While Bill Gates is jetsetting around the world helping mold a globalist initiative on how we should all be running our lives, his daughter has been stepping up her posh New York City digs…in a big way.

Gates’ daughter, Jennifer Gates, recently paid $51 million for a sprawling penthouse at Metro Loft Management’s 443 Greenwich Street, according to a report from The Real Deal. 

So much for owning nothing and liking it.

The unit was previously owned by Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, the report says. Located in Tribeca, the condo is six bedrooms and includes a 3,200 square foot terrace, private elevator and three levels. 

In sum, the unit is 8,900 square feet and costs more than $18,000 per month in common charges, the report says. It also sports six bathrooms, two powder rooms and two of the building’s 15 parking spaces. Additionally, there is outdoor seating, a plunge pool and a gas fireplace. 

The building itself has 53 units and includes amenities like a pool, gym, sauna, steam room, playroom and roof deck. The list of celebrities that have lived in the building include the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Lawrence, Justin Timberlake and Harry Styles. 

Gates has been married to Olympic equestrian Nayel Nassar since October 2021 and she previously lived in a $5 million condo at 1212 Fifth Avenue in East Harlem. That house has now been put on the market, listed at $4.8 million. 

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Folly is a child of power.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense, and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The term “folly” is particularly apt at this stage in the decline of the great American empire. Folly is defined as: criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct; an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking. If ever a word captured the actions of American political leaders in the 21st Century and reflect the tragic downfall of an empire borne out of the ashes of the Second World War, it is the term “folly”.

For the last two decades I’ve been befuddled by the inane foolishness of our leaders, as they have driven the nation into a bottomless pit of debt at an astoundingly ridiculous pace, initiated military conflict across the globe, and in the last three years initiated anti-human policies guaranteed to destroy our economic system, depopulate the planet, increase human suffering, and turn the world into a techno-gulag where we will own nothing, eat bugs, and bow down to the commands of globalist overlords.

None of what is being jammed down our throats is based upon reason, facts, or common sense. Why do governments initiate policies destined to destroy the nations they have been entrusted to administer? Is it purely incompetence and stupidity, or is it purposeful and evil?

When I heard the term folly last week, it triggered a memory of reading Barbara Tuchman’s 1984 book – The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. After reading her Pulitzer Prize winning treatise on the opening days of World War I – The Guns of August – I immediately became a huge fan of her work. She had the ability to bring the boring dry facts of history to life with her vivid descriptions of events and making it interesting for the average person.

Her storytelling acumen was second to none. She made you feel like you were part of the story. I subsequently read her other Pulitzer Prize winning tome – Stillwell and the American Experience in China, along with The Zimmerman Telegram, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War – 1890–1914, and A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. But it is her March of Folly book which captures the absurdity of our world at this time in history.

Tuchman addresses four instances throughout history when, paradoxically, governments pursued policies clearly contrary to their own interests. The first three were: the Trojans’ decision to move the Greek horse into their city, the failure of the Renaissance popes to address the factors that would lead to the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, and England’s policies relating to American colonies under King George III.

But Tuchman spent half of her 1984 book discussing the most recent government folly – the Vietnam War. Vietnam was still an open wound in the mindset of Americans, after the deaths of 58,000 U.S. boys, over 150,000 wounded in action, and the emotional and physical toll on those who came back haunted by what they saw and had to do to survive. This epic folly also resulted in the deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese. It appears the arrogant leaders of all empires fall into the trap of committing foolish acts out of hubris and overestimation of their intellectual and political power.

“The follies that produced the loss of American virtue following Vietnam begin with continuous overreacting, in the invention of endangered national security, the invention of vital interest, the invention of a commitment which rapidly assumed a life of its own.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

For an empire which only came into existence in 1946 through the destruction of Europe and Japan, along with agreement by the vanquished and the nearly bankrupt victors to elevate the USD as the currency to rule the world, an avalanche of folly has led us to near ruin. This path towards empire began shortly after Jefferson warned to not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt and Washington warned to not engage in foreign entanglements and costly alliances. Lincoln’s consolidation of Federal power, while pushing the nation further into debt, and setting a precedent of using military might to accomplish political ambitions.

As our industrial strength grew, imperialist tendencies continued to blossom, with the government and media (Randolph Hearst) joining forces to instigate the Spanish American war. After being elected on a platform of not getting the U.S. into World War I, Woodrow Wilson reneged on his promise and sent American troops to fight in a war we had no business entering. This after he had already handed the financial future of our nation over to a private banking cabal and set in motion the perpetual creation of debt and taxation which would eventually create the dynamics of collapse, now on our doorstep.

“The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Wilson’s global machinations and involvement in the vengeful Treaty of Versailles laid the groundwork for WW2, where the supremacy of the American Empire began its ascension and power-hungry men put a final nail in the coffin of the idea of an American Republic of the people, by the people, and for the people. America has squandered any claim to being a virtuous and moral light in a darkening world. Instead, those who have degraded and discarded the Constitution over the last several decades have captured the levers of power within government and are inflicting their tragically foolish intrigues upon a world gone mad.

