National security concerns over Joe Biden’s classified document scandal just got worse, as two reports have emerged which place Hunter Biden at the Bidens’ Wilmington, Delaware residence while he was raking in millions of dollars from CCP-linked business dealings.

First, Seamus Bruner  (researcher for legendary bombshell-dropper Peter Schweizer), reports via Breitbart News, that “While addicted to drugs, cavorting with prostitutes, and making deals with businessmen tied to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, Hunter Biden lived in the house where Joe Biden stored classified documents.”

While filling out a background check, Hunter made a crackhead error and listed his ‘rent’ as $49,910 – when in fact that’s the amount of the security deposit and 6 months of rent for prime office space at the prestigious House of Sweden in Washington DC. What’s most interesting, however, is that the dates Hunter listed as living at the Wilmington, DE residence – as claimed on other documents and financial statements – overlap with the period in which multiple Biden family members were taking money from foreign businessmen with connections at the highest levels of Chinese state intelligence services through energy company CEFC. As Bruner further notes, CNN described CEFC as a state-directed entity in 2018.

CEFC, and at least four of its executives and associates – Ye Jianming, Patrick Ho, Gongwen Dong and Jiaqi Bao, have been linked to the CCP and its military intelligence apparatus. In one case, Hunter described Patrick Ho as “the fucking spy chief of China.”

More via Breitbart,

By early 2017, Hunter was directly corresponding with CEFC personnel and flew to Miami in February of that year to meet with CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming. During this trip, Ye Jianming gave Hunter a 3.16 carat diamond valued at approximately $80,000..

When Hunter’s ex-wife discovered that he had obtained something of such immense value, she had her divorce attorney send an “Urgent” email seeking to determine the whereabouts of the diamond and secure the asset before Hunter could “dissipate” it. Hunter’s attorney offered a shady denial:

“There is no diamond in Hunter’s possession. I don’t know where Kathleen is getting access to this information, but on this score, what your email purports below is inaccurate.”

Metadata gleaned from photos of the diamond on the abandoned laptop indicate that Hunter lied about not having the diamond and he in fact had the diamond with him in Wilmington. The current location of the 3.16 carat diamond remains unknown

After the fateful February 2017 meeting with Ye, and around the time Hunter claimed to have moved into the Wilmington house where classified documents were found, the Bidens’ business with CEFC exploded.

Nine days after Miami meeting, Hunter received two separate wire transfers of $3 million which the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network flagged as suspicious.

We encourage you to read the rest of the Breitbart report here, as it goes into extensive detail.

Second, the Washington Free Beacon reports that photos from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop place him at the Wilmington House in July, 2017. Of note, the classified documents were reportedly brought to the house in January of that year.

The photos ‘are the most concrete evidence to date’ that Hunter – who was actively negotiating a deal with a CCP-linked Chinese energy company – had access to areas of his father’s home where classified documents were stored.

A Washington Free Beacon review of the laptop found four 2017 photographs of Hunter Biden, clad in a white collared shirt and a camouflage baseball cap, behind the wheel of his father’s 1967 Corvette Stingray. GPS metadata embedded in the photos indicate they were taken within a minute of each other at 6:49 p.m. on July 30 of that year, just outside the president’s Wilmington, Del., residence. The photos show Hunter Biden posing in the vehicle beside two young girls. One appears to be his then-12-year-old niece, Natalie Biden. The other could not be identified.

Former Secret Service agent and certified cyber forensics expert, Konstantinos Gus Dimitrelos, analyzed the photos and confirmed their authenticity.

“If requested, I will testify the photographs are genuine and were taken on July 30, 2017,” he told the Free Beacon.

And as the Beacon further reports – corroborating Breitbart‘s reporting, “At the time the photos were taken, Hunter Biden was negotiating a lucrative business deal with the now-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, which was closely tied to the Chinese government. Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski claimed to have met with Joe Biden in person in early May 2017—less than three months before Hunter Biden was pictured taking the wheel of his father’s prized vehicle—to discuss the Biden family’s Chinese business dealings.”

In total, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $6 million in legal and consulting fees in 2017 and 2018.

