Month: March 2024

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

“Rotations”

We will use the term “rotation” a bit more broadly today. Yes, it will incorporate what we typically think of as rotations, but will be broadened to encompass “pivots” and “evolution” if not “rethinking.”

The areas of focus today will be:

• U.S. Equity Markets
• The Fed on Inflation
• Crypto
• Carry Trades
• Private Credit

Each of these is important for overall markets and represent, to some degree, “rotations.”

U.S. Equity Markets

I’ve been particularly bearish on the Nasdaq 100 which, despite all the hype, closed lower to end March than where it closed on March 1st. While I’ve liked energy, I have not committed to the “laggard” trade, like we did in late fall/early winter last year. Back then we were reduced to Wayne’s World and Beavis and Butt-Head to support what was a largely contrarian (and seemingly illogical) view.

While I’ve been struggling to become constructive on the Nasdaq 100 (IGIW in A Day for Acronyms), it certainly makes sense to revisit the broad market and the potential for another big rotation like we saw late last year.

I’m so sick of hearing about the Mag 7, Fab 4, or whatever (Time to Retire Mag 7 Moniker) and that it is at the 22nd all-time high on this run for the S&P 500, that I’m looking for anything to steer me away from that. The Russell 2000, suddenly outperforming, is interesting.

This has been a market driven by AI, AI proxies, and anything that has been “deputized” into the AI space. That is where the performance has been concentrated.

#AI at a reasonable price via Citi pic.twitter.com/shX7MokT20

— JE$US (@WallStJesus) March 31, 2024

That is where I question whether markets, investors, or even corporations have gotten ahead of themselves on what AI can deliver today, especially versus the costs of implementing it today.

It is refreshing to see a bounce in some other areas. Energy and mining have done well of late. The regional bank index seems to be trying to break back to levels last seen before some smaller banks faced pressure and required some immediate investments.

This is occurring while ARKK, one of my favorite proxies for “innovative” stocks, bounces around, roughly unchanged from the middle of February. That is even with a resumption of the IPO market, which I would have expected to provide a “knee jerk” bounce to that ETF. It didn’t, which is somewhat encouraging, as it could be taken (and I’m taking it this way) that there is a lot of thought going into picking stocks and sectors (yes, a LOT of the thought is to BUY AI) which seems healthy.

Is this rotation real?

Are we set for another period of significant outperformance by small caps? I could be convinced of that, quite easily, in fact. We’ve hit that point in the rally, where even some of the biggest bulls are seeing signs of excessive exuberance.

But (and this is a big but), will it occur like late last year, when the outperformance occurred in a very positive market, or will it occur in a decline?

I’m starting to eye outperformance for more sectors than just energy (which has been my focus), but while I can see energy going up, even amidst a decline in the Nasdaq 100, I’m not sure that I can see the same for the Russell 2000.
Leaning towards a rotation, but the outperformance seems likely to be losing less, rather than making more.

The Fed on Inflation

Clearly the Fed seems to be getting more comfortable with some level of inflation above 2%. While they haven’t officially changed their target, they seem to be willing to ease monetary policy, even while inflation remains closer to 3% than 2%.

The Fed’s “preferred” measure of inflation came in at 2.5% on Friday (core was slightly higher).

There are three things I think are worth pointing out:

• The “favorite” measure, whether by design or coincidence, has struggled to be above 2% for extended periods. It is almost like you pick a favorite measure that lets you bias policy towards easing, since it doesn’t often or naturally get above 2%. Above 2.5% is almost an anomaly for this metric.

• Remember back when we were finally getting above 2% inflation, and the Fed “rotated” from a sort of “hard target” to an “average target?” The Fed shouldn’t react to inflation above 2% after extended periods below 2% because they have to think in terms of averages, not absolutes. If that thinking was prominent today, we would need deflation for a year or two, to get averages back to below 2% (depending on whether you are thinking in terms of 1-to-3-year averages, or 5-to-10-year averages).

• Transitory. Enough said, other than that it highlights a propensity within the Fed towards easier money, rather than tighter fiscal policy.

The Fed has “rotated” into methodologies and views that let them be more dovish than might otherwise be expected. That is happening right now, but their thought process hasn’t always worked.

This “rotation” should largely be expected, but it is fully priced in. However, is the risk balanced appropriately if the data comes in “soft enough” (under their new “guidelines”) to allow for more cuts, or for it to be “inflationary enough” that the Fed winds up disappointing markets?

On the bright side, markets seem to be moving far more on economic data (which has been strong) than overreacting to Fed jawboning. The equity market rallied strongly even as multiple rate cuts were priced out of the market.

Really not sure what conclusion to draw from this latest “rotation” of Fed thinking, other than it seems to be their predilection to find ways to “pivot” to easier monetary policy. However, their track record for being able to follow through has been mixed.

Crypto

I remember back when Bitcoin was “better than money” and a mechanism for transacting (someone bought a pizza for 10 coins). I also remember when Bitcoin was an inflation hedge. I remember when Long Island Iced Tea became Long Blockchain Corp and rallied. I also vaguely remember things similar to this occurring regarding the metaverse, and of late, how everything suddenly has an “AI” component (either in its function or design).

One thing that has been consistent about crypto is that it has always been about adoption.

The reasons for adoption have changed, but the need for new adoption, and the ability to attract it, has been crucial to timing Bitcoin markets.

Now, as far as I can tell, the Bitcoin argument has simplified to:

• Scarcity. There is a limit to the number of ones and zeros that can be created. I rarely hear “use” cases any longer, so scarcity has bubbled to the surface.
• On a more technical note, we have the “halving.” The reward for mining is cut in half, as Bitcoin makes new supply more “scarce.” The halving has accompanied rallies in the past, therefore, it will again, especially since it is tied to “scarcity” which is now the main selling point.

So, the scarcity argument is now designed to drive RIAs into Bitcoin. Bitcoin was so “complex” that RIAs managing billions couldn’t figure out how to do it. But now, the ease of ETFs (which should be anathema to Bitcoin purists) is the ticket to adoption and success.

Bitcoin ETF assets grew to around $55 billion late last week.

• Bitcoin ETFs started with a massive head start as GBTC, formerly a Unit Trust, converted to an ETF.
• Bitcoin was around $40k when the ETFs were launched and is now at $70k, helping the asset size grow.
• So, there has been some adoption, but:
  • It has been a drop in the bucket (somewhere around $10 billion in new money) for an “asset” worth $1.4 trillion.
  • Even some big proponents have been commenting on how relatively small flows have outsized price moves associated with them.

Maybe the scarcity, halving, and “RIA adoption” story is enough? Certainly, Bitcoiners have been awesome at creating and evolving their rationale as to why you need to own Bitcoin.

This “pivot” or “rotation” on what is used to create FOMO is impressive, but I’m still not getting a strong sense of greater adoption. Yes, in our world, if it keeps going up, it will gather more adoption as FOMO kicks in. However, a decline seems unlikely to trigger a buying opportunity, at least in the minds of many RIAs who admit a 1% allocation is small, but also don’t see buying anything they don’t believe in.

