Month: March 2023

Authored by Christian Parenti via TheGrayZone.com,

The lockdowns and the stimulus required to keep the economy alive helped drive inflation. Then the Fed jacked up interest rates. And all hell broke loose…

On Friday March 10th, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) died of Covid. Alright, it’s a little more complicated than that, but Covid lockdowns followed by massive government stimulus were a critical – and massively under-acknowledged – factor in propelling the bank’s demise.

At the heart of the crisis is the gigantic pile of low-interest debt that was issued during the height of the pandemic. While private-sector pandemic-era debt like corporate bonds also soared, US government debt like Treasury bonds piled up.

In a nutshell, during the pandemic the government issued enormous amounts of extremely low interest government debt — about $4.2 trillion of it. But now interest rates, including on government debt, are higher than they have been in 15 years and investors are dumping their old low-interest debt. As they dump, the resale price of the old debt goes down. The more it declines, the more investors want to dump. And thus, a panic is born. 

To understand the problem fully, the question of US government debt has to be put into its larger context, which is: the pandemic response as a whole.

When news of the Covid virus first broke in December 2019, the 2 Year Treasury bond was being offered at 1.64% interest; the 10 year was at about 1.80%, and the resale value of such bonds on secondary markets was strong. Then, in March 2020, as Covid cases and deaths spiked, the US began to shutter its economy with panicked lockdowns that were supposed to “flatten the curve” or slow the spread of the virus and thus protect the hospitals. But Covid was politicized and the lockdowns were extended.  

As the lockdowns dragged on, the US economy began to collapse, shrinking at a record-shattering annualized rate of 31.4% during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.

To avoid total economic devastation, the federal government began massive debt-financed spending. In March 2020, Trump signed into law the $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill the CARES Act, or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security. Then, in March 2021, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act which contained $1.9 trillion more in Covid relief. Finally, in April 2021, another trillion or so of Covid relief arrived in the Consolidated Appropriations Act. 

Thanks to these laws, every industry and most people received public money. There was increased and extended unemployment payments, as well as the so-called “stimmy checks” or stimulus payments to everyone earning under $75,000 a year (about half the population). The Paycheck Protection Program spent almost a trillion dollars. The Provider Relief Fund doled out $178 billion to the healthcare system. 

All this debt spending kept millions of people in their homes, and helped feed, employ, and care for millions more. The measures allowed hundreds of thousands of businesses to stay afloat even as many thousands of others went under. The impact of the spending on Americans’ well-being was generally positive. For a moment, the US child poverty rate was cut in half, falling to 5.2%. 

But the economically destructive lockdowns were not necessary and did not work. Covid fanatics maintain that the lockdowns were unavoidable because the virus is so deadly. That, however, is uninformed. Last year I explained in detail how the Lockdown Left got the Covid crisis wrong. Not a single critic has challenged any of the facts I presented so there is little point in rehashing them all here. 

Those who advocated an alternative to ham-fisted lockdowns, like the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for “focused protection” of vulnerable groups like the elderly, were viciously targeted in a reputation destruction campaign covertly orchestrated by former NIH director Francis Collins and de facto Covid czar Anthony Fauci. Never mind that the document’s authors were three eminently qualified scientists: Sunetra Gupta, professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University; Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford; and Martin Kulldorff, formerly a professor of medicine and biostatistics at Harvard. They were portrayed as far-right cranks who were almost eager to see millions die. But now, they have been vindicated.

Ultimately, the federal government spent $4.2 trillion propping up the economy that it was simultaneously choking to death with lockdowns. These two contradictory pressures laid the groundwork for the recent bank failures. Government mandated lockdowns hit the economy like a body blow. Factories closed, small businesses went under, ports and logistic hubs reduced operations, and about 2 million mostly older workers simply resigned. But at the same time, the federal government injected vast amounts of purchasing power into the economy, thus boosting consumption.