And of course, the same media which suggested the Trumps were Russian operatives based on a hoax – are virtually silent at actual risks to national security posed by the Biden family.

Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClear Wire,

Fed-speak, Alan Greenspan once explained, was about practicing the art of constructive ambiguity. Testifying to Congress as Fed chairman, Greenspan would resolve a sentence in a deliberately obscure way that made it incomprehensible, “but nobody was quite sure I wasn’t saying something profound when I wasn’t.” 

Speaking on Tuesday at a symposium on central bank independence in Sweden, Greenspan’s latest successor avoided ambiguity as he spoke about the Fed’s need to stick to its assigned policy goals of maximizing employment and price stability and not getting diverted to pursuing other objectives. “In a well-functioning democracy, important public policy decisions should be made, in almost all cases, by the elected branches of government,” Chair Jerome Powell declared. “It is essential that we stick to our statutory goals and authorities, and that we resist the temptation to broaden our scope to address other important social issues of the day.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, the current Fed chair noted that climate policies could have significant effects on companies, industries, regions, and nations: “Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections.” Without explicit congressional authorization, it would not be appropriate for the Fed to use monetary policy or its supervisory tools to promote a greener economy, Powell suggested. “We are not, and will not be a ‘climate policymaker.’”

But before supporters of limited government, separation of powers, and rolling back the administrative state stand up to applaud, they should remember that Powell has an indirect climate-policy tool: as part of its supervisory responsibilities, the Fed will require banks to understand and manage the financial risks of climate change. Yet at the same time, Powell would have us believe that the Fed’s supervisory decisions are “not influenced by political considerations.”

Climate “stress tests” are one of the principal tools used by the European Central Bank in furtherance of what its president Christine Lagarde openly proclaims as part of its mandate. “Our planet is burning and we central bankers could look on our mandate and pretend that it is for others to act and that we should simply be followers. I don’t think so,” Lagarde said at a June 2021 Green Swan conference of central bankers and regulators. 

For its climate stress tests, the Bank of England uses the most extreme climate scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It then takes this projection about climate at the end of this century and telescopes eighty years of extreme climate change into three decades. The result is a physical impossibility. That a central bank believes it necessary to engage in such behavior demonstrates two things: that climate change does notrepresent a genuine threat to financial stability—if it did, the Bank would have used a plausible climate scenario—and that climate stress tests are indeed a tool of climate policy. Unlike the Fed, the Bank of England does have an explicit climate policy mandate. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak expanded the Bank’s remit to support the government’s goal of achieving “balanced growth that is also environmentally sustainable and consistent with the transition to a net zero economy.” 

The Fed’s lack of a similar climate mandate proved no obstacle to Powell, however, when he spoke at the same Green Swan conference as Lagarde. The conference had been convened by the Network for the Greening of the Financial System (NGFS) to develop proposals for a more sustainable economy, financial sector, and society. “There’s a lot to like about climate stress tests,” Powell told the meeting. Not much constructive ambiguity there.

The NGFS is a club of central banks and financial regulators formed by the Banque de France in December 2017 on the second anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. Its aim is to strengthen “the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and to enhance the role of the financial system.” It also seeks “to manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development.” These objectives have no place in the Fed’s formal mandate.

Powell’s notion of an apolitical Fed tightly hewing to its congressional mandate is belied by the central bank’s decisionto join the NGFS. Even more devastating to Powell’s claim of the Fed eschewing political considerations is the timing of that move: December 15, 2020, six weeks after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. The Fed cannot have it both ways. It cannot truthfully claim that its supervisory decisions are untainted by political considerations and remain a member of the NGFS. It was a mistake for the Fed to have joined the NGFS in the first place. If Powell wants to be believed, the Fed should quit the club.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, one of the best known and longest faces of the globalist menace that steamrolled all personal rights and liberties during the period of world history known as “covid fascism” while arresting countless non conformists just so she could impose universal lockdowns and to enable the CEOs of Pfizer and Modern to become stinking rich, said she would step down by Feb. 7 after more than five years as leader because she “lacks the energy” to do the job ahead of an election later this year.