Finally, on the theme of rotations, Gensler rotated into approval. Part of me now wonders if, in the back end, many will rue the day that the ETFs were created. One thing that seemed prevalent in the “old days” of crypto was the inability to substantiate claims, or even sue. I wonder if that is changing?

Wouldn’t short this here, but it seems incredibly overdone based on “scarcity,” the “halving,” and ETF adoption, which just doesn’t seem that great relative to the size of Bitcoin.

Ethereum, and some others that are still sticking to “use” cases other than scarcity, could be more interesting over time.

Carry Trades

So far, with the most dovish hike ever, the Japanese Yen has retained its use for funding carry trades. There has been some concern expressed that a hawkish Bank of Japan could upset the carry trade “apple cart” but yields are still a fraction of what

they are elsewhere in the world, they sound dovish, and the Yen is weakening, even with the potential for some intervention.
There has been no rotation in the carry trade, but that is something to watch.

Private Credit

I’m extremely comfortable with private credit, but we are running out of time and space today, so that will get its own piece later this week.

While baseball is often referred to as “America’s favorite pastime”, American football has long surpassed baseball as the nation’s favorite sport to watch.

For several reasons, including first and foremost its better suitability for television, football flew by baseball in the 1960s and hasn’t looked back since.

In recent years, baseball has even been surpassed by basketball, as younger audiences prefer the action-packed, star-studded NBA over what many young viewers consider the dragging affair of a three-hour baseball game.

As Statista’s Felix Richter shows in the following chart, baseball does in fact have a problem reaching younger audiences, which may become a problem for the Major League Baseball in the not-too-distant future.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to Statista Consumer Insights, 64 percent of U.S. sports fans aged 55 to 64 follow baseball, while just 43 percent of those aged 25 to 34 and 34 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds do the same.

While American football is still the clear number 1 among sports fans above the age of 25, basketball has surpassed it in popularity among 18 to 24-year-olds.

Authored by Donald Jeffries via ‘I Protest’ Substack,

Spring is in the air, to quote a time honored expression. The atheists must really struggle at this time of year. Observing the plants and the flowers magically blossoming forth, the birds and crickets chirping. The renewal of life. It must be very hard to attribute all that beauty and loveliness to sterile randomness.

I feel sorry for those who don’t live in climates where the change of seasons is so visible. Who don’t get to watch the leaves turning golden and red and yellow in the fall. Or watch the birds flying south for the winter. But spring is truly special. It symbolizes the Resurrection which we celebrate on Easter Sunday. The coming back to life. Jesus rising from the dead was instantly recognized for the danger to the established order that it represented. You can read in the Bible where Matthew notes that “the Jews” were spreading the lie that his disciples had stolen his body from the tomb. This would probably be a popular view among secularists today, if they even acknowledged that Jesus Christ ever existed.

If Jesus rose from the dead, something which is scientifically impossible for human beings to do, this would automatically prove that he was the Son of God. Thus, such a concept must be ridiculed by all the usual suspects. The same thing holds, of course, for the Immaculate Conception. To those of us who believe in God, there is no problem accepting that the unfathomable being who created our world could impregnate a woman without sexual intercourse. Or die and then rise from the dead. The coldhearted eugenicists who rule this world have no time for anything supernatural, especially when it concerns a Creator who will one day judge us all. Instead, they try to distract us with black holes and big bangs.

Looking at the title of my little missive, you may be asking just what squatters have to do with Easter. Well, nothing directly perhaps, but they are suddenly in the news, and it is Easter time. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how someone can just break into an empty home, and then be considered the legal occupants. Even for our monstrously corrupt society, with its open borders and misgendered pronouns, this is incomprehensible. We are told that “the law” sometimes protects the squatters, and not the homeowners, or renters whose names are on the lease. I suppose that makes as much sense as men giving birth, or “White Supremacy” being responsible for the epidemic of Blacks physically attacking Asians.

When your entire civilization has gone mad, your laws will reflect that. So a classless, uneducated public official like Fani Willis is protected by the law. But a guy selling pillows, like Mike Lindell, is driven into bankruptcy and may well be prosecuted for expressing the view held by millions, that the 2020 election was fraudulent. One of the career criminals going around and sucker punching women in New York is released without bail every time. But the January 6 political prisoners are denied bail, and some still sit behind bars, over three years later, denied all due process. If that doesn’t sound like lunacy, I don’t know what would. We are dealing with something far beyond mere corruption. It is not even simple insanity. It is as if the Joker, the Riddler, and other comic book villains were placed in power, and all had a tyrannical political agenda.

As I mull over what will be in my Easter basket tomorrow (and yes, at sixty seven, I still get one), I think of all the homeless American citizens, forced to live a prehistoric existence on the streets. Sure, it’s often because of drug abuse or alcoholism, and more often from mental illness that goes untreated because the mental health facilities have largely shut down. But they are still human beings, who’ve probably paid a lot of taxes over the years. How must they feel as they watch the illegal immigrants- some of them undoubtedly alcoholics, drug addicts, and mentally ill- be given shelter in school gyms or even five star hotels? Depending on the source, the illegals are apparently getting as much as $2200 a month from our government as well. Even the craziest of the homeless must be irked by the fact these policies are being promoted by real lunatics.

Opening the border irrationally to unvetted migrants is about as insane as it gets. Or is it? Wouldn’t allowing squatters to take over someone’s legal property be even more insane? I suppose if you’re demented enough to allow all these people to enter the country illegally, many of them suspiciously enough young males of prime military age, then permitting squatters to possess the homes of those who bought or rented them is the next illogical step. What next? If a squatter or migrant wants your child, can they just snatch it? And if you can’t catch them running away, do they now have “possession” of your child? Every carjacker should be complaining about this. Don’t they essentially “squat” in someone else’s car? If they’re able to drive off with it, doesn’t it become their possession? What’s the difference?

This whole squatting thing opens up a lot of possibilities. Many, if not most men have coveted their neighbor’s wife at some point. That’s probably the one Commandment that has been broken more than any other. So, would “coveter” rights be any more ridiculous than squatter rights? If you can snatch his wife, and get her inside your own house, does that now make her your wife? True, if you had a wife of your own there already, that would certainly complicate things. But the absurd premise is the same. You could expand upon the whole squatter concept to include any property. If a squatter can take your home, they certainly have a right to your large flat screen TV. Or your high-end computer. Or your top of the line cell phone. Based on the squatter defense, all thieves should be released from prison.

What is odd here is that I haven’t heard of any cases of actual homeless Americans squatting in someone’s property, and the law basically giving it to them. Maybe it has happened. I’m certainly no expert on squatting. The whole concept baffles me as much as all the sudden deaths baffle doctors and scientists. And why isn’t the Left up in arms about all this? After all, isn’t every legal occupant of a property “indigenous?” The Left pays a lot of lip service to indigenous people. I guess there are no such things as indigenous homeowners. I don’t know how the law reacts to those without shelter staying in one of the many abandoned buildings littering the landscape of America 2.0, but my guess is they probably treat them less gently than they treat squatters who just take over someone’s home.