These two, contradictory government moves imposed almost unbearable pressure on supply chains. As shortages mounted, prices began to surge. Put simply: lockdowns plus stimulus equaled inflation.

Consider just one of the most important bottlenecks in the whole economy. During lockdown, many commercial driving license schools were closed. This helped create a shortage of about 80,000 truckers. If trucks do not roll supplies run low and prices go up.

At first, the official line on inflation – parroted by the Lockdown Left – maintained that inflation was “transitory.” But it was not. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 while wage growth lagged at about 5%. In April 2020 during the worst of the lockdown, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Funds Rate sank to 0.5%. By February 2022, it had only risen to 0.8%.  

Meanwhile, inflation was surging. By February 2022, inflation had reached 7.9%. Only then did the Fed, in an effort to tamp down prices, begin raising interest rates at the fastest pace rate in its history. The federal Funds rate was around 4.57% when SVB went under. Perhaps a massive wave of taxation could have soaked up enough liquidity to have helped cool prices, but that was a political impossibility. The more politically palatable response in Washington was for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. 

Herein lies the problem. During the height of the lockdowns, banks bought up enormous amounts of government debt. As the Wall Street Journal put it: “U.S. banks are suffering the aftereffects of a Covid-era deposit boom that left them awash in cash that they needed to put to work. Domestic deposits at federally insured banks rose 38% from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021, FDIC data show. Over the same period, total loans rose 7%, leaving many institutions with large amounts of cash to deploy in securities as interest rates were near record lows.” Awash in deposits with not enough demand for loans, the banks bought US government securities. Their purchases surged 53% between 2019 and the end of 2021, to a total of $4.58 trillion, according to Fed data reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Because so much debt was being issued, it carried super-low interest rates. For example, on July 27, 2020, the 10 Year Treasury was offered at an annual interest rate of only 0.55%. This is fine if you are the borrower of money, but if you are the lender (that is to say, a bank giving the federal government money in exchange for a Treasury bond), it means your income stream will be reduced to a mere trickle. If inflation rises, it essentially disappears. 

As the yield on new government debt reached toward 5% and inflation hung stubbornly at around 6.4%, all of that old, low-interest, pandemic-era debt started to look like garbage and banks began unloading it. The more that banks dumped old debt, the less value that debt had on resale markets. The lower its resale value, the more the banks wanted to dump it. SVB lost almost $2 billion selling off Government securities. And when they announced the loss, their stock price plunged by 60%. 

At the same time, many of SVB’s clients were withdrawing money. This was in part because rising interest rates made borrowing new money more expensive and thus incentivized the use of savings in day-to-day business operations. Also, higher inflation and higher interest rates made low-earning bank deposits less attractive and compelled depositors to redeploy their surplus capital towards higher-earning investments. So, just as SVB needed cash, deposits were evaporating.

By the end of the week of March 10, the four biggest banks in the United States had lost $51 billion because of their panicked dumping of pandemic-era debt. Right after SVB was taken under government control, state regulators closed the New York-based Signature Bank. Before the weekend was over the Federal Reserve announced the creation of a new lending facility that would ensure that “banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.” Furthermore, the Fed said it was “prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise.”

It would seem that the federal government is ready to execute another de facto partial nationalization of US banking, just as they did in 2008 via emergency “cash injections” and then the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). In this current crisis, banks can avoid losses on their low-interest debt if they do not sell it before its maturity. For that to happen, the banks need money. The Fed has said it will pour enormous amounts of money into the banks while all of the relevant officials have proclaimed that the banking system will somehow pay for this. All of this will almost certainly mean even more government debt will be issued. 

Already, interest payments on the federal debt are one of the largest single items in the US budget – set to reach $400 billion this year. That is almost half as much as the grotesquely overdeveloped military budget. By comparison, federal spending on housing is only $78 billion.