Ever since Bretton Woods insured the USD would reign supreme across the globe, at the point of a gun, the American empire has expanded and bullied the rest of the world into falling in line. When bribery didn’t work, missiles and boots on the ground were employed. Not once in the seventy-eight years since WW2 has our nation faced a threat requiring the use of our military, but somehow our political leaders, at the behest of the military industrial complex, have intervened militarily more than 250 times in countries around the world.

Not one conflict since WW2 has been waged with a formal declaration of war as required by the U.S. Constitution. The Korean War, Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine have all been fought under the cover of UN Resolutions. Vietnam, Iraq, and the never-ending War on Terror were all authorized by Congress, without a formal declaration of war. Essentially, the U.S. president can bomb anyone he wants anywhere in the world, with no accountability to anyone.

Tuchman concentrated the majority of her book on the greatest folly of the American empire, until that point, the Vietnam War. The persistent aspects of folly all played a part in the disastrous outcome of that foolish bloody conflict.

“Their three outstanding attitudes – obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, illusion of invulnerable status – are persistent aspects of folly”. ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Lyndon Johnson, an arrogant power-hungry politician, listened to his soulless neocon warmongering Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and bloviating incompetent generals in using the fake Gulf of Tonkin attack as the motivation to broaden the war in Vietnam. Johnson saw the U.S. as the last bastion against the expansion of communism by the Soviet Union and China.

He and the military industrial complex, warned about by Eisenhower, saw themselves as invulnerable and able to defeat any foe. They found it laughable that a mighty military empire could be defeated by lowly peasants in rice paddies. He was so arrogant he thought he could even defy the law of economics which said you had to choose between guns and butter. He chose guns, butter, and his Great Society welfare state. These insane choices set in motion a tsunami of inflation, debt creation, and a never-ending cover-up operation to give the empire the continued appearance of stability and power.

As Johnson dropped tons of bombs, napalmed villages, sprayed agent orange to defoliate jungles while poisoning his own soldiers, and sent 550,000 young men into the swamps of hell on earth, the American public began to realize there was no vital strategic interest in Vietnam. He ignored the violent protests and growing discontent sweeping across the land, led by the youth of the country. McNamara realized the war was unwinnable and resigned in 1968.

Johnson followed by choosing not to run for reelection in 1968. But the nature of a folly once set in motion is to continue in motion. Despite knowing the war was unwinnable in 1967, the politicians, bureaucrats and generals sacrificed the lives of 38,000 American boys between 1968 and 1975, when the war officially ended. These boys were cannon fodder so their leaders could save face and not admit they had made a dreadful decision in fighting that war.

Weak men would rather let the awful murderous momentum carry-on rather than ceasing their folly. A lack of intelligent thought, use of reason, understanding the facts on the ground, a major dose of hubris, cognitive dissonance, and cowardliness in refusing to admit they were wrong, permanently damaged the reputation of the United States as a bastion of righteousness and integrity in the world. As usual, the only lesson learned from history is the leaders of empires never learn the lessons of why previous empires have fallen. As Tuchman noted, persistence in error is the ultimate folly.

“The folly consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles but in persistence in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Since Tuchman wrote her book in 1984, those calling the shots in this empire of debt have committed far more horrendous acts of folly as we approach the denouement and fall of this short-lived military realm. And the rapidity of these foolish ventures has only accelerated as each foolish venture leads to far more foolish responses to try and cover-up the previous acts of foolishness. The lessons of Vietnam were not learned, as we intervened in the Iraq-Iran War on the side of Sadaam, because Iran overthrew the dictator installed by a CIA coup in 1953.

The CIA also armed Osama bin Laden and his Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War. Then a few years later Sadaam was our mortal enemy because he invaded Kuwait over a border dispute. And Osama’s Al-Qaeda fighters become public enemy #1 after being tagged as the perpetrators of 9/11, launching the War on Terror folly.

Then Bush Jr. and his neo-con puppeteers Cheney and Rumsfeld feigned the threat of Sadaam’s WMDs as an excuse for the disastrous Iraq War, where thousands of American soldiers were killed and wounded for nothing, and generations of new Muslim enemies were created by the mass slaughter of Iraqis. The lesson of the Soviet empire dying in Afghanistan was lost on the egotistical psychopaths who then proceeded to spend the next two decades sacrificing more young men fighting the Taliban, to then withdraw in shameful failure and hand the country back over to the Taliban, who then tortured and killed anyone who collaborated with the U.S. and again took away all the rights of women. Mission Accomplished, as Bush Jr. would say.

But it was during Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s reign of error where acts of folly ratcheted up to a new level of deceitfulness and chaos creation. Both Syria and Libya were run by dictators who marched to their own drumbeat and did not bow to the imperial American empire. They had oil revenue, modern cities, and fairly secular societies, with little terrorism or radical Islamist influences. Obama, his neo-con advisors, and the military industrial complex needed chaos and war to keep their racket going.

A flailing empire faced with intractable economic decline needs foreign enemies to distract the masses and fill the coffers of the Deep State, as the nation circles the drain. Obama and his despicably evil Secretary of State Clinton created ISIS from the ashes of the Iraq War as the means to deposing Assad. He also funded the forces whose job was to overthrow and kill Muammar Gaddafi, along with pretending the humanitarian crisis in Yemen didn’t exist. These foolish actions have resulted in the inevitable blowback, a diminishing trust of the U.S. among nations, the deaths of millions, and the destruction of once thriving countries, leaving nothing but destruction and suffering in the wake of its imperial misadventures.