We appear to have gone way beyond “adverse possession,” which permits squatters to take over a property if they haven’t been evicted for a long period of time, in some of these recent cases. A woman in Queens, New York recently was placed in handcuffs and arrested, for changing the locks on her property. She did this to keep out the squatter who’d been occupying her property, which she inherited from her recently deceased parents. Because he was there for over thirty days, he has a legal right to occupy under New York City law. Just another reason not to live in New York I guess. Squatters have taken over 1,200 homes in Atlanta alone. Someone really ought to tell the homeless crapping in the streets. Squatting certainly beats living in a tent.

A recent headline read, “Squatters Are Taking Over Homes All Over the Nation.” According to the article, “Many states have laws that make it exceedingly difficult to get squatters out once they have settled in.  In some cases, squatters are able to live rent free in beautiful homes for months or even years.” Does that make any sense? What kind of “law” would allow something like that? Would sane leaders permit something like this? Say what you want about Ron DeSantis, but the guy does produce some reasonable legislation once in a while. He recently signed a bill that protects the rights of homeowners against squatters. Multiple squatters had caused some $40,000 in damages to just one Florida property.  “If we don’t have private property rights, we will not have a free society,” DeSantis said.

Squatters really fit perfectly into a crumbling society where deranged transgenders and antagonistic illegal invaders are coddled by the authorities. Leonel Moreno, an illegal from Venezuela, recently made the news when he angrily urged his fellow invaders to start taking possession of American properties. Moreno claimed to have received $350 a week in government handouts since entering the U.S. illegally and bragged about earning $1,000 a day as a TikTok influencer. He has ties to a violent gang. So how could he not have tons of followers on social media? Maybe he can get the “Woke” lunatics in Congress to pass legislation to make it a “hate crime” to oppose squatters. Perhaps they can give squatters the sweet deal some migrants are getting. Free healthcare. Free housing. More money every month than the average Social Security recipient gets. If you oppose that, you’re a “threat to democracy.”

How do you even analyze these batshit crazy situations? It’s like trying to determine why someone thinks they’re Napoleon. Only now, he might be running a government agency, instead of sitting in a quiet and comfortable padded room. The padded rooms were in those antiquated mental health institutions, which were largely emptied during the Reagan years. I read and admired the work of renegade Dr. Thomas Szasz as a youngster. Quoted from his book “The Manufacture of Madness.” Forty five years later, we’ve manufactured a lot of real madness. Madness that seems to run our government, and our corporate world. So now we have a lethal combination of corruption, incompetence, and insanity to contend with, in America 2.0.

So if you go to church on Easter Sunday, lock all your doors. Hopefully you have a loud dog to scare off any intruders. Which is what “squatters” are. Just like “undocumented migrants” are illegal invaders. I guess in some parts of the country, if you go away for the Easter weekend, “squatters rights” might apply when you return. Don’t change the locks. You could wind up treated like a January 6 political prisoner. Enjoy the harmless secular stuff like the Easter Bunny, too. Easter should be a more religious holiday than Christmas. Born of a virgin birth is pretty remarkable, but being crucified and rising from the dead three days later is the foundation of our faith.

Enjoy your chocolate, but celebrate the Resurrection. And watch out for squatters.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Have you ever tried to break out of the orbit of a narcissist? It’s damn difficult. Their pattern of emotional abuse is designed to make you feel like the abuser, demoralizing you, sapping you of your vitality and agency.

They weaponize your humanity and feed off your guilt. When you finally summon the courage to divorce yourself from them that’s when the fangs really come out. That’s when their true face is revealed. And it’s nothing but scorn, derision and unfettered hatred.

Narcissists don’t love you. They love themselves.

I’m opening this article with that quick reminder of human psychology to set the stage for this week’s discussion of all things geopolitical. There ain’t no art in this piece folks, I’m too damn exhausted to craft the language.

Why am I exhausted? Running behind narcissists as they perp walk us towards World War III saps the energy of even the most resilient personality. The truly malignant narcissists that think they operate the levers of power over the world have realized that we are walking away from them.

And they are fucking angry. The feeling is very, very mutual.

Since the firing of VicToria “Cookies” Nuland from the State Department on March 5th (and make zero mistake she was fired) events surrounding Russia are accelerating. Last weekend’s attack on the Crocus Concert Hall in Moscow was supposed to originally happen on March 9th, apparently. It was to be timed with Joah BIi-Den’s! State of the Union address and meant as a severe warning to Russians to ‘make the right decision’ and vote against Vladimir Putin a week later.

That day the State Department issued a warning to all Americans to stay away from meetings, concert halls, etc. I think this was us finally acting like a grown up, because it begs a major question that doesn’t comport with unlimited US aggression towards Russia.

Why would we issue this warning knowing full well the Russians would respond to it and stop the attack?

It literally makes no sense. When Nuland is fired from the State Department, our first reaction was to see it as a shift in US foreign policy away from Russia and towards China. Toria lost a power play. See you at the auto show.

That sounds neat and compact… but is it the whole story?

Because then the attack actually happens two weeks later. A bunch of Tajiks go in, like the professional soldiers they are, shoot the place up and make their escape. Acting not at all in character for the ISIS head-choppers who were immediately blamed for this.

Pepe Escobar’s recent article on this is excellent and is worth the read. He goes through the timelines and traces a lot of important connections. But, as I was reading it I noticed that he ‘buried the lede,’ as i saw it.

Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).

The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.

The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.

Because the GGnG community sniffed out this angle almost immediately, linking in Khairullin’s post for us to ruminate on. This isn’t meant as a slight to Escobar. He was working a lot of angles in this story, parsing through everything to lead to a conclusion. That takes time and I’m glad he took it.

But for me, the MI6 angle is the first one to be considered in this attack, not the last one.

And the keys lie in that very timeline. Because, as opposed to assuming that the US is the catalytic agent for events here — easy to think because Nuland is involved — reframing this as a distinctly British operation (with help from rogue elements in the State Dept. and CIA, of course) yields a far more coherent narrative.

Remember, we’re dealing ultimately with narcissists here. Then let’s remember cui bono.

Because without assessing who benefits from this attack, we aren’t doing the analysis right. Moreover, I’m not trying to blame shift here away from the US. We are definitely a player here. But it’s defining who ‘we’ in the US is where the nuance lies.

What if Nuland was fired because knowledge of this attack finally reached the right people at State and the DoD? And they realized, rightly so, that an attack like this would make it nearly impossible for Putin to ignore and force his hand politically to escalate the war in Ukraine to a level that would justify to the people of the West that it was finally time for us to get involved over there.

You can hear the growing chat of “Putin must go” emanating from the think tanks on K Street and the halls of GCHQ.

Who wants that outcome? Who has been begging for that outcome for over two years? Who has staged provocation (Kerch, Nordstream, Bucha, hitting Russian ships in the Black Sea, ZNPP, etc.) after provocation to get Putin “on tilt?” Outside of Victoria Nuland’s office and Lindsay Graham, no one in the US has been fully committed to this the entire time.

