters that day did not participate in any violation of law. Likewise, most citizens are able to denounce members for taking a bullhorn to a legislative debate while rejecting calls for their expulsion.

What these Tennessee House members did was wrong — but it was no insurrection. Nor was it worthy of expulsion, as opposed to censure or other sanctions.

Yet, every controversy is now repackaged to amplify talking points, even when they cannot withstand the most cursory examination.

Take Rep. Johnson’s insistence that, as the only white member of the three, she was spared expulsion due to racism. That ignored distinctions raised by Johnson and her supporters during the debate that, unlike Jones and Pearson, she did not use a bullhorn; her counsel also insisted that she separated herself from the protesters. Johnson’s distinctions swayed one member to defeat expulsion, but Johnson then declared the result was evidence of sexism and racism: “pretty clear I’m a 60-year-old white woman, and they are two young Black men. I was talked down to as a woman, man-splained to.”

The media was also captured perfectly in this controversy. For example, it was difficult to distinguish between CNN reporter Sara Sidner and protesters. Sidner corrected Republican Caucus Chair Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) as he tried to explain why the members were expelled for “riling up” the crowd. Sidner insisted that the crowd already was “riled up” by the failure to protect them from guns. She then explained that the public was “extremely upset that your legislature wasn’t trying to deal with the issue of keeping children safe.”

House Minority Leader Karen Camper (D-Memphis) praised the protest as “good trouble,” a reference to the words of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ guiding principle on civil disobedience.

This is now our “historic reality.” Liberals and the media, long criticized for downplaying violence from the left, are now rationalizing a disruption of legislative procedure as “good trouble” because the cause is considered to be correct. Conservatives are equally quick to declare protests by those on the left to be “insurrections,” or to declare their opponents to be (in the words of Donald Trump) “enemies of the state.”

Only a few days before the Tennessee House floor fight, a confrontation occurred off the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington which captured perfectly this new political reality.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) was shown on videotape screaming about gun control in the Capitol as his colleagues left the floor following a vote. Various Democratic members, including former House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), tried to calm Bowman. However, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked Bowman to stop yelling, Bowman shouted back: “I was screaming before you interrupted me” — which could go down as the epitaph for our age.

This feels very stagflationary.

As the labor market starts to finally crack (the most lagged economic signal), and consumer credit growth slows (at their limits), The Fed has a problem as, according to the New York Fed’s March Survey of Consumer Expectations, inflation expectations are on the rise once again, especially the short-term.

Median inflation expectations increased by 0.5 percentage point at the one-year-ahead timeframe to 4.7%, the first increase in the series since October 2022. Median inflation expectations for the three-year-ahead horizon edged up 0.1 pp to 2.8%.

Source: Bloomberg

The oldest cohorts among the respondents were the ones expecting the highest inflation ahead…

Perhaps even more notably, the share of households reporting that it’s harder to get credit than a year ago rose, reaching a series high.

Additionally, The NY Fed said they were also more pessimistic about future credit availability, which makes sense given that real estate loan growth is collapsing.

Finally, expect delinquencies to rise as a larger percentage of consumers, 10.87% vs 10.63% in prior month, expect to not be able to make minimum debt payment over the next three months.

Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

American consumers continued to pile on debt in February, but the pace of borrowing slowed significantly, another sign the economy could be heading toward a recession.

Overall, consumer debt grew by $15.3 billion in February, a 3.8% annual increase, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. That compares with an upwardly revised 19.5 billion increase in January.

Americans now owe a record $4.82 trillion in consumer debt.

The Federal Reserve consumer debt figures include credit card debt, student loans, and auto loans, but do not factor in mortgage debt. When you include mortgages, US households are buried under more than $16.9 trillion in debt. Household debt charted the biggest increase in two decades in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Credit card debt grew at a much slower pace in February, in line with the drop in retail sales. Lower fuel and energy prices gave consumers some relief, even as price inflation remains elevated.  As Forbes reported in February, retail sales that month told a “story of consumers leaning into value and curtailed spending.” The borrowing data confirms this.

Revolving debt, primarily reflecting credit card borrowing increased by $5 billion in February, a 3.8% increase. In absolute terms, it was the smallest increase in revolving credit since April 2021. But credit card borrowing still remains slightly higher than the prepandemic average even with higher interest rates as Americans continue to cope with rapidly increasing prices.

To put the numbers into perspective, the annual increase in 2019, prior to the pandemic, was 3.6%. It’s pretty clear that Americans are still heavily relying on credit cards to make ends meet. Bloomberg reported, “Still, many Americans are leaning on credit cards to keep up with rising prices. A Census Bureau survey in early March showed about a third of Americans said they used credit cards or loans to meet their spending needs.”

Americans now owe a record $1.22 trillion in revolving debt.

The bigger problem is the double whammy of rising debt and rising interest rates.

Average credit card interest rates eclipsed the record high of 17.87% months ago. The average annual percentage rate (APR) currently stands at 20.11%.

NBC News revealed just the impact of rising interest rates on indebted consumers.