The greatest act of folly during the Obama administration was the CIA and Victoria (“Fuck the EU”) Nuland initiated Maidan coup in the Ukraine in 2014, toppling the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and replacing him with a U.S. puppet Petro Poroshenko and his neo-Nazi allies. This coup was purposely conducted to diminish Putin’s influence in Ukraine, but set the stage for the tragedy still unfolding today and possibly leading to World War 3.

Putin’s response to the coup was to annex Crimea, so the Russian navy retained its Black Sea port, and support the Russian speaking rebels in the Donbas. Obama revealed his yellow streak by avoiding direct confrontation with Putin, but used the old toothless sanctions card to pretend he was hurting Russia.

The propaganda war has never ceased, with the Ukraine nazis shooting down an airliner and attempting to pin the blame on the Russians. For eight years the nazis had bombed and slaughtered Russian speaking civilians in Eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Biden crime family took advantage of the most corrupt country on earth by milking it like a dairy cow. Zelensky, a two-bit sitcom actor, was installed in 2019 by corrupt Ukrainian billionaire oligarchs and was given the task of provoking war with Russia by unleashing his nazi Azov legions in Donbas, slaughtering women, children, and other non-combatants. It worked. Putin’s invasion in February 2022 was meant to free the eastern provinces from the senseless slaughter and establish a new border between the Ukraine and Russia.

Both sides were at the negotiating table in March 2022 when in an act of supreme folly, the US instructed their UK lackey – Boris Johnson – to threaten/bribe Zelensky into turning hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians into cannon fodder in order to further enrich the imperial empire’s military industrial complex and try to provoke Putin into a broader war, with the goal of deposing him. Of course, Putin is playing chess, while our pedo dementia patient in chief is playing checkers, but just wants some ice cream and his diaper changed.

There is one thing for certain. Foolish acts, foolish interventions, and foolish policies are enacted by fools and supported by fools. The history of government folly makes perfect sense when you realize mediocre men with small minds and a lust for power are drawn to politics and passionately inflict their idiocy on the masses who were too stupid or too apathetic to care about who they chose to lead them. The quotes below perfectly describe what has occurred since 2020.

A basement dwelling dementia patient with anger issues, who likes to touch children, collect his 10%, and eat ice cream was installed by the Deep State in a rigged election, as a means to destroy what remains of our society as part of a globalist Great Reset agenda. The same strategy was used to get a brain damaged galoot, whose IQ before the stroke was sub-100, elected as a senator from PA, despite his inability to speak a coherent sentence or comprehend a basic question. These are little minds running a “great” empire. We deserve what we get and we’re gonna get it really hard.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ― H.L. Mencken

“A great empire and little minds go ill together.” – Edmund Burke

The nearly insane actions, decisions, illegal mandates, and squandering of taxpayer funds to enrich pharmaceutical mega-corporations and arms dealers to fight the annual flu and an undeclared war against Russia are either the acts of a madman or someone who has been captured by malevolent mercenaries and is doing their bidding for fear of the consequences to himself and his family.

Biden has been an incompetent, lying, gaffe machine during his entire 40 years in politics, but his dementia has made him the perfect patsy for the Deep State and globalist banking interests. Going back to the definition of folly – criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct – Biden’s actions and conduct most certainly meet the criteria. It seems no amount of failure and disastrous outcomes can shake Biden and his cronies from their senseless path of destroying the economy and cultural fabric of the nation, while provoking a global conflagration against two nuclear powers simultaneously.

Do they really believe the ridiculous Great Reset agenda based on climate change falsehoods, depopulation, global rule over the peasants by a few billionaire oligarchs, and artificial intelligence programs running the world? Has their ideology blinded them to facts, reason and a course which would be most beneficial to mankind? Or are these the desperate acts of people trapped by the folly of their predecessors, who feel obligated to keep marching the world off a cliff and into the abyss because they have no answers?

We know for a fact the national debt is $31.5 trillion and unfunded liabilities total in excess of $200 trillion and can never be honored. But the whole world is in the same boat, with total global debt exceeding $300 trillion and debt to GDP at 350%, up from 278% just prior to the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. The “China Century” narrative will also prove false, as they owe one-third of that global debt figure.

There is no escape from this tsunami of unpayable debt. Central banks, trying to fend off hyper-inflation, have raised rates by 2% to 4%, which has increased interest expense on the debt by $3 trillion, on a path to $8 trillion. Facing this dire situation, politicians across the globe have insanely ramped up government spending, accelerating towards the cliff, disregarding the horrible consequences awaiting the citizens they are supposed to represent.

Are the covid scam, vaccine mandates, foreign interventions, UFO distractions, gender absurdity, wokeness tripe, and fake climate crisis all just engineered distractions to allow the perpetrators of this engineered demolition to continue their wealth pillaging operation until the last moment? In reality, no one will survive this debt induced folly if they trigger nuclear Armageddon because their psychopathic level of hubris blinds them to where they are driving this world.