Nikki Haley was finally forced out of the presidential race.

If anything, the longer this war goes on the less support Ukraine has gotten from the US, even from Bii-Den!. The shift in the US attitude towards Ukraine has been happening for over a year.

No, the people who have made the most noise are the gods-damned British, who Nuland certainly works hand-in-glove with. The French and German Greens have been just as full-throated, so continental Europe isn’t being spared here either.

So, now here’s what I think the real story is surrounding Crocus. Nuland, MI6, and likely the Turks put this thing together using ISIS-K Tajik mercenaries to kill a bunch of Russians. The operational goal was to keep the US from turning its back on the malignant narcissistic colonialist assholes in Europe who need this war but cannot fight it. That’s the Yanks’ job.

US leadership, already deep in plans to extricate themselves from Europe and pivot to China, warn the Russians on March 7th which scrubs the March 9th operation after sending the major signal that things in Ukraine will calm down by firing Nuland on March 5th.

This is what real statecraft looks like.

After that, the operation is still going forward but under someone else’s guidance (or just on auto-pilot). Nuland’s fingerprints are all over it. The US looks guilty as hell. What does evil do? It doesn’t sleep, it waits. And then we get the actual attack last weekend, after Putin wins a massive re-election. It still serves it’s primary purpose, force Putin’s hand.

Now, the kicker. Who issues notes of condolences to Russia for the attack? Shockingly, the US and NATO. In the past three years there hasn’t been one conciliatory utterance from Sec. of State Antony Blinken’s pie hole when it comes to Russia. He’s been the epitome of the anti-diplomat.

And yet, here he is issuing condolences to Russia. Then the US abstains from the UNSC council vote against Israel, another British project going completely haywire.

None of this tracks with the US and Russia are implacable enemies narrative folks. Not. One. Single. Bit. Of. It.

Now, guess who refused to even acknowledge the Russian loss of life? Yup … the UK.

Here’s Jeremy Hunt:

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has told Sky News that Britain has “very little confidence in anything the Russian government says.”

“We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tragedy when innocent people lose their lives, when you have horrible bombings,” Hunt said. Hunt further emphasized that London takes “what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt… after what we have seen from them over the last few years.”

Can you not feel how dirty Hunt felt having to even half-heartedly lament dead Russians? It’s beyond pathetic and inhuman, but then again, he’s a member of the British Political Elite… what else can you expect from these bloodless ghouls?

David Cameron has done nothing but lambaste the US for not ponying up more money for Ukraine. In effect blaming us for Ukraine’s losses. This is classic narcissistic bullying of the victim here.

But, the real revelation came from top EU diplomat Josep Borrell, who can always be counted on to show the world how one contracts foot-in-mouth disease. In a shocking display of truth telling Borrell finally told the world the reality behind Ukraine:

Translation of #Borrell’s statement:

Dear Americans, don’t dump #Ukraine on us. We don’t have money. We have elections coming soon and we may not be re-elected, given the situation in Europe. If you help and we are re-elected, we will do everything you say pic.twitter.com/JCYpaFs9t4

— Malinka 🔶️ (@Malinka1102) March 26, 2024

Remember, narcissists don’t love you. They love themselves. Note the direction of the clip, when Borrell is imploring Americans, cue the one-shot and the close up. This is all staged, my friends. This is the real truth and it’s a warning from Borrell.

So, in this context, Blinken’s condolences have to be taken as a real fig leaf to Putin. Sadly, both sides have to continue gearing up for future conflict because it’s the prudent thing to do, even if neither side wants it. Sound familiar? It’s reminiscent of the story of WWI.

The US was led into the trap in Ukraine by Nuland and her co-collaborators in MI6 and Europe over the past decade. All three players, the US, UK and Europe had reasons for Ukraine, but all were ultimately different.

In this month’s Gold Goats ‘n Guns Newsletter I laid out the full argument from all three sides:

Ukraine became the battleground physically for this. To the EU, the US and the UK, through their influence in Poland and the Baltics, were used to foment this war. Bankrupting them through war forces them back to being subjugated sources of raw materials while exporting EU laws and rules to those places which have the privilege (from their perspective) of doing business with them.

From all three players’ perspectives if Ukraine beat Russia, then they win. Putin is eventually deposed, Russia is humiliated, and the long-desired breakup of their land-based empire would commence. Europe gets their Great Reset. The UK gets to maintain control over the maritime empire, reclaiming NATO
control over the Black Sea, and forcing the Arab oil producers back in line. The US gets to leverage a fallen Russia to weaken China and stop the further integration of the BRICS into a competitor.

In short, the world would go back to the 1990’s when guys like Bill Browder were running around buying up everything and the Russian oligarchs Putin beat would be restored to power. Fukuyama would finally be right.

But, as I said, the real goal of this war wasn’t just getting Russia, they had to maneuver the US into a terminal state as well, through the costs of fighting a war we weren’t capable of sustaining. And that was the bridge too far for US interests not beholden to the ghost of Trotsky and the tears of Bill Kristol.

And now you have the ‘who benefits’ from this operation. The US saw no upside in brutally killing hundreds of Russian civilians, knowing full well it would be US doing the majority of the fighting. The UK and EU need the US to do this because if the US comes out of this war unscathed (like in WWII) then the current arrangement will continue, and their plans for domination will fail.

And this is why these people have become so unhinged and so histrionic in the past few months as the US refuses to send more aid to Ukraine. It’s why Emmanuel Macron is pushing all-in, he’s a lame duck president easily sacrificed here. It’s why British perfidy behind the scenes has to be your first suspect in any act of horror. It’s why Germany is politically paralyzed between its gasping industrial class and the revolutionary Greens who actually run the government.

It’s why their hatred for the US is so nakedly apparent now. The US is trying to walk away from the old, sclerotic, malignant narcissists of Europe and they cannot handle it.

It’s almost like they are villains from the old Scooby Do cartoons… “And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those damned Russians.”

So, nothing…. not one fucking thing… is off the table from them.

They have the motive, means, and opportunity. On the US side of the ledger, Nuland’s actions can be understood through her genetic hatred of Russians. For the UK and Europe it’s their seat at the post-Globalism geopolitical table.

Removing Nuland removes a lot of the bureaucratic momentum. But it doesn’t mean that things change on a dime. Course corrections take time. This operation in Moscow was a long time in the making. It wasn’t going to be stopped. Delayed? Sure. But it actually happening speaks more to the other players involved not the US.

And that brings me to the Francis Scott Key bridge. As an event it deserves its own article, but I think you know where I’m going with this. There is a vanishingly small probability that this was an accident caused by an old ship with a spotty maintenance record, a Ukrainian captain, and an Indian crew.

All of those things are, in movie terms, “set dressing,” to create a plausibly deniable narrative. Bullshit, in other words. I have to hand it to whoever put this one together, it looks better thought out than the last half-dozen of these things. I guess the Writer’s Strike in Hollywood is actually over.

This was an attack on US soil by a foreign power. And the first group of people we’re supposed to think who did it was the Russians. Why? Revenge for Moscow, after we were set up to look like the ones who did that, to the people who matter… the ones making the decisions.