“I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also one of the more challenging,” a tearful Ardern said. “You cannot and should not do it unless you have a full tank plus a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges.”

“I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice,” the now former prime minister said. “But I absolutely believe and know there are others around me who do.”

🚨BREAKING: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has resigned.

pic.twitter.com/SH9ZP7wkdK

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 19, 2023

She added: “This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life. I am leaving because with such a privileged job comes a big responsibility.”

Opinion polls have shown Ardern’s center-left Labour Party trailing the opposition National party, although her own standing with voters was higher than other political leaders. Results of one survey released last month by 1 News Kantar showed support for Labour had fallen to 33%, from 41% around a year earlier. National topped that poll with 38%.

Translation: some huge scandal is about to emerge.

She said she is proud of what she has accomplished during her time as leader, citing progress on responding to climate change, addressing child poverty, easing access to education, improving worker conditions and dealing with issues of national identity

Labour lawmakers will elect a new leader of the party — and the country — in three days’ time, Ardern said.

Ardern said she had informed party members of her decision earlier in the day. She said would remain a member of Parliament for her electorate in the city of Auckland until April, in order to avoid the need for a by-election.

Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Public,

For the last week and a half, defenders of President Joe Biden have said that the way he allegedly mishandled classified documents was not as dangerous, illegal, or inappropriate as the way former President Donald Trump allegedly mishandled classified documents.

But we now know that Hunter Biden was taking millions of dollars from businessmen tied to Chinese military intelligence while living at the home of his father, President Joe Biden, where classified documents, including ones relating to foreign nations, were recently found.

We additionally know that Hunter Biden was in the grip of a debilitating addiction to cocaine and alcohol and that he experienced frequent blackouts and loss of memory.

There is no evidence that Hunter Biden, willingly or unwillingly, sober or intoxicated, took classified documents from his father’s residence in Delaware and gave them to his client, a Chinese businessman named Patrick Ho.

“There’s no evidence that Hunter Biden accessed the documents, but — God-forbid — the opportunity existed for him to do so,” said investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer, who has tracked the Biden family’s business ties to the Chinese government, including military intelligence, over the last five years.

During the time that Hunter lived in his father’s residence, between 2017 and 2018, Hunter and the entities he and his uncle, James Biden, President Biden’s brother, controlled received at least $4.8 million from a Chinese energy conglomerate called CEFC, which is tied to the Chinese military. Hunter Biden received an additional $1 million from Patrick Ho, a CEFC official.

“After Ho is arrested in late 2017, the first phone call he makes is to James Biden, the president’s brother, because he’s looking for Hunter,” said Schweitzer.

Why is that? What was going on between the Bidens and the Chinese government, exactly? And what does it all mean?

…

Hunter’s former client Patrick Ho is a criminal convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. Ho was sentenced for his role in a multimillion-dollar effort to bribe leaders from Chad and Uganda. That appears to be what Ho was attempting to do with Hunter: bribe him in order to buy protection from his powerful father. A CEFC intermediary reached out to Hunter Biden in December 2015 to set up a meeting between Hunter and Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of CEFC, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive. Hunter Biden at one point said he was working for Ye. Hunter, in a voicemail found on his laptop, tells a colleague,  “I’m representing the f**king spy chief of China.”

…

What does it all mean? The evidence strongly suggests that the Chinese government was seeking to bribe the Biden family to gain advantages both in terms of energy and also to protect its sources.

…

Subscribers to Public can read the rest here…

In 2012, the United States dominated China in the field of AI research.

Of the 25,000 or so papers published that year, the US led with 629 of the most-cited (top 10%) of citations by other papers. China was in second place at 425.

In 2021, China produced approximately 43,000 of the 135,000 research papers on AI  – roughly twice as many as the United states. The same year, China accounted for 7,401 of the most-cited papers, beating the American tally by around 70%, according to a study by Japan’s Nikkei in conjunction with Dutch scientific publisher Elsevier.

The study, which used AI-associated keywords to scan for academic and conference papers focusing on AI, found that Chinese companies Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei Technologies are among the top 10 companies producing AI research. Baidu, China’s leading search engine, came in 11th in both the quantity and quality of AI research.