As anyone awakened to the scam of political parties and media propaganda designed to distract and create fear knows, you won’t be able to vote yourself out of this predicament, put into motion 110 years ago. The options are few, as some sort of collapse is inevitable. The globalist Great Reset crowd want a collapse where they retain their wealth, power and control and you own nothing, eat bugs, live in a pod, and obey your masters.

Once the collapse is initiated no one knows how it will proceed. They will lose control of the narrative and the path of events. This is where groups of rational thinking patriots will have an opportunity to reverse some of the follies inflicted upon them during this century and regain some of the liberties and freedoms taken from them, while inflicting punishment upon those guilty of treason. Serious men will need to take serious measures to triumph during the coming crisis.

The choices will be between disastrous and unpalatable. There are no good choices left. A future of little or no government, with local communities of like minded people working together to live a purposeful life should be the goal. But, as Plato noted over two thousand years ago, the masses will remain ignorant and distracted by their technological gadgets, unable to see beyond the shadows and lies of a culture manipulated to keep them from thinking or comprehending how badly they have been exploited and oppressed by their foolish government leaders.

The march of folly is perpetual.

*  *  *

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Two weeks ago, we reported that Credit Suisse stock suffered one of its biggest drop ever after it i) warned of continued losses for 2023 and beyond, and ii) revealed that it had suffered a record CHF110.5BN in outflows in the quarter, an amount which KBW analysts called “quite staggering.”

And, as we noted at the time, this was rather problematic because in late 2022, right after reports of the record bank run first hit, the company’s management team and Chairman, Axel Lehmann, said in various media interviews that outflows had stopped – hoping this would relieve pressure on the bank and in the process, contain the outflows – when in reality the bank run was only just getting started.

Well, two months later, the regulators have gotten involved, and according to Reuters, regulators are reviewing unfoundedly cheerful comments the chairman – and other Credit Suisse representatives – made about the health of its finances.

As a reminer, on Dec 1, Lehmann told the Financial Times in an interview streamed online that after strong outflows in October, they had “completely flattened out” and “partially reversed”. The following day he told Bloomberg Television that the outflows had “basically stopped.” On December 2, the bank’s stock jumped by 9.3% after Lehman’s comments; it then cratered again after the company revealed just how ugly the outflows truly were.

Not only had outflows not stopped but they were accelerating. And now, Reuters sources say that the regulator is reviewing whether Lehmann’s statements were potentially misleading.

In response to a question on the distribution of withdrawals in the period Chief Executive Ulrich Koerner told analysts that day that more than 85% of the outflows in the last quarter happened in October and November, according to a transcript of the call.

That led analysts at Citigroup to conclude in a note to clients that management effectively indicated 15% of the outflows had happened in December, or after Lehmann’s soothing comments. Finma’s scrutiny adds to the challenges faced by Credit Suisse, which has been rocked by scandals in recent years. The lender has embarked on a sweeping overhaul to restore profitability by exiting certain investment banking activities and focusing on managing money for the wealthy.In early October a social media storm triggered by an unsubstantiated report about the bank’s financial health prompted wealthy customers to move deposits elsewhere. The bank said at the time it was pushing ahead with its restructuring and remained close to its clients.

Responding to a Reuters request for comment on the Feb. 9 results, Finma said in a statement that while Credit Suisse’s liquidity buffers had a stabilizing effect, the regulator “monitors banks very closely during such situations,” referring to the outflows, which “were indeed significant” in the fourth quarter. It did not elaborate further.

News of the latest woes to befall the embattled Swiss lender which is now a mere shell of its former self, sent its stock plunging as much as 6.4% to a new record low of CHF 2.52 before partially recovering losses.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Last week, there was another bombshell story by the Washington Post on the purported evil that is Elon Musk.  Quickly amplified by MSNBC and other media, it was another hit job on Musk and could be viewed as what many in the media love to call “disinformation.” Musk himself noted that the premise of the piece (that his tweets were artificially boosted during a recent period) was demonstrably false. Yet, the countervailing facts found little space in the long Post piece. None of that is particularly surprising. Musk became a hunted man when he sought to restore free speech protections to social media. The media regularly offers him little quarter or consideration. However, what was most striking was that the underlying controversy may have been Musk’s targeting of “bots” in his restructuring of Twitter.

The Post story was written with the usual telltale signs of a hit piece.

First, there was the breathless headline (notably amplified on its own Twitter account) expressing a combination of shock and scorn: “Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself.” Then came the lead line of how Musk had transformed the company into the “billionaire’s personal sandbox.” It reported how Musk ran amok at Twitter headquarters firing people in a rage over the failure to artificially boost his own tweets in the system. It portrays employees cowering from his wrath and rushing to change algorithms to increase his tweet visibility.

Musk immediately responded with a simple but seemingly major point: there was no such spike or adjustment. He tweeted “Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week. A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false. We did have a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same prominence as primary Tweets, but that has now been fixed.”

The Musk tweets do not necessarily end the controversy but it raises core factual questions that seemed to be largely omitted in the Post coverage. Indeed, it was simply ignored by media who continued to push the narrative regardless of the serious questions over the premise of the article. Sound familiar? The Russian collusion scandal, the Hunter Biden “Russian Disinformation,” the Lafayette Park “Photo Op” conspiracy, the Nick Sandmann controversy, the Jussie Smollett case, the Migrant Whipping scandal. This list seems endless of false stories where the “facts were too good to check.” However, that is not “disinformation.”  Not at all.