Shoring up the banking system is necessary because if it collapses, the whole economy goes with it. At least in the short term, Americans are hostages of the US financial system. But government intervention without any new regulations and taxes upon the financial sector will likely mean more inflation and a bigger financial bubble. By refusing to properly tax the top 1%, the federal government also commits itself to more austerity for the many and more welfare for the rich, because rising government debt means a rising portion of our taxes must go toward interest payments. 

This system of crisis-prone, hyper-financialized capitalism seems ever more like a junkie. If it doesn’t get its regular fix of public sector help, it will simply collapse and die. 

Even if the federal government can stanch the current crisis, the pandemic debt story is global and very likely to cause trouble for some time to come. As a 2021 report by the World Bank put it: “The debt buildup during the pandemic-induced global recession of 2020 was the largest in several decades. This was true for all types of debt—total, government, and private debt; and advanced-economy and EMDE [emerging market and developing economy] debt; external and domestic debt. In 2020, total global debt reached 263 percent of GDP and global government debt 99 percent of GDP, their highest levels in half a century.” 

The US intelligentsia and its media elites are finally beginning to reckon with the impact of misguided and authoritarian lockdowns on student learning and the psychological and physical health of millions. But in all the discussion of the current bank runs, the pivotal role of lockdowns in priming the crisis remains overlooked.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad continues to be brought “in from the cold” and back into the Arab regional fold at rapid pace, with Reuters confirming on Thursday the prior rumors that Saudi Arabia and Syria were on the brink of fully restoring diplomatic ties. They will now reopen embassies – a huge step. Is a return to the Arab League next?

“Syria and Saudi Arabia have agreed to reopen their embassies after cutting diplomatic ties more than a decade ago, three sources with knowledge of the matter said, a step that would mark a leap forward in Damascus’s return to the Arab fold,” Reuters reports.

The mutual embassy openings reportedly are the result of talks between the Saudis and a senior Syrian intelligence official. A source told Reuters they “preparing to reopen embassies after Eid al-Fitr,” in reference to a Muslim holiday in late April.

Most recently, the United Arab Emirates hosted Assad and his wife in an official visit – the first in well over a decade. 

The US and Israel have not been happy at these developments, and the Syria-Gulf rapprochement also comes in the context of Iran and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations. One source told Al Jazeera:

“The prevailing attitude can be defined as, ‘times have changed, the Arab Spring is history and the region is transitioning towards a new future, with new geopolitical characteristics,'” the official, who himself recently reconciled with Damascus after defecting to the Syrian opposition in the summer of 2011, added.

It seems the Gulf has been willing to recognize that the Syrian government won the decade-long war and move on, but not Washington. The US has continued its military occupation of northern Syria, and Israel has extended its bombing campaign, even this week with strikes on Aleppo international airport.

Saudi Arabia will reopen its embassy in Syria, joining a list of several regional countries that reestablished ties with Damascus after failing miserably to overthrow its government for over a decade. Condolences to Israel, US and UK for failing to isolate post-victory Syria

— Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) March 23, 2023

Far-reaching US sanctions are also still on. But regional leaders have been reaching out to Assad after the deadly earthquake which rocked Turkey and Syria, killing tens of thousands of people. 

Saudi Arabia and allies like Qatar and the UAE had helped the US spearhead regime change efforts in Damascus. Russia and Iran came to the aid of Syria, however, in a war that took hundreds of thousands of lives and left much of the country in rubble.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Defense attorneys in the Proud Boys seditious-conspiracy trial in Washington D.C. learned late March 22 that one of their own defense witnesses who was about to testify had worked as an FBI informant for at least 22 months.

They asked for an emergency hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly and filed a motion to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to disclose if the witness has been spying on the defense team.

Judge Kelly suspended the trial until March 24 and converted March 23 from a day of testimony into a motions hearing.

Zachary Rehl, one of five Proud Boys defendants, filed a motion on behalf of his co-defendants seeking a court order to compel prosecutors to disclose any recordings or reports made by confidential human sources (CHS)—informants—about the defendants and their attorneys.