The fact that the US and Russia both have tried to deflect blame for both of these incidents away from the other is a very big tell. It says clearly that both sides are aware of the dangers these attacks on their sovereignty represent and are unwilling to use them as a casus belli. It’s the most encouraging part of all of this. Rational people are still trying to slow the climb up the escalatory ladder.

The problem is they aren’t in control of the situation. If the US wanted war with Russia, we’d already be there. That means someone else does.

Note the lack of “Russia did it!” coming from the US. Note now the FBI came out immediately, with no investigation, and said this was an accident, not an act of war, which it most likely was.

The question then is, “who committed the act?” We will never find out the truth to this but our prime suspect has to be the one who has the motive to get the US to go “on tilt” and move into position to defend Ukraine openly.

I’m not saying that Russia didn’t do it. Far from it. As a piece of 4th generational warfare, taking out this bridge at this moment in time is absolutely one of Russia’s best moves on the board, especially if Putin really is getting ready to up the ante on Kiev in the coming weeks. And I expect him to do just that.

Paralyzing the US logistically is the right move. But it also then invites a counter-attack from the US that Putin has studiously avoided for over eight years since he first put Russian forces into Syria in 2015.

No, I think this again is one of those “orgies of evidence” to frame Russia for something someone else did for very different reasons. And that reason is pure, unfettered, narcissistic revenge for the US having the temerity to walk away from its responsibilities (as they have defined them) in Europe.

These people have been very clear now for years, either the US goes along with their plans for the future or it will be destroyed from within. This attack on the Key bridge in Baltimore is a nightmare event, meant to be a catalyst for a breakdown of the US economy, creating chaos during an election year.

It could easily ripple through our property, debt and equity markets in the coming weeks. Attacking the US puts pressure there while lifting some of the focus away from the deterioration of Europe’s economy.

This is an event that the more I think about it the more it turns into an Agatha Christie novel, with everyone having motive to attack the US for entirely different reasons. So, I won’t come to any definitive conclusion here, even though you know who my prime suspects are.

But, suffice it to say that in the rage of narcissists, we will be spared nothing while being blamed for their slow, painful perp walk towards WWIII.

*  *  *

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Authored by Jeff Thomas via International Man,

Today, more than at any time previously, Westerners are justifying a move toward collectivist thinking with the phrase, “Capitalism has failed.”

In response to this, conservative thinkers offer a knee-jerk reaction that collectivism has also had a dismal record of performance. Neither group tends to gain any ground with the other group, but over time, the West is moving inexorably in the collectivist direction.

As I see it, liberals are putting forward what appears on the surface to be a legitimate criticism, and conservatives are countering it with the apology that, yes, capitalism is failing, but collectivism is worse.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is not classical logic, as Aristotle would have endorsed, but emotionalism that ignores the principles of logic.

If we’re to follow the rules of logical discussion, we begin with the statement that capitalism has failed and, instead of treating it as a given, we examine whether the statement is correct. Only if it proves correct can we build further suppositions upon it.

Whenever I’m confronted with this now oft-stated comment, my first question to the person offering it is, “Have you ever lived in a capitalist country?” That is, “Have you ever lived in a country in which, during your lifetime, a free-market system dominated?”

Most people seem initially confused by this question, as they’re residents of either a European country or a North American country and operate under the assumption that the system in which they live is a capitalist one.

So, let’s examine that assumption.

A capitalist, or “free market,” system is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by consumers and the open market, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

Today, none of the major (larger) countries in what was once referred to as the “free world” bear any resemblance to this definition. Each of these countries is rife with laws, regulations, and a plethora of regulatory bodies whose very purpose is to restrict the freedom of voluntary commerce. Every year, more laws are passed to restrict free enterprise even more.

Equally as bad is the fact that, in these same countries, large corporations have become so powerful that, by contributing equally to the campaigns of each major political party, they’re able to demand rewards following the elections, that not only guarantee them funds from the public coffers, but protect them against any possible prosecution as a result of this form of bribery.

There’s a word for this form of governance, and it’s fascism.

Many people today, if asked to describe fascism, would refer to Mussolini, black boots, and tyranny. They would state with confidence that they, themselves, do not live under fascism. But, in fact, fascism is, by definition, a state in which joint rule by business and state exists. (Mussolini himself stated that fascism would better be called corporatism, for this reason.)

In recognizing the traditional definition of fascism, there can be no doubt that fascism is the driving force behind the economies of North America and Europe.

In addition, the concept of any government taking by force from some individuals the fruits of their labour and bestowing it upon others is by no means free-market. It is a socialist concept. And, in any country where roughly half of the population are the recipients of such largesse, that country has, unquestionably, settled deeply into a socialist condition.

However, this is by no means a new idea. As Socrates asked Adeimantus:

Do not their leaders deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking care to preserve the larger part for themselves?

So, which is it? Are we saying here that these countries are socialist or fascist?

Well, in truth, socialism, fascism, and, indeed, communism are all forms of collectivism. They all come under the same umbrella.

So, what we’re witnessing is liberals, rightfully criticising the evils of fascism, but failing to understand it for what it is—a form of collectivism. Conservatives, on the other hand, do their best to continue to operate under their countries’ socialist laws, regulations, and regulatory bodies, whist continuing to imagine that a remnant of capitalism remains.

And so we return to the question, “Have you ever lived in a country in which, during your lifetime, a free-market system dominated?”

Such countries do exist. It should be pointed out, however, that even they tend to move slowly toward collectivism over time. (After all, it’s in collectivism that they gain their power.) However, some countries are “newer,” just as the US was in the early nineteenth century and, like the US, the governments have not yet had enough time to sufficiently degrade the economies that have been entrusted to them.

In addition, some citizenries are feistier than others and/or are less easy to convince that, by allowing themselves to be dominated by their governments, they’ll actually be better off.

Whatever the reasons, there are most certainly countries that are far more free-market than the countries discussed above.

But, what does this tell us of the future? What can be done to turn these great powers back to a more free-market system? Well, the bad news is that that’s unlikely in the extreme. To be sure, we, from time to time, have inspired orators, such as Nigel Farage or Ron Paul, who remind us what we “should” do to put these countries back on track, so that they serve the people of the country, rather than its leaders. But, historically, such orators have never succeeded in reversing the trend one iota.

History tells us that political leaders, in their pursuit of collectivism, never reverse the trend. They instead ride it all the way to the bottom, then bail out, if they can.

However, it is ever true that, in some locations in the world, there have always been free-market societies. Over time, they deteriorate under the hands of their leaders and, as they do, others spring up.

The choice of the reader is to look upon the world as his oyster—to assess whether he is more or less content with the country he’s in and confident that it will continue to be a good place in which to live, work, invest, and prosper, or, if not, to consider diversifying, or even moving entirely, to a more rewarding, more capitalist jurisdiction.

Editor’s Note: There are practical ways to maintain your financial freedom, even as your home country takes a dive to the bottom. Find out more in our free Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse.

Authored by Anthony Esolen via American Greatness,

What would be the state of a society in which a will to stupidity were united with a will to power?