If you read the Post piece, it becomes clear what the real fight at Twitter may have been over.

Buried in the piece is this observation: “Even before he bought Twitter, Musk emphasized the site’s need to crack down on spam and bots, particularly those shilling cryptocurrency.”

The Post noted that Musk declared before buying the company that  “If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”

Musk has been riding roughshod over engineers to remove certain algorithms and combat bots to restore the company’s transparency and integrity.

Bots and AI systems, however, have a growing alliance in Washington.

Democratic leaders have called for a type of “enlightened algorithms” to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for algorithms to be created to protect people from their own bad choices. She was upset that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.” She denounced Amazon and declared that “this pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” She gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.

More recently, Bill Gates seemed to go “full Borg” in calling for AI to stop certain views from being “magnified by digital channels.” The problem is that we allow “various conspiracy theories like QAnon or whatever to be blasted out by people who wanted to believe those things.” Gates added that AI can combat “political polarization” by checking “confirmation bias.”

So AI overlords will bring unity through forced content assimilation where, to paraphrase the Borg, “free speech is futile.”

The Post does not go to bat for bots like Gates in this piece and even acknowledges that ” it wasn’t that crypto bots weren’t a problem,” but then returns to the Musk press mosh pit.

I previously discussed how Washington has gone to war with Twitter with an alliance of political, corporate, and media interests. It has been unrelenting and includes a campaign to get companies to suspend or reduce advertising until censorship is restored. The media has kept a steady stream of hit pieces on Musk that often border on wartime propaganda.

Musk is not perfect. No one is and being a billionaire gives you a billion ways to magnify your own idiosyncrasies. However, Musk has brought a level of transparency to Twitter (and his own controversies) that is unmatched in any social media company.

I will admit to a bias in favor of Musk as a long-standing free speech advocate. I previously wrote that, despite his incredible achievements in space and transportation technology, Musk’s greatest legacy may prove his defense of free speech. His release of the Twitter Files has revealed a comprehensive system of censorship coordinated with the government. He has also restored free speech protection to a major social media platform. The move is transformative and historic.

The campaign against Musk reflects a degree of desperation as the control of social media collapsed with his purchase. If you are to control speech on social media, it must be complete and total. Musk shattered that unified front and, with it, the ability to maintain approved narratives by silencing critics and barring particular views. Elon Musk did not “reinvent” Twitter as much as restore Twitter to what it was. However, there is a reinvention of journalism in a new and more menacing image.

The trend of plunging bonuses and job cuts on Wall Street continues – now it has hit HSBC and JP Morgan. 

For about 6 months, we have been covering both increasing layoffs and how bonuses across Wall Street have suffered at the hands of 2022 being a terrible year for dealmaking. And the bad news doesn’t look like it’s about to stop anytime soon.

This week we learned that HSBC bonuses are falling nearly 4% to $3.4 billion for the year, with the bank also blaming dealmaking. The bank’s junior banker bonuses rose on average, Bloomberg wrote, due to inflationary and cost of living factors. Commercial banking, as well as wealth and personal banking saw the strongest outcomes for bonuses, however, the firm’s global banking and markets division took a cut. 

JP Morgan, on the other hand, is laying off about 30 of its investment bankers in Asia, with a majority of them in Greater China, this week. Bloomberg attributed the layoffs to “deal flows in its biggest growth market in the region struggl[ing] to rebound”. 

It marks the largest cuts to Hong Kong and China-based bankers in years, as employees in the area only make up less than 5% of the company’s headcount in the region. 

A JP Morgan spokesperson told Bloomberg: “We regularly review our business needs and a small number of employees across Asia Pacific have been affected.”

And just days ago we reported that Deutsche Bank was among many banks cutting bonuses. Cuts of 40% are expected to be made for investment bankers at the firm, marking some of the largest cuts we have seen in the last 6 months. 

Credit Suisse Group AG Chairman Axel Lehmann also made a statement last month warning about lower bonuses after what he called a “horrifying year”. Recall we wrote that the bank had come out and was considering a large cut to its bonus pool.

Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan join a number of Wall Street banks who laid off employees, cut bonuses or both after a torrid 2022. Goldman Sachs, for example, is set to lay off up to 4,000 employees, we noted in Q4 2022. Days prior to that announcement, we noted that Goldman was curtailing originating unsecured consumer loans. Citi also fired “dozens” of bankers in Q4 2022. The bank was also “considering shrinking the bonus pool for its more than 3,000 investment bankers by at least 40 per cent this year”.

Also in mid-December, we wrote that Ernst and Young would be cutting its bonuses entirely. The company held an “all hands” meeting two weeks ago where it delivered the news to its employees. The company is in the midst of splitting its audit business from a tax and advisory business heading into 2023. Morgan Stanley’s Asia banker bonuses were also at risk by as much as 50%, we wrote days before that. In December, we also noted that Jefferies was considering slashing bonuses. 

President Biden delivered a major speech from Warsaw, Poland Tuesday night fresh off his surprise visit to neighboring Ukraine where he met with President Zelensky.