Defense attorney Carmen Hernandez said the information given to the defense team on March 22 raises “serious and substantiated allegations of governmental misconduct surrounding the surreptitious invasion and interference of the defense team by the government through a confidential human source, at the government’s behest.”

Judge Kelly ordered prosecutors to file a response to the motion by 1 p.m. EDT on March 23. A hearing on the matter will begin at 3 p.m.

The trial began Dec. 19, 2022, in U.S. District Court. Prosecutors wrapped up their case on March 17.

Defense Witness was Prosecution Informant

After the close of testimony on March 22, prosecutors disclosed that a witness on the defense list who was due in court on March 23 had worked as an FBI informant from April 2021 through to at least January 2023.

“During this period of time, the CHS [informant] has been in contact via telephone, text messaging, and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant,” the motion said.

“The CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families. The CHS also engaged in discussions with one of the defendant’s family members about replacing one of the defense counsel.”

Defendants in the trial include Rehl, former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, and Dominic Pezzola.

The men are accused of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings, obstruction of official proceedings, and conspiracy to prevent certain federal officers from performing their duties at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Tarrio, Rehl, Nordean, and Biggs face nine criminal counts, while Pezzola is charged with 10.

Disclosure of the FBI informant demonstrates “that there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the government’s explanation and justification for withholding information about the CHSs [informants] who have been involved in the case,” Hernandez wrote.

It was the second time in March that privileged attorney-client communication became the center of controversy.

On March 8, FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller disclosed that investigators had been monitoring communications between Rehl and his now-former attorney, and discussing his trial strategy among themselves.

Defense attorneys also discovered a hidden tab in an FBI evidence spreadsheet containing some of Miller’s emails, “in which the FBI agent admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” according to a March 9 court filing (pdf).

The defense motion called the discovery “a clear and flagrant Sixth Amendment violation” that “screams for a dismissal.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Fang Bingxing – considered the ‘father of China’s Great Firewall’, are joining OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk in raising concerns regarding the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI).

“We’ve got to be careful here,” the 37-year-old Altman told ABC News last week, adding “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.”

“I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation … Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyber-attacks.”

That said, Altman also thinks it could be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed.”

OpenAI is the company behind Chat GPT, which launched “GPT-4” less than two weeks ago. The highly sophisticated chatbot can reach almost perfect scores on SAT math tests, and achieve a 90% on the US bar exam.

And it has competitors…

Other AI-based startups are making surprising advancements in the field as well. RAD AI recently launched the first AI marketing platform built to understand emotion, and some of the largest companies on the planet are already using it.

GenesisAI is a startup building a marketplace to allow for any business to integrate AI and automation into their business. Meaning soon AI might be just as much of an integral part of a business as employees themselves. –Benzinga

According to Altman, however, ChatGPT-4 uses deductive reasoning vs. memorization, which can lead to inaccurate results.

“The thing that I try to caution people the most is what we call the ‘hallucinations problem’” Altman told ABC News. “The model will confidently state things as if they were facts (but they) are entirely made up.”

Altman thinks there is a need for regulation of AI in general.

“There will be other people who don’t put some of the safety limits that we put on,” he said. “Society, I think, has a limited amount of time to figure out how to react to that, how to regulate that, how to handle it.”

Also concerned over GPT-4 and similar AI is Fang Bingxing, the father of China’s so-called Great Firewall.

According to Fang, such chatbots can lead to an “information cocoon” (as opposed to the free flow of information in China?)

“People’s perspectives can be manipulated as they seek all kinds of answers from AI,” he told Red Star News, a media affiliate to state-backed Chengdu Economic Daily, as reported by SCMP.

Fang, a computer scientist and former government official, is widely considered the chief designer of China’s notorious internet censorship and surveillance system. He played a key role in creating and developing the Great Firewall, a sophisticated system of internet filters and blocks that allows the Chinese government to control what its citizens can access online.