What’s more, China will likely keep up the momentum, as a 2017 government plan set a goal to become the world’s primary AI innovation center by 2030.

The government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s top scientific institution, possesses vast research capabilities. Tsinghua University, a public research university in Beijing, is also an AI hot spot.

The need to accelerate research, development and application of cutting-edge technologies, including AI, was stressed in 2023 economic priorities outlined at this December’s closely watched Central Economic Work Conference, where President Xi Jinping spoke.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said last Wednesday that growing AI and other emerging industries is a key priority for 2023. –Nikkei

US tech giants have traditionally dominated the field of AI – with Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and IBM constituting the largest three producers over the 10-year period the study noted. In 2021, six US companies were in the top-10 for most-cited research, while the remaining four were Chinese firms, Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei and State Grid Corp.

Interestingly – government-owned operator State Grid is considered one of the best AI research institutions among Chinese corporations, because “the big data collected from hundreds of millions of smart meters.” The company is attempting to create the ability to predict power demand and identify problems throughout the electrical grid.

Japan, meanwhile, has fallen behind in AI research – dropping from 6th place in 2019 to 18th in 2021.

That said, META is building the world’s largest AI supercomputer in conjunction with NVIDIA, which could train models with more than a trillion parameters. For comparison, AI research tool ChatGPT has 175 billion parameters.

Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) rejected President Joe Biden’s demand that Congress increase the nation’s debt ceiling without attaching any conditions such as the spending cuts that virtually all congressional Republicans are demanding.

In an informal news conference with reporters just outside the Capitol, McCarthy said “we’re six months away, approximately, and what I would like to do is sit down with all the leaders, especially the President, and start having the discussion.”

The Speaker said Biden’s refusal to discuss anything other than a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling, which limits federal borrowing, is “a sign of arrogance that he would say he wouldn’t even discuss it. I mean think about what the Democrats have done just in four years, they’ve increased discretionary spending by 30 percent. When Republicans were in control for eight years, discretionary spending didn’t go up one dollar.”

Noting the national debt is nearly $32 trillion, McCarthy asked “why would you do this to any future generation in anything we do? Why wouldn’t you sit down and talk, especially with something as serious as a debt limit; why would you want to wait until the end? Who wants to put the nation through some type of threat at the last minute with the debt ceiling? Nobody wants to do that.”

McCarthy added that “any household that was mis-spending, the first thing they would do is sit down and set a budget. Why wouldn’t we request the House and Senate to do a budget … why wouldn’t we now set a budget, set a path that will get us to a balanced budget? And let’s start paying this debt off and make sure future generations have as many opportunities as we do.”

Medicare, Social Security and the military would not be subject to spending cuts, according to McCarthy, who said Biden’s demand for a debt ceiling increase without strings is “off the table.”

Biden Responds to Demand for Cuts

McCarthy’s comment follows Biden’s Jan. 16 remark describing Republican demands that the debt ceiling increase be combined with significant cuts in federal spending as “fiscally demented.” The interest costs of servicing the national debt are in excess of $500 billion annually.

Congress approved and Biden signed into law a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in late December that keeps the government funded through September. The immediate problem is that federal borrowing to pay for the omnibus bill technically will hit the debt ceiling Jan. 19, according to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

As a practical matter, the Treasury department has ways of avoiding a default on the debt interest payments that would give Biden and the Congress several months in which to work out a deal involving a boost in the ceiling combined with some level of specific spending cuts sought by House Republicans.

House Republicans are backing McCarthy’s demand for spending cuts. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) issued a Jan. 17 statement in which he says “every major piece of financial legislation ought to come with some incremental, responsible spending cuts to keep us moving along a trajectory towards a balanced budget.

“That’ll take time and effort of course, but whether it’s a normal appropriations bill or something like a debt ceiling increase, every step along the way represents another opportunity to cut a little more spending to help balance the budget within 10 years.”

Concerns Over National Debt

Similarly, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) issued a warning to her GOP colleagues and an unexpected vow, saying, “Our national debt is approaching a level not just harmful to economic growth and irresponsible to future generations, but dangerous to our national security today. We are entering treacherous waters and must couple any debt ceiling increases with real reforms.”