When I first decided to study and teach literature as my life’s vocation, I foresaw the work ahead of me—to learn as much as I could about English letters. Was I still unread in the Victorian novel? That would have to change. Had I a blank area in early American? It would have to be filled. The idea, though, was not simply to cover this and check off that. It was to gain a broad view of the whole, to see the relations of one area to another, to hear Melville in conversation with Milton, to set Jay Gatsby off against Tom Jones, to hear the American strains of confidence and rule-breaking in Walt Whitman, and the no less American strains of reserve and fence-setting in Robert Frost.

But to study English literature is to open yourself to the literature of other nations, because English authors were never reading only English. You cannot have Chaucer without the three great Florentines: Dante, Petrarch, and, especially, Boccaccio. You cannot have the English romantics without the German romantics. If you want to best appreciate what is characteristic of Tudor and Stuart drama, with its boisterous violation of the “unities” of space and time as it whisks you from Rome to Alexandria and back, or lets pass sixteen years as Time himself comes on stage to tell you of it, you should become acquainted with the near contemporary drama of Racine and Corneille just across the water, with its classical concentration of action within a single day.

This, of course, is the work of a lifetime. I continue to learn languages and read literature I have never encountered before. But to call most of it “work” is to mistake its nature. It would be as if a self-described lover of art should drag himself from bed and mutter to his valet, “Dear me, I suppose I must go to the Sistine today. Paintings and paintings, nothing but paintings. Michelangelo, you know. Creation of man all the way to the what’s-it, with devils and bankers going one way and angels and decent sorts going the other. Molesworth, where is your mind wandering? Kindly hold the mirror so I can see myself.”

Yet that, as I see now, is the aim of our schools: to produce spoiled, self-satisfied graduates with the stolidity but not the innocence (and usually not the income) of an upper-class twit—a Bertie Wooster, if Bertie were sullen, debauched, and always in a state of political water-boiling. That is not the same as ignorance. I do not read Sanskrit, so I am largely ignorant of Sanskrit poetry. Had I more years ahead of me than I do, I might learn Sanskrit. I know something of the language, and I am piqued by the theology of Shankara, the greatest of commentators on the Rig-Vega. But I don’t have the years. Meanwhile, I have a Russian Bible that will provide my next re-introduction to the word of God, because when you know a language as poorly as I know Russian, you have to take things very slowly, and when you do that, you often see things that ease and fluency often miss, and these things can be small objects of wonder. It is like having to cross the woods afoot rather than driving along a road that cuts it in half. You might hear the ovenbird that way.

No, ignorance is one thing; we’re all going to be ignorant of most of the things there are to know. It used to be that a titan in mathematics, a Leonhard Euler, could be expert in all the areas of that subject; those days are gone. The topologist may be ignorant of Milton; that depends on his reading. But he is certainly going to be ignorant of most of the other branches of mathematics, simply because he has not got the time for them. Ignorance is one thing. Stupidity is another.

By stupidity, I do not mean mere dullness or sluggishness in the organ of understanding. I mean what the etymology suggests. You are stupid when you gape. The emperor Frederick II was called “Stupor Mundi,” “The Wonder of the World,” and to be stupefied still, in English, might suggest that you are overcome with astonishment. But stupidity has come to denote a gaping that is as far removed from wonder as possible. You are stupid when you gape indifferently at something excellent that you have the power to understand but without understanding it and without caring to, when you are unmoved by a beauty that you have the power to apprehend but you make sure you will not apprehend, when you shut the eyes of your soul against the goodness they might otherwise see.

Suppose you are trying to introduce a savage to a system of writing. He is ignorant of what the scratches and squiggles are supposed to say. Once you show him that they do speak, he should be interested, and if he has a lively mind, he will be like Sequoyah, who brought writing to the Cherokees. But if he has decided beforehand that nothing you have to show him is worth his time, he will be resolutely stupid: gaping on the thing and thinking that it is mere chicanery or foolishness or whatnot.

That sort of stupidity is what our schools are about. They do not teach young people about the glory of Melville, if they teach Melville at all, but about how Melville does or does not fit into some gridwork of identity politics, so that the work of art and intelligence itself, Moby-Dick, is left on the shore like a beached whale, dead and stinking, while onlookers in their stupidity hold their noses and pass by.

Nor is Melville an exceptional case. Consider what Milton thought the most beautiful thing in all of creation: the human form, male or female, as expressed most powerfully in the human face. Now consider how far we have gone to deny that such beauty, male or female in its characteristic manifestations, even exists. Suppose I say that ballet dancing or certain kinds of gymnastics most beautifully conform to the willowy beauty of the female body, while such things as weightlifting and football do not. I do not know which will cause me to be reviled more: my sense that the latter is awkward or my sense that the former is graceful and lovely. In this matter, I am required to be stupid and to gape in indifference at the one and the other.

It is the same with marriage and family life. Suppose I see a large family at a reunion. There are three or four generations, about fifty or sixty people in all. That’s by no means a lot, or at least it wasn’t when I was a boy, not when I had twenty-eight aunts and uncles and thirty-nine first cousins, and neighbor children had the like. I should be struck by the sheer human vitality. But if my first thought is that there are too many, that the women must have been pregnant too often, and that birth control would have solved the problem, I am stupid. I am like a savage who would rather dig under bark for grubs than learn how to plant seeds.

Now suppose that this will to stupidity is both the engine and the object of political power. When Sequoyah completed his syllabary of the Cherokee language, it took his people only a couple of years to see what a great gift he had given them. But if I were to say that Americans should learn to honor the religion without which their nation would never have been born and to be grateful for the gifts it conferred, even if they do not themselves believe in its teachings, I might as well hang a sign around my neck, inviting everyone, especially teachers, politicians, professional entertainers, and journalists, to spit on me and to make my name a byword from coast to coast. You must be stupid to be safe.

Readers may think of similar cases. Stupidity, apparently, is no obstacle to success in Google’s AI department; it is the royal road. Stupidity sells; stupidity is all the rage. Only someone stupid before the beauty of man and woman could suppose that a lopping-off here and a pin-the-tail there could turn one into the other, but dare to call out the stupidity, even in private, and you risk your career. I am not to honor my country; I am to be stupid before the contributions it has made to the world. I am not to be enthralled by the wonder of the cell and its intricate design: stupidity must reduce it to random jelly, as stupidity reduces the miraculous human being in the womb, with all its latent powers unfolding, to a wart, a tumor, or a parasite.

Hear, O America, the powers that be, the powers that be are united, and you must be stupid with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, or else.

Elon Musk-led Neuralink Corp. implanted a brain chip into the head of a 29-year-old man with quadriplegia. The paralyzed millennial was recently seen using what he described as “The Force” to move a computer cursor around the screen to play Civilization VI with his mind. This is further evidence that the ‘trans-humanism’ movement – the merger of humans and machines – is accelerating development, fundamentally improving human lives, or at least that’s what the billionaires are pitching. 