“I have just come from a visit to Kyiv, and I can report that Kyiv stands strong. Kyiv stands proud. It stands tall. And most importantly, it stands free,” Biden said at the opening of his remarks.

Just hours prior, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin delivered his own address wherein he vowed his country will continue unbending toward fulfilling military objectives in Ukraine. Biden addressed the “dictator” – as he referenced Putin, while vowing to never let Ukraine fall to the Russians.

Appearing to directly answer Putin, Biden said while in front of the Royal Warsaw Castle Gardens in Warsaw: 

“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine — Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.”

Both speeches served as one-year anniversary rival markers of the Feb.24 invasion of Ukraine, coming up on Friday.

Biden alluded to the crucial timing, offering the following assessment: “One year after the bombs began to fall, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. Ukraine is still independent and free,” he said. “From Kherson to Kyiv, Ukrainian fighter have reclaimed their land.”

“One year later we know the answers. Yes, we would stand up for sovereignty, and we did. Yes, we would stand up for the right of people to live free from aggression, and we did. And we would stand up for democracy and we did.” The US has given Kiev billions of dollars, mostly in defense aid and weapons, including tanks (a transfer which will be long in process).

However, by all accounts things aren’t going so well for the Ukrainians in Bakhmut. At a moment Russian forces have the city nearly completely encircled, Zelensky on Monday for the first time appeared to waver on maintaining defense of the city in Donbas…

“Yes, it is not a particularly big town. In fact, like many others in Donbas, (it’s been) devastated by the Russians,” Zelensky told Italian publication Corriere della Sera in an interview published Sunday, per Reuters.

“It is important for us to defend it, but not at any price and not for everyone to die,” he added.

Regardless, Biden in his Warsaw speech painted a grandiose picture of good vs. evil, light vs. darkness in saying, “Stand with us, we will stand with you. Let us move forward with faith and conviction and with an abiding commitment to be allies, not of darkness but of light, not of oppression but of liberation, not of captivity but, yes, of freedom.”

Meanwhile, the below was not quite the ‘show of strength’ Biden’s press team and handlers were hoping for…

👴🇺🇸🇵🇱Biden was being managed at the red carped in Poland pic.twitter.com/JO7Okk1qPZ

— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) February 21, 2023

Biden also teased new sanctions. “We continue to maintain the largest sanctions regime ever imposed in any country in history. And we’re going to announce more sanctions this week together with our partners.” Sources told The Wall Street Journal the administration is planning to impose new sanctions on some 200 Russian individuals and entities in total.

Update(1422): China’s foreign ministry has issued a statement within hours after Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi touched down in Moscow for an official visit: 

China’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Beijing is “deeply worried” that the war in Ukraine could continue to escalate and “spiral out of control,” as the conflict continues to rage on nearly one year later.

Foreign Minister Qin Gang appeared to call out the U.S. for its extensive support of Ukraine, urging “the countries concerned to immediately stop adding fuel to the fire, stop blaming China, and stop clamoring for ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.'”

Qin added that Beijing will “continue to promote peace talks” and “provide Chinese wisdom for the political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.”

China says President Xi is interested in brokering peace in Ukraine, however, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday charged that “China is trying to have it both ways,” given that, “Publicly, they present themselves as a country striving for peace in Ukraine. But privately, as I said, we’ve seen already over these past months the provision of non-lethal assistance that does go directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort.”

* * *

Update(1015ET): During top diplomat’s Wang Yi’s visit to Moscow, The Wall Street Journal is reporting based on its sources that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is planning his own visit to Russia soon, where he’ll meet with his counterpart President Vladimir Putin at a moment the war in Ukraine shows no signs of slowing.

“Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing to visit Moscow for a summit with Russia’s president in the coming months, according to people familiar with the plan, as Vladimir Putin wages war in Ukraine and portrays himself as a standard-bearer against a U.S.-led global order,” WSJ writes Tuesday morning.

And according to unnamed sources, “Beijing says it wants to play a more active role aimed at ending the conflict, and the people familiar with Mr. Xi’s trip plans said a meeting with Mr. Putin would be part of a push for multiparty peace talks and allow China to reiterate its calls that nuclear weapons not be used.” However, nothing official from either side has yet to be confirmed.

The Biden administration has angered Beijing over the last several days in issuing repeat warnings against providing the Kremlin with any lethal weapons or military assistance. Despite these efforts, a Xi trip to Moscow would certainly solidify the ‘no limits’ partnership between the two countries, and with huge symbolism to boot given the timing.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi announced Saturday at the Munich Security Conference that China will seek to roll out a plan focosued on ending the war in Ukraine, saying, “We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue.” Meanwhile, during Putin’s Tuesday speech…

Putin:

“We are not waging war with the Ukrainian people. They are in a hostage situation, politically and militarily, occupied by the West.” pic.twitter.com/OSZUhRTYah

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 21, 2023

* * *

After the weekend back-and-forth of warnings centered on the Biden administration’s latest assertions that Beijing is mulling providing lethal aid to Russia in order to help the Kremlin execute its war efforts, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky has weighed in on the deepening Beijing-Moscow partnership.