The Indiana Republican continued, saying “huge amounts of politically directed spending and crony capitalism have created a significant oligopoly problem in nearly every market sector—not much different from oligarchs ruling in post-socialist countries. Health care monopolies lobbied by special interest groups, like hospitals, is one of the major examples.

Read more here…

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two Republican House lawmakers landed committee assignments after having been stripped of them in the previous Democrat-controlled Congress on separate occasions in 2021.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) had both been stripped of their committee seats in 2021 over social media posts they had made.

Their reinstatement to various committees fulfills a promise by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) who said back in November 2021 they would regain their committee posts for the 118th Congress if Republicans win the House.

Both Greene and Gosar are now assigned to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, where Gosar had previously served.

Greene is also assigned to the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Gosar will also hold a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, where he previously served.

The Oversight committee is expected to be the forefront of investigating the Biden administration. Most recently, committee Republicans began a probe into President Joe Biden’s handling classified documents that were found at his office and Delaware home.

The Homeland Security committee makes decisions on laws pertinent to U.S. national security, including on border security, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity, among others. It also conducts Congressional oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Natural Resources committee looks at legislation regarding energy, mineral and water resources, and national parks and public lands. It also conducts Congressional oversight of the Departments of the Interior, Commerce, and Agriculture.

Greene Vows to Investigate Federal Government

Greene issued statements late Tuesday upon her new assignments. She said the Oversight Committee is arguably “the most important committee [in] this Congress.”

“We will return the role of the Oversight Committee to investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of the federal government, which is exactly what the American people are fed up with,” she wrote.

“Joe Biden, be prepared. We are going to uncover every corrupt business dealing, every foreign entanglement, every abuse of power, and every check cut for The Big Guy.”

She added that Republicans will also “investigate every bit of government being used to abuse the American people, which includes “every three and four letter agency.”

On her appointment to the Homeland Security Committee, Green highlighted security issues including a surge in illegal immigration across the southern border, Chinese fentanyl entering the United States via Mexican cartels, and cyber attacks.

“We will investigate the Biden administration’s violations of our laws and fund (and defund) programs to defend our border and American sovereignty,” Greene said.

Gosar, in an interview with The Epoch Times back in January 2021, had said several Democrats should be stripped of their committee assignments if Republicans win the House. At the time, he singled out Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) should be ejected from their committees, citing potential conflicts of interest and other concerns he has with the lawmakers.

McCarthy has previously pledged to oust Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) announced on Twitter Tuesday: “Speaker McCarthy confirms that Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar are getting kicked off the Intel and Foreign Affairs Committees. Promises made. Promises kept!”

How Greene, Gosar Were Removed from Committee Seats

Greene had been stripped of her committee assignments in February 2021 on a vote of 230–199, largely on party lines—just a month after she was sworn into Congress for the first time. At the time, Greene had been assigned to the House Budget Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee.

Democrats cited social media posts she made before she entered office as grounds to remove her. At the time, McCarthy had denounced Greene’s past comments but called on House Republicans to vote against the Democratic resolution to take away her committee assignments.

Of concern were posts where Greene had speculated that the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks were a false flag and alleged that deadly U.S. school shootings were staged, among other theories. Reports also claimed that Greene had “liked” a Facebook comment suggesting that “a bullet to the head” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “would be quicker.”

Read more here…

Authored by Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints.org,

In a coordinated effort, legislators in seven states, including Illinois, will introduce legislation on Thursday for their states to impose a wealth tax, according to reports Tuesday by the Tax Foundation and the Washington Post.

The seven states, that collectively hold about 60 percent of the nation’s wealth, are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington, according to the Tax Foundation.

Details are still thin, but the Washington Post reports that Illinois’ proposal will be for a tax on wealthy people’s holdings, or so-called “mark-to-market” taxes on their unrealized capital gains. That means, for example, that you could be taxed on what the value is of a stock at some given time, regardless of whether you later sell it for a loss.