Editor Tim Hinchliffe of the tech blog The Sociable posted a creepy quote from a new report commissioned by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and conducted by RAND Europe and Frazer Nash Consulting that read:

“An ‘internet of bodies’ may also ultimately lead to an ‘internet of brains’, i.e. human brains connected to the internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks.” 

RAND describes a future of the Internet of Bodies ecosystem that may morph into the Internet of Brains, i.e., a network of brain-to-brain connectivity. This technology could find itself in the marketplace between 2035 and 2050. 

“Trans-humanism implies the adoption of considerably advanced technologies by 2050, including brain-to-brain communication and genetic enhancement, and thus depends on resolving the various scientific and engineering barriers currently characterizing the field,” the report said.

According to the report, the technological applications for this new brain network include:

• Wearable devices and implants for tracking and analyzing physiological and environmental data (e.g. biochips and implantable sensors). These technologies aim to achieve real-time continuous monitoring of physiological data to understand human health conditions and performance. 

• Sensory augmentation technologies such as hearing and retinal implants designed to improve or augment sensory activities, particularly vision and hearing. Smart prosthetics are a related category, including exoskeletons, i.e. whole-body robotic suits that enhance end users’ physical capabilities and improve their mobility, strength, endurance and other abilities.

• Brain-computer or brain-brain interfaces that establish direct communications between human brains and/or computer devices. 

The latest example of transhumanism is Neuralink’s brain chip…

The first human Neuralink patient, who is paralysed, controlling a computer and playing chess just by thinking. pic.twitter.com/eMt159JoIg

— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) March 21, 2024

If and when humans become fully integrated with machines, is this just a march towards digital slavery? 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

I have said it many times in the past but I think it bears repeating once again: If you want to understand why world events happen the way they do, you must understand the goals and influence of globalist institutions. You must accept the fact that these people create most of the national and international disasters you and I have to deal with on a regular basis and oftentimes they create these disasters deliberately.

Yes, I know, there are plenty of skeptics out there that think all geopolitics and crisis events are random or a product of bureaucratic stupidity; and those people are wrong. They have no idea what they’re talking about because they’re basing this conclusion on assumptions rather than facts and research. Make no mistake, there’s a good reason why it feels like the whole world has gone crazy all at once.

The primary purpose of the globalists is to erase national borders and homogenize all countries and cultures under one economic and governmental system. They have openly admitted to this plan on numerous occasions. One of the most revealing quotes on the agenda comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine that:

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

He adds in the same article a lesser known quote:

“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”

The people who push for this agenda are generally members of a number of globalist organizations, from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Tavistock Institute to the World Economic Forum to the IMF or World Bank, not to mention the Bank for International Settlements and the Council For Inclusive Capitalism. However, these think-tank groups are only part of the bigger picture. They are supported by some of the largest banking and investment corporations in the world, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Blackrock, etc.

If you want to know why mass illegal immigration is a growing crisis at this time and why the current government has been actively trying to enforce an open border police in the US, simply look into the financial aspects of pro-illegal immigration lobbying groups and think tanks pushing open borders messaging into the mainstream. You will find many of these banks and investment funds connected to them in one way or another.

For example, the list of companies backing the Governor of New York’s plan to subsidize illegal aliens entering the state is very revealing. If they’re allowed to continue offering incentives to illegals then those people will continue trying to come to the US; this isn’t complicated. The conspiracy is out in the open.

Admitting To The Agenda, Then Painting It As A Positive

For the first few years of Joe Biden’s presidency, he and his cohorts attempted to deny there was any mass illegal migration problem at all. However, when media coverage (mostly independent) began to expose the enormous caravans of illegals overwhelming border towns like El Paso, Texas, he was forced to acknowledge that the crisis was in fact a crisis.

But, if you thought that forcing Biden to admit to the migrant disaster was going to force him to do something about it, you were sorely mistaken. The reason mass immigration exists right now is exactly because the Biden Administration and globalist institutions are offering free handouts to “asylum seekers.” All they have to do to stop the rising tide of illegals is to stop offering them free stuff. Clearly, the political elites have no intention of doing this.

Instead, government officials, think-tanks and the media have decided that since they’re now pressed to admit that mass immigration and open borders are real, they’re going to spin the crisis as if it’s actually a good thing for America.

In a narrative similar to the one used by EU officials to justify their support of the invasion of Islamic fundamentalists from 2014 onward, American elites claim that western nations are “desperate for a younger population” which can fill the “needs of the labor market.” They claim than mass migrations into the west are “good for the economy.”

This was also the primary message of a World Economic Forum conference on migration and labor held in March. The globalist organization discussed how open borders and mass immigration could be framed as a “positive” in terms of economic advantages. And the talking points derived from WEF events always find their way into the corporate media. The main takeaway? Protectionism (of national borders) is bad and countries that engage in it will be at an economic disadvantage.

Since last month there’s been a hailstorm of establishment media articles and news reports suggesting that mass immigration will boost GDP and make America stronger. These assertions are all built on a single line from a single report from the Congressional Budget Office which states:

“In our projections, the deficit is also smaller than it was last year because economic output is greater, partly as a result of more people working. The labor force in 2033 (EDITOR’S NOTE: Do they mean 2023?) is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise. We are continuing to assess the implications of immigration for revenues and spending.”

Bloomberg recently published an article boasting that this line from the CBO report shows that the rising fears among Americans over illegal immigration are unfounded. They question why the migrant crisis is a top issue going into the 2024 elections and cite a number of major banking institutions that have adjusted their US fiscal outlook into the positive because of the CBO’s data point and higher immigration. Bloomberg quotes the HSBC:

“Immigration is not just a highly charged social and political issue, it is also a big macroeconomic one,” Janet Henry, global chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. No advanced economy is benefiting from immigration quite like the U.S., and “the impact of migration has been an important part of the U.S. growth story over the past two years.”

Firstly, let’s clarify something in terms of the CBO’s theory – The US deficit has fallen in direct correlation to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. It’s more expensive to borrow for everyone, including the government, which makes it more expensive to spend. Because of far higher interest payments the US is now adding over $1 Trillion every 100 days to the national debt. That’s unprecedented.

Any spending cuts can be directly attributed to higher interest rates, NOT immigration. The CBO mentions this fact very quickly in the same report, without elaborating on why they think immigrants add value. But let’s consider the GDP claim for a moment; why would the CBO expect higher immigration to add $7 trillion to the GDP in the next ten years?

Illegal Immigrants Are A Net Negative – We Don’t Need Them

They say it’s about more people working, but what about more people taking welfare and other subsidies? Neither the CBO (nor the media) make any distinction between legal migrants and illegal migrants when it comes to economic effects.

Legal migrants usually have careers, business plans, skill sets and their own money coming into the US. Most illegals have nothing – Little education, no substantial skill sets, no money and no plan other than to get free handouts wherever possible. We have seen the proof of this in places like New York and Washington DC, where a tiny percentage of migrants bused into the cities have absolutely crushed their welfare infrastructure.

It’s estimated that the net lifetime cost of each illegal immigrant for the American taxpayer is over $68,000. While some illegals do end up paying taxes, their overall cost is far higher than the amount they pay in.