He warned that WW3 is on the horizon if China begins supplying weapons. “For us, it is important that China does not support the Russian Federation in this war,” Zelenskiy told German daily newspaper Die Welt. “In fact, I would like it to be on our side. At the moment, however, I don’t think it’s possible.”

“But I do see an opportunity for China to make a pragmatic assessment of what is happening here,” he continued. “Because if China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war, and I do think that China is aware of that.”

Likely China will shrug off Zelensky’s provocative comments, given Beijing already told Washington that it’s in no position to make demands.

Previously, Biden administration officials had said the US is concerned by “disturbing” trends when it comes to China’s support for Russia. Despite prior international media reports, mostly based on speculation, alleging that China was already supplying Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, there’s as yet no evidence of this. 

The timing of the accusations is also important, given on Tuesday China’s top diplomat Wang Yi made his first visit as Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Office to Russia, having arrived in Moscow.

The day prior, he reiterated Beijing’s position that negotiated settlement is needed to solve the Ukraine crisis:

“We would like a political solution to provide a peaceful and sustainable framework to Europe,” Wang said ahead of a visit to Moscow during a stop in Hungary, which could result in billions of euros of new Chinese investment in the country.

On Saturday Wang had emphasized something similar in addressing the Munich Security Conference. Calling a room full of European officials “dear friends”, he said “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we’re against reaping benefits from this crisis” – in a message aimed squarely at Washington.

What was supposed to be a bilateral meeting with Secretary Blinken never materialized earlier this month due to the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon shootdown saga…

“This relationship is far too consequential to allow what was a relatively minor security incident to derail [it]. The Wang Yi-Blinken meeting offered an opportunity to begin this process. Unfortunately, it was an opportunity squandered.” – @Dalzell60 https://t.co/upoXVJx0cr

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) February 20, 2023

“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize. They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, nor the harm on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue,” Wang added in the weekend comments.

As for Wang’s trip to Moscow, the Kremlin has said a meeting with President Putin could be in the cards, though this is uncertain. “We do not rule out a meeting between Mr. Wang Yi and the [Russian] president, he will indeed be in Moscow,” spokesman Dimitry Peskov said in a briefing.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said last week that the US is “supporting” Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and called Russian military installations on the peninsula “legitimate targets.”

Nuland made the comments when asked about a report from The New York Times that was published in January and said the Biden administration was “warming” to the idea of helping Ukraine attack Russia despite the risk of escalation.

“Russia has turned Crimea into a massive military installation … those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that,” Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington DC-based think tank.

Nuland also expressed support for the “demilitarization” of Crimea. “No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight, etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum — at a minimum — demilitarized,” she said.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Nuland’s comments, saying she was inciting an escalation of the war. “Now the American warmongers have gone even further: they are inciting the Kiev regime to further escalate, to bring the war to the territory of our country. Just like that, with direct strikes,” Zakharova said.

Nuland’s comments came a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that a Ukrainian attempt at retaking Crimea would be a “red line” for Russian President Vladimir Putin and would risk a major response from Moscow. US support for such operations would increase the risk of provoking Moscow and heighten the chances of a direct clash between NATO and Russia.

Putin has shown that he will significantly escalate the war over attacks on Crimea. Russia did not start large-scale missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure until after the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland.

While Ukraine hasn’t been in a position where it can launch an offensive against Crimea, the Biden administration has made clear throughout the conflict that it wouldn’t discourage Kyiv from attacking the peninsula.

Back in the summer of 2022, when the US first provided the HIMARS rocket systems to Ukraine, the administration sought assurances that the weapons wouldn’t be used to target Russian territory. When asked by Antiwar.com if that restriction applied to Crimea, a State Department spokesperson replied, “Crimea is Ukraine.”

Russia has controlled Crimea since 2014, but neither the US nor Kyiv recognize the peninsula as Russian territory. The people of Crimea voted to join Russia following a US-backed coup in Kyiv, which Nuland played an instrumental role in, and polling since 2014 has shown that they are still happy with the change.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged an investment arm of the Mormon church for disclosure failures and misstated filings.

Ensign Peak, a nonprofit entity operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, agreed to pay a $4 million penalty for failing to file forms that would have disclosed the church’s equity investments, and instead filing forms for shell companies that concealed the Church’s portfolio – as well as misstated Ensign Peak’s control over investment decisions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The church, which requires its members give 10% of their income in the form of tithing, itself agreed to pay a $1 million penalty, according to the SEC.

The SEC’s order finds that, from 1997 through 2019, Ensign Peak failed to file Forms 13F, the forms on which investment managers are required to disclose the value of certain securities they manage. According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences. To obscure the amount of the Church’s portfolio, and with the Church’s knowledge and approval, Ensign Peak created thirteen shell LLCs, ostensibly with locations throughout the U.S., and filed Forms 13F in the names of these LLCs rather than in Ensign Peak’s name. The order finds that Ensign Peak maintained investment discretion over all relevant securities, that it controlled the shell companies, and that it directed nominee “business managers,” most of whom were employed by the Church, to sign the Commission filings. The shell LLCs’ Forms 13F misstated, among other things, that the LLCs had sole investment and voting discretion over the securities. In reality, the SEC’s order finds, Ensign Peak retained control over all investment and voting decisions. -SEC

“We allege that the LDS Church’s investment manager, with the Church’s knowledge, went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the Church’s investments, depriving the Commission and the investing public of accurate market information,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The requirement to file timely and accurate information on Forms 13F applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations.”