(See a Wirepoints companion piece on more tax hikes: It’s back…Illinois’ Sen. Martwick to again push for a progressive tax, even as U.S. states overwhelmingly move toward flat or zero income taxes.)

The proposals in each of the seven states apparently will be variations of the central proposal for a federal wealth tax championed by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The concept has not progressed at the federal level, so supporters are turning to progressive states to implement it.

The Washington Post put it this way: “Left-leaning proponents of taxing the assets held by America’s billionaires have a new target: In lieu of a federal wealth tax, state lawmakers want to tax billionaires where they live.”

The concept is absurd, particularly at the state level. Wealth is frequently in forms that defy rational valuation, such as privately held companies, high-growth tech companies, intellectual property like patents and trademarks and artwork. Even when valuation is clear, as with publicly traded stock, the unfairness of taxing unrealized gains would be obscene. Elon Musk’s stock holdings, for example, are worth some $200 billion less today than they were worth in 2021. Imagine if a wealth tax had been imposed on him then.

Most importantly, and most obviously, the wealthy would immediately flee any state that imposed a wealth tax – as they no doubt already are. Every one of the seven states where a wealth tax will be imposed were net losers in domestic migration according to the annual Census Bureau estimates released last month.

Names of the Illinois legislators who will introduce the bill are unknown at this time.

In other news, a leading Illinois state senator says he will rekindle efforts for a graduated income tax, which was defeated at the polls in 2020. When it comes to their role in Illinois’ suicide, progressive legislators are nothing if not persistent.

Germany just upped the pressure on the Biden administration regarding growing calls to send Ukraine M1 Abrams tanks, which the White House has thus far resisted, fearing further escalation with Russia.

It comes as Germany just appointed a new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, after scandal-plagued Christine Lambrecht resigned the day prior, after also long being accused of representing weakness on arming Ukraine. The Scholz government said it will be up for the new defense minister to mull the question of tanks for Ukraine, as Kiev’s pleas grow louder.

“Germany won’t allow allies to ship German-made tanks to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia nor send its own systems unless the U.S. agrees to send American-made battle tanks, senior German officials said on Wednesday,” according to fresh Wall Street Journal reporting.

Multiple NATO countries have now expressed their willingness to send the highly sophisticated German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine, namely, Poland, Denmark and Finland – but Berlin has to sign off on it first.

This month has witnessed for the first time in the 11-month long war growing political momentum to ship Western-made heavy tanks to the Ukrainian battlefield, instead of the infantry carriers and Soviet tanks thus far supplied. 

The German reluctance in approval comes after the opening months of the Russian invasion triggered an about-face in German foreign policy, as Berlin has now abandoned its historic neutrality. “One can’t differentiate between direct exports (of German-made tanks) and exports by third countries,” a senior German official was quoted in the WSJ report as explaining of Berlin’s stance.

But it seems Germany is now clearly signaling that Washington must lead the way in opening the flood gates of a heavy weapons system as significant as tanks onto the Ukraine battlefield. But perhaps it’s also calling a US bluff of sorts, essentially telling Biden: ‘wanna talk big on Ukraine?… you first’.

The timing of the WSJ’s German tank story is interesting, also given the same day top Republican committee chairs in Congress are ramping up the pressure on Biden, demanding that the US approve what are widely seen as ‘weapons needed to win’ against Russia.

“Leopard 2 tanks, ATACMS, and other long-range precision munitions should be approved without delay,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in a statement reported by Bloomberg. The pair of lawmakers at the same time criticized the “current indecision and self-deterrence” which they say will only prolong the conflict.

But Germany’s Scholz has consistently expressed a desire to avoid potential direct military escalation with Russia at all costs. Approving tanks would likely plunge Germany deeper in right alongside the US as things continue sliding toward direct confrontation.

Meanwhile, sabotage from Scholz?…

BREAKING:@JulianRoepcke from @BILD reports that Scholz told Biden in a phone call on Tuesday that Germany won’t allow Leopard 2 tanks be sent to Ukraine before the U.S. sends Abrams

Biden answered that USA won’t send Abrams.