The jobs market has been inflated by trillions in Federal Reserve stimulus and most of the jobs created are low wage retail and service positions that will disappear in a couple years anyway. The CBO notes in the same report that unemployment is set to increase in 2024, but the media overlooked that little tidbit of information.

Migrants are not needed to keep the labor market going. In fact, as jobs numbers inevitably plummet due to higher interest rates illegals will only add to jobless levels and poverty levels in the US, further dragging the economy down.

Not to mention, the American housing market has suffered an oppressive spike in prices, with home costs and rents in many places doubling. This is caused in part by the millions of migrants entering the country each year looking for housing and getting help from US government programs to secure that housing. Get rid of the illegals and I guarantee rent costs will go down quickly.

Almost all of the projected GDP gain from illegal immigrants comes from their wages which go into their pockets (the same wages they send back to their families in their home countries). There is no direct GDP gain from illegals in terms of benefits to the overall economy. That said, the CBO may also be accounting for another factor which many Americans are unaware of – Government spending being added to GDP.

As I’ve noted in the past, a large portion of GDP calculated by state governments and the federal government comes from spending. The more the government spends the higher GDP climbs. It doesn’t matter if that money was wasted, it is still counted as rising economic activity.

So, if the US is adding 2-3 million illegals per year to the population and the government is spending thousands in tax dollars per year on each illegal through various subsidies, that will amount to billions per year in extra GDP. And the more they allow illegals to enter the country unchecked the more GDP can grow exponentially. Is that good for the economy? No. It’s going to destroy the economy and we are already seeing the effects, but the government and the media can spin it to look like it’s a positive.

The head of the CBO is a Republican but he’s also a former member of the IMF, so it’s not surprising he would paint mass immigration as a positive. The globalists want to end national sovereignty and the fastest way to do that is to create open border conditions, kill domestic economies, erase western culture and then swoop in with a “global solution” after the dust settles. This is the plan; to destabilize the US economic system, not save it. And, illegal immigrants are a useful tool for that end game.

*  *  *

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

Spain’s northeast Catalonia region is currently suffering its worst drought on record.

And, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, it’s not just Spain afflicted with this problem: The EU Commission’s Joint Research Center sounded the alarm earlier this year over how prolonged drought events have affected Europe for more than two years already and northern Africa for as many as six, which is “causing water shortages and hampering vegetation growth.”

You will find more infographics at Statista

Food and water supplies were not considered a particular issue among Europeans for a long time. But new data illustrates how that is starting to change.

According to a survey by Statista’s Consumer Insights, as many as one in four respondents in France said that food and water security was one of the biggest challenges their country faced in 2023.

The proportion was similarly high in the United Kingdom (24 percent), Spain (24 percent) and Italy (23 percent).

In all four polled countries supply security has become a more widespread concern with each passing year.

Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times,

Thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks were delivered to Ukraine in September/October of 2023 only to effectively disappear from the news for about four months. Now with the reported destruction of the fourth M1 Abrams tank in a span of 12 days, they are back in the news. And the fact they are back in the news is a sign of how desperate things are for Ukraine.

There are a number of plausible reasons that Ukraine did not deploy the Abrams and their freshly trained crews to the frontlines until just recently, and none of them are mutually exclusive.

First, while a properly supported M1 Abrams is very effective, it is highly maintenance intensive and guzzles gas. So, before they could be used at all effectively, the proper support infrastructure and logistics needed to be in place. Also, by the time the Abrams could be properly supported by Ukraine, it was facing heavily fortified lines that included tank traps, trenches, tank-killing drones, massed artillery fires, and minefields that have proved devastating to Ukraine’s other tanks. And with the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, it made sense to keep the gas-hungry/maintenance-intensive Abrams in reserve for defensive operations when Russia inevitably began its own offensive operations.

All of the above reasons are legitimate, but arguably the biggest reason may be that it was believed by Ukraine and the Biden administration that the propaganda value Russia would reap from their destruction was far greater than any value they would bring to Ukraine in uselessly throwing them against the fierce and devastatingly effective defenses of the Surovikin Line.

That Russia recognized the propaganda value of destroying Western “wonder weapons” is demonstrated by its creation of tank-killer groups (TKGs) whose focus is destroying and/or capturing any modern armor provided to Kyiv by the United States and its NATO allies.

To encourage the TKGs, Russian businesses and officials reportedly offered cash bounties for the destruction of Western military equipment in Ukraine. Aleksandr Osipov, the governor of Russia’s Zabaikalsky Region, reportedly signed an order in January 2023 promising local soldiers 3 million rubles ($37,000) for capturing an operational Leopard 2 tank, or 1 million rubles ($12,000) for destroying one. Fores, a Russian chemical manufacturing company, issued a press release stating that “Fores will pay 5 million rubles [$70,700 U.S.] for the first trophy. The payment for every next one [Leopard 2 or Abrams] … will be 500,000 rubles [$7,070 U.S.].”

With Russians paying special attention to the Abrams, it is not hard to imagine that Ukraine and the Biden administration quickly agreed that rushing the “game-changing” Abrams into lethal environs to become propaganda fodder was not the favored course of action.

However, with the devastating losses in men and materiel suffered by Ukraine, Ukraine is running low on everything, including ammunition, men, morale—and tanks. And with Russia having shifted from conservation of forces operations to limited offensive operations, denying fodder for Russia propaganda has taken a back seat to battlefield realities, and Ukraine is desperately throwing everything it has into defensive operations to slow down Russian advances. And that everything includes the 31 Abrams.

How the Abrams were destroyed illustrates why the Ukraine-Russian battlefield is arguably the most hostile environment for tanks ever. According to unverified reports from Russian media, the first Abrams was destroyed when it came under attack by units of the Samara 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade after being spotted by a reconnaissance drone. First it was struck by a kamikaze drone and then finished off by grenade launchers. The second Abrams was put out of action by Russia’s Army Group Center, which successfully used two first-person-view unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The third Abrams was lost in battle to a T-72B3 main battle tank that used its powerful gun-fired anti-tank missile, something Abrams do not have, to take out the Abrams with a single shot. The fourth Abrams tank looks like it was destroyed by artillery.

The use of the gun-fired anti-tank missiles such as the 9M119M Refleks, which is standard on advanced T-72 tanks, including the T-72B3 and the highly cost-effective T-90M, allows Russian tanks to outrange Abrams and get in the first shot. This capability illustrates the fact that modernized T-72 tanks, when properly employed and supported, are a threat to even the most advanced of Western tanks.

As was to be expected, the destruction of the M1 Abrams tanks has been trumpeted by Russian media and social media. But given that both Challenger and Leopard 2 tanks have been destroyed in the last few months, and that Ukrainian morale is already low, losing the Abrams at this stage of the war probably had less impact than if they had been destroyed shortly after arriving in Ukraine.

Still, having three M1 Abrams tanks destroyed in just over a week, and the fourth destroyed within a 12-day span, did provide a boost for Russian morale that Ukraine and the United States would dearly love to have avoided.