Bankrate data shows it would take 16 years for someone to pay off the current average credit card balance of $5,474 by making the minimum payments at 19.2%. At that point, they would have shelled out $7,365 in interest alone.”

Given that the CPI is still closer to last year’s high than it is to the Fed’s 2% target, the central bank still needs to raise rates higher to slay price inflation. This is going to be difficult given the amount of debt piled up not only by consumers but also governments and corporations. As economist Daniel Lacalle put it, rising interest rates are on a collision course with a wall of debt.

People are already struggling to pay the bill. According to a Moody’s Analytics analysis of Equifax data, nearly 25 million people are behind on credit card, auto loan, or personal loan payments. We haven’t seen delinquency levels like this since 2009.

The growth of non-revolving credit has cratered in the last three months. This debt includes auto loans, student loans, and borrowing for other big-ticket items.

Revolving credit grew by just $10.3 billion in February, a 3.4% increase. This was up from the meager 1.7% increase in December and the 2.2% increase in January, but it remains below the average growth of 5% in recent years.

The plunge in non-revolving credit indicates that consumers have cut back spending on big-ticket items. That could signal that the economy is slowing under the weight of high interest rates.

And now we’re seeing a similar slowdown in credit card debt.

Does this indicate Americans are getting close to the end of their ropes?

The American economy depends on consumers spending money. They relied on plastic to make ends meet as price inflation blazed through the economy. Prices are still going up, but a lot of people have to be getting close to their borrowing limit.

So, what happens when consumers max out those credit cards? How will they make ends meet? How will it impact an economy that relies on borrowing and spending to limp along? And how will the Fed slay price inflation without popping the massive debt bubble?

Mainstream pundits and policy analysts don’t seem to be asking these questions. They probably should.

The end of the biggest pandemic-fueled personal-computer boom has been ugly, and it’s still not over. 

New data via International Data Corporation‘s (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shows first quarter shipments were around 56.9 million, or about a 29% decline compared to the same quarter in 2022. 

IDC blamed continued “weak demand, excess inventory, and a worsening macroeconomic climate” as contributing factors to the drop in shipments for the quarter. 

The results also show the “era of COVID-driven demand and at least a temporary return to pre-COVID patterns,” the report said. Shipments in 1Q were more than the 59.2 million units shipped in 1Q19 and 60.6 million in 1Q18. 

“Even with heavy discounting, channels, and PC makers can expect elevated inventory to persist into the middle of the year and potentially into the third quarter,” Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in the report. 

Among the top computer makers, Apple Inc.’s computer shipments plunged by 40.5%, Lenovo Group Ltd., ASUSTek Computer Inc., and Dell Technologies Inc. recorded drops of more than 30%, and HP Inc. was down 24.2%.

The continued demise of the PC market comes as no surprise to readers. We have pointed out the bubble and shown the unfolding bust for nearly a year. We even said the bust cycle might not experience a turnaround until 2024. 

Recall that we have also outlined how graphics cards, memory chips, and monitor prices have plunged in the last two quarters. There are also great deals on networking equipment. 

Now’s the time to upgrade the home office if you didn’t buy into the Covid hype. 

Authored by Savannah Fortis via CoinTelegraph.com,

A new report reveals that two former Google employees were vocal about their concerns for society over the release of the company’s new AI chatbot.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a major talking point with the rise to prominence of AI chatbot ChatGPT from OpenAI and generative AI image makers like Midjourney and DALL-E 2. However, not everyone sees eye to eye with this emerging technology.

A new report from The New York Times (NYT) revealed that in March, two Google employees tried to stop the company from launching its own AI chatbot rivaling OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

According to the NYT report, the employees’ jobs are specifically to review Google’s AI products. The employees allegedly believed the technology generated “inaccurate and dangerous statements.”

Microsoft employees and ethicists raised similar concerns months prior, as it, too, planned the release of an AI chatbot to be integrated into its Bing browser. Concerns were voiced at Microsoft about the degradation of critical thinking, disinformation and eroding the “factual foundation of modern society.”

Nonetheless, Microsoft released its Bing-integrated chatbot in February, and one month later, Google released its “Bard” chatbot toward the end of March, both of which succeeded OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT-4 in November 2022. 

We’re expanding access to Bard in US + UK with more countries ahead, it’s an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI. Hope Bard sparks more creativity and curiosity, and will get better with feedback. Sign up: https://t.co/C1ibWrqTDr https://t.co/N8Dzx1m0fc

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) March 21, 2023

Since its release, ChatGPT has stirred up major conversations around the ethics and usage of AI chatbots and image generators.

Midjourney — an application that uses artificial intelligence to generate realistic images — discontinued its free trial to curb problematic deep fakes. Around the same time, an Australian media executive called for monetary compensation from ChatGPT and AI for the news it consumes.

Meanwhile, there are concerns for the future of society and truth in a letter penned by over 1,000 researchers and thought leaders in the tech space, including Elon Musk. The letter calls to slow the pace of development of the technology.

Global governments have been tackling the emerging technology in a similar tone, with Italian officials temporarily blocking ChatGPT in the country. United States President Joe Biden has also urged tech firms to address risks posed by AI.