This increasingly looks like sabotage from Scholz pic.twitter.com/F6JTTKwKPM

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 18, 2023

But here’s what Scholz told his peers at Davos today…

‘Ukraine is defending itself with great success and impressive courage.’ @OlafScholz (@Bundeskanzler) speaks of Germany’s — among other G7 nations’ — support for #Ukraine. #wef23 pic.twitter.com/xt0AyCCPTq

— World Economic Forum (@wef) January 18, 2023

“…will support Ukraine for as long as necessary…”

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Should the wealth effect reverse as assets fall, capital gains evaporate and investment income declines, the top 10% will no longer have the means or appetite to spend so freely.

Soaring wealth-income inequality has all sorts of consequences. As many (including me) have noted, the concentration of wealth and income in the top 0.1% has enabled the few to buy political influence to protect their interests at the expense of the many and the common good.

In other words, extreme wealth-income inequality dismantles democracy. There is no way to sugarcoat this reality.

But the concentration of wealth and income isn’t limited to the top 0.1% or top 1%. The top 5% and top 10% have increased their share of household wealth and income, too, and this has far-reaching consequences for the economy, as the top 10% accounts for the bulk not just of income but of spending.

According to the Federal Reserve, ( Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989), the top 1% owned 22.7% of all household wealth in 1989. Their share increased to 30.6% in 2022. The share of the 9% below the top 1% (90% to 99%) remained virtually unchanged at 37.4%. The top 10% own 68% of all household wealth.

But this doesn’t reflect the real concentration of income-producing assets, i.e. investments. Total household wealth includes the family home, the F-150 truck, the snowmobile, etc. What separates the economic classes isn’t their household possessions, it’s their ownership of assets that generate income and capital gains.

As the chart below shows, the top 10% own the vast majority of business equity, stocks/bonds and income-producing real estate, between 80% and 90% of each category.

This means the tremendous increases in asset valuations of the past two decades have flowed almost exclusively to the top 10%, with the important caveat that the vast majority of the gains in income and wealth have flowed to the top 0.1%, top 1% and top 5%.

According to the US Census Bureau, ( Income in the United States: 2021), the top 20% of households have 52% of all household income, and the top 5% have about 1/4th, (23.5%). The top 20% have roughly 50% of all income, but the top 10% have 40% of all income.

The other charts below reveal that the bulk of income gains sine 1980 have been concentrated in the top 1%. The top 5% registered triple the gains (71%) of the bottom 90% (24%). The income of the top 0.1% soared by 340%.

For context, let’s look at some annual-income numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean income of the top 10% ($290,000) is almost six times the mean income of households at the 50% level ($51,000).

Even more telling, the top 10% households ($290,000) earn twice as much as the 80% to 90% households ($145,000).

What’s all this mean? It boils down to the wealth effect and spending. The top 10% account for roughly half of all consumption, which makes sense given they own 2/3 of the wealth and 85% of income producing assets, and they get 40% of the total income.

If their wealth were to diminish in an extended Bear Market, their spending will also diminish. Not only will they no longer feel so rich (the wealth effect), the income and capital gains produced by their assets will also decline.

The dependence of major sectors of the economy on the spending of the top 10% is often overlooked. For example, one study of US airline flights found that 12% of the American populace take two-thirds (66 per cent) of all flights.

You see the pattern here: the top 10% account for half, two-thirds or over three-quarters of everything: wealth, income, income-producing assets, capital gains and spending.

Should the wealth effect reverse as assets fall, capital gains evaporate and investment income declines, the top 10% will no longer have the means or appetite to spend so freely. By concentrating wealth and income in the top 10%, and making their spending so heavily dependent on capital gains and income generated by the bubble du jour, we’ve set our economy up for an asymmetric decline as credit-asset bubbles popping will lead to steep declines in top 10% spending–spending that supports myriad sectors that are heavily dependent on the free-spending top 10%.

Put another way: the chickens of income-wealth inequality will inevitably come home to roost, generating far-reaching consequences in consumption, employment, tax revenues and virtually every other economic metric.

If you want to know the direction of the economy, watch the top 10%. In some sense, everything else is signal noise.

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