The Great Firewall has been fortified over the past decade, blocking Chinese netizens’ access to a wide range of foreign websites and online services including Facebook, Twitter and Google. -SCMP

Fang also warned that when AI evolves further, it could pose a threat to humanity.

“Now it’s simply software used in an online chat-like scenario. If it’s incorporated into robots and cars, we need to stay vigilant for the potential harm they could do to humans.”

Regular readers are aware that over the years we have become big fans of real-time card (both credit and debit) spending data as tracked by one of the largest US banks, Bank of America, which makes “big data” observations on its massive card portfolio available to clients. After all, it was Bank of America’s card data that allowed us to correctly predict that the February retail sales would be blowout (if one-time) number, multiples higher than consensus…

… and just days later, to also predict that the subsequent, February retail sales number would see a dramatic slump now that the bevy of one-time stimulus benefits had passed. We were right again.

This matters, because now that the Fed has effectively capitulated its tightening campaign by handing over the disinflationary responsibilities to the ongoing bank crisis – with Jerome Powell explicitly saying in the latest FOMC statement that “recent developments are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring, and inflation”, getting the latest card data has become absolutely paramount as it would demonstrate whether Powell’s hypothesis is accurate, and if so, it would justify the Fed’s de facto end of its tightening campaign (and imminent rate cuts and then QE).

Unfortunately, there is still no update from Bank of America on its latest card spending data… but yesterday Citi – the world’s largest credit card issuer globally – was kind enough to release its own credit card data and boy, is it a doozy.

As Citi’s Paul Lejuez writes in the latest “Citi’s Credit Card Insights” report (available to professional subs), the bank’s credit card data for the 16 sub-sectors it tracks show that total spending in March wk 3 (ended 3/18/23) decreased 10.3%, a big deceleration vs March wk 2 (-6.8%), and driven by a high-single digit decline in transactions. Ex-Food, spending decreased even more, tumbling by 13.0% vs -8.1% in March wk 2.

As Lejuez notes, “This was the first week of data following the disruption within the financial sector, and we were curious if it might have had an impact on the consumer. It sure did” and as Citi goes on to note, the third week of March, and the first week after America’s regional banks imploded, “was the biggest decline in total retail spending we have seen since the pandemic began (April 2020).”

In total, March is off to a much slower pace than Feb (-8.3% MTD vs Feb -6.0%), with Citi seeing broad based deceleration across sectors with only one sector (Jewelry) accelerating. And that was probably to buy gold as a hard asset to diversify away from the dollar.

Here, some call-outs:

• (1) Household Items remain weak with Appliances, Home Furnishings, and Electronics all down double digits,
• (2) Jewelry saw a big acceleration and was the second strongest performing sector (in absolute terms) in March wk 3. Jewelry has been very volatile over the past several weeks;
• (3) Cosmetics still topped the charts of absolute performance YoY (+8.0%), though the category is now well below the +30-40% trend we saw in Dec and Jan.

Turning to the chart below which shows sub-sector acceleration/deceleration in March wk 3 vs March wk 2, we find that in March week 3 compared to March week 2, we saw an acceleration only in Jewelry. We saw a deceleration in Home Improvement, Footwear/Shoe Stores, Electronics, Cosmetics Stores, Home Furnishings, Mass/Dollar/Off-price, Eyewear/Optometry, Aftermarket Auto Parts/Service, Apparel, Pet Shops, Dept Stores, and Sporting Goods Stores.

And a few words on the methodology (more in the full note available to pro subs):

Citi is the world’s largest credit card issuer globally, and in conjunction with our Innovation Lab colleagues, we look at credit card data for many different sub-sectors of retail. Though we cannot see individual retailer transactions (due to legal limitations), we believe looking at the data at a sub-sector level is helpful to assess industry and overall spending trends as a part of building an investment mosaic.