Earlier this month the Journal reported that the SEC was investigating the Mormon church, after a former employee revealed in 2019 that the organization had amassed $100 billion of holdings.

The current size of Ensign Peak’s holdings remains a tightly held secret. The firm, based in Salt Lake City, was incorporated in 1997. Under SEC rules, it must disclose some types of investments, like U.S.-listed stocks, that it manages directly, which amounted to roughly $40 billion on Sept. 30. The remainder of the portfolio is made up of investments such as fixed-income securities, private companies or funds. Ensign Peak had an estimated $100 billion of holdings in 2019. 

Investment managers with at least $100 million under management publicly report their stockholdings quarterly. The numbers are tracked by public companies and investors. About 5,000 entities file the form, according to SEC data made public in 2020. –WSJ

Ensign Peak and church officials say they haven’t violated nay tax laws, and that the fund was a “rainy-day account” to be used in difficult economic times.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

This Daily has long taken the stance that geopolitics is now geoeconomics and so impacts global markets, and that the rest is commentary. The latest set of headlines reinforce that belief.

President Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Presidents’ Day, pledging “unwavering support.”  (As former President Trump is to go to Ohio, the scene of a disaster of a different kind: it remains to be seen if geopolitics is good 2024 politics if it ignores local economics.)

The EU’s top diplomat says China will cross a ‘red line’ if it sends arms to Russia, matching US rhetoric from Secretary of State Blinken. Borrel stated Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi “told me that they’re not going to do it, that they don’t plan to do it. But we will remain vigilant.” US Senator Graham put it more bluntly on TV: “If you jump on the Putin train, you’re dumber than dirt. It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie.”

Yet the Wall Street Journal, which already alleged China is sending dual-use technology to Russia, now claims ‘In China, worries about a weakened Russia prompt a rethink’, not suggesting Beijing will jump on the Biden train, but floating that its peace plan out this Friday may contain an implicit threat: peace now (on de facto Russian terms), or China really may supply Moscow with lethal aid. That would extend the scale and length of the conflict: and buying a ticket on the Titanic for China; or the US; and either way for ‘2023 is not 2022’ those in a happy-clappy claptrap trap.

Japan’s Kyocera already says China is no longer viable as the world’s factory due to US technology restrictions, and that production there only makes sense to sell in China rather than to export from it; Bloomberg reports the Pentagon isn’t sure how to start stripping Chinese suppliers out of its production lines – but political pressure means it will try; Turkey denies exporting electronic equipment used by the Russian military as well.  The common thread is an ongoing bifurcation of global supply chains which means higher structural inflation. Nobody is as cheap as China once was – including China.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands is warning of Russian attempts to sabotage its energy infrastructure.  Again, geopolitics meets geoeconomics meets markets, implying higher structural inflation as a tail risk, unless you ‘assume’ it away (as explored in our report on balance of payments and balance of power crises).

Yes, there are other factors involved, such as post-Covid changes to labour markets; or what China is or isn’t doing in terms of stimulus, as Beijing reportedly asks banks to hold back from increasing loans. However, if geopolitics is now geoeconomics and so impacts global markets, is it really a surprise that February’s RBA minutes showed a 50bps hike was considered; that tomorrow the RBNZ is seen going 50bps to 4.75%; that the ECB is seen going 50bps too; and that a slew of Fed speakers just threatened to step up to 50bps again? The rest is commentary.

Even so, that comment needs some commentary too. The phrase ‘the rest is commentary’ is taken as a reductive, no-nonsense, American way of thinking. While that may be true, that isn’t its root or even the full saying. Both lie in the Talmudic story about the first-century rabbinic sage Hillel, who a gentile provocatively asked to teach the whole Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) while standing on one leg. Hillel stands on one leg and replies, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary – go study.”

Besides being a lesson in good politics, international relations, and economics that we never live up to anywhere, the key point is that today we omit the “go study”, which changes the meaning of the phrase. It is not that the other 99.99% of the Torah is “commentary” to Hillel, but rather that commentary on the core message requires that 99.9% of study; indeed, you cannot make sense of the core message without it.

Translated back to today, it’s not good enough to say ‘geopolitics is now geoeconomics impacting markets’ and the rest is commentary. That statement requires detailed study into the details and implications. Equally, no amount of study will help if you don’t accept that core principle first.

Sadly, far too much market analysis still falls into the first or second camp. Conversations between the two, and between both and those who accept the key statement and study it, tend to be tense, or see people speak past or over each other. On which note, back to the Talmud.

The rival scholar to the open, “liberal” Hillel approach of debate is the strict, “conservative” sage Shammai, who when asked the same question about the Torah hit the man with a stick for his audacity. Indeed, although overlooked, tensions between the Hillel and Shammai camps rose to the point where some scholars of the Jerusalem Talmud state Shammai’s followers at one point killed Hillel’s over a Torah dispute. That is a lesson in bad politics, international relations, and economics that we still seem to live up to everywhere.

Please – go study!