It sure is helpful, and what it shows is that if the Fed indeed was secretly hoping to have a contained bank failure “crisis” (it remains to be seen if the crisis can and will be contained) in order to hammer the primary pillar of US growth – consumer spending which accounts for 70% of GDP – and thus, latent reflationary forces, it has finally succeeded and the only thing that can avert a crushing recession or worse in the coming months, is for the Fed and Congress to finally realize that any hope of a normalization of the US boom-bubble-bust cycle is dead and buried, and the best officials can do is kick the can, buy the US a few more quarters and unleash the stimmies once again, both monetary and fiscal.

Because when you are in the endgame, you might as well admit you are in the endgame and at least extend your existence for a few more days.

Much more in the full citi note available to pro subs.

Early in the day Thursday China’s military said it monitored and then drove away a US warship which had “illegally” entered China-claimed waters of the South China Sea.

The Southern Theatre Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) charged that the guided missile destroyer USS Milius entered waters of the disputed Paracel Islands before being warned and driven away. Washington and its allies have long rejected that these are territorial waters of China, after Beijing embarked years ago on the militarization of multiple island chains in the region. 

China presented that it had forced the US destroyer to exit the area, however, the US Navy’s 7th fleet is rejecting the claims.

Calling it a routine operation in international waters, the US Navy’s Lt. j.g. Luka Bakic responded by saying, “USS Milius is conducting routine operations in the South China Sea and was not expelled,” and that “The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.”

But a Chinese military spokesman is still calling it an “illegal incursion into Chinese territorial waters … without permission from the Chinese government, harming peace and stability” in the region.

“The theatre forces will maintain a high state of alert at all times and take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security and peace and stability in the South China Sea,” the PLA spokesman added. 

The Paracels are claimed by US allies Vietnam and Taiwan, making encounters among rival vessels turn into tense standoffs going back years.

The US side in the past has presented these as ‘innocent passages’ – asserting that it is the right of all vessels under international marine law as reflected in the Convention on the Law of the Sea, which means is that permission is not required to transit. But China will continue to challenge this interpretation.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

USA Today has picked a trans-identified male as it’s ‘woman of the year’ for a second time running, and this time it’s someone who advocates for child sex changes.

The media outlet has chosen Leigh Finke as its ‘woman of the year’ for Minnesota. Finke was the first transgender legislator to be appointed to the Minnesota House of Representatives in November.

Today, @USATODAY released their Women of the Year project, picking one woman to represent each state, and they have selected me as Woman of the Year for Minnesota. https://t.co/cOKwoMrD9b

— Leigh Finke (@leighfinke) March 19, 2023

USA Today says the awards are a way of highlighting “local and national heroines who make a positive impact in their communities every day.”

Finke has made it a priority to ensure children are allowed to have access to gender altering surgery, recently sponsoring a bill to make Minnesota a “trans refuge state.”

As we highlighted last week, the Democrat Governor and lieutenant governor of the state are on an executive mission to force state agencies to push “gender-affirming” health care.

Elon Musk Hits Back At ‘Protect Trans Kids’ Democrat Lieutenant Governor

Governor Tim Walz has labeled efforts to halt trans surgery on children as “persecution,” vowing to “make sure that Minnesota’s place as a welcoming, loving, neighborly state where you are welcome and will be free of persecution or anything else that we’re trying to see in some other states.”

Minnesota is also one of the states where shocking trans and gay porn books have been placed into school libraries, seemingly unbeknownst to school officials.

Video: Mother Reads Shocking Gay Porn Material Found In Minnesota School Direct To Board Members

USA Today now has a habit of picking biological men as ‘woman of the year’, having last year decided that Biden assistant secretary of health and human services Rachel Levine was worthy of the award.

Babylon Bee Suspended by Twitter Over Parody Article About Rachel Levine

There is a pattern developing here:

Figures: White House Gives International Women Day of Courage Award To A Biological Male

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Chevrolet announced Wednesday, “the sixth generation Chevrolet Camaro will retire at the conclusion of the model year 2024,” indicating the last of these iconic muscle cars will leave the production line at the Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in Michigan in January. 

“As we prepare to say goodbye to the current generation Camaro, it is difficult to overstate our gratitude to every Camaro customer, Camaro assembly line employee and race fan,” Scott Bell, vice president of Global Chevrolet, said in a statement. He did not say what would replace the muscle car but added, “this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”

The current sixth-generation Camaro has been at dealerships since the 2016 model year and has seen a sales slump. 

When the current generation Camaro came out in 2016, Chevrolet sold 72,705 of them.

But by the end of 2021 that number fell almost 70% to 21,893. –NYPost 

Chevrolet spokesman Trevor Thompkins provided Detroit Free Press with insight on what could be next for Camaros. 

“Chevrolet made the decision now as a part of continuously evaluating our portfolio offerings for progress toward our EV future and sales demand.”

And what this could mean is an EV Camaro-style muscle car could be next. Chevrolet has previously teased this image. 

It remains uncertain whether Chevy muscle car enthusiasts will embrace an electric vehicle future. We doubt many won’t. 

Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is being accused of using obscure conspiracy laws to target conservatives.

For example, violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act ordinarily would bring a year in prison. But in the last year, a host of sidewalk counselors at abortion facilities have been charged with both FACE violations and Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights for posting to Facebook about where they would gather.

The conspiracy charge adds a potential 10-years in federal prison.

Douglass Mackey, 31, is on federal trial this week in the Eastern District of New York for posting a satirical meme under the Twitter handle “Ricky Vaughn” in 2016, advising voters they could vote for Hillary Clinton for president via text message or social media.

The DOJ charged him five years later, in 2021, with Conspiracy Against Rights ( 18 U.S. Code § 241), which carries up to 10-years in prison.

“This is a law that was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, designed to protect the rights of newly freed slaves in the post-civil war South to vote,” James Lawrence, attorney for the Douglass Mackey Defense Fund told The Epoch Times. “Understandably, there were threats to the physical safety of those people with respect to the Ku Klux Klan, and that’s why this is a provision from the Ku Klux Klan Act.”

Passed in 1871, the Conspiracy Against Rights code within the Ku Klux Klan Act has two parts:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution—
Or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

They shall be fined or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

Intent to Interfere

There is no mention in the act of posting political memes.

But the DOJ said in its indictment that Mackey, “together with others, conspired to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States”—that is, the right to vote.

It is a statute that has been used historically to go after conduct that is identified in the statute, which is conspiring to physically interfere with someone’s constitutional rights.

Read more here…

New York City has the highest per-day cost for a typical business trip among all destinations in the world, according to the consulting firm ECA International, which tracks expenses for accommodation at four-star hotels, meals, transportation via taxis, beverages, and other miscellaneous costs.

ECA said business travelers in 2022 spent, on average, $796 per day in The Big Apple, increasing 8% from the prior year. Rising inflation from hotel rates to food to transportation was the primary divers in soaring costs. 

After New York City was Geneva at $700 per day, then Washington, D.C., at around $658, Zurich at $641, and San Francisco at around $600.

“Climbing inflation rates were a major factor in the increase in travel costs, while a pandemic-fueled drop in demand led to more affordable rates in places like China,” Bloomberg pointed out. 

Paris was the least expensive, with average daily costs of $557 per day. 

The good news for companies that are cost-cutting and reducing headcount to weather the inflation storm and economic downturn spurred by the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rates hikes in a generation that has already sparked a regional banking crisis is the continued move towards Zoom calls rather than travel.

In a separate report, the Global Business Travel Organization said one in five travel managers said their companies have begun to limit business travel due to rising costs. 

Avoid travel. Take a Zoom call. Cathie Wood would appreciate that.