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Andrew McCabe, the disgraced Russiagate FBI agent who lied four times to the DOJ and FBI, will receive his full pension more than three years after he was fired by the Justice Department, according to the New York Times. Under the terms of a settlement stemming from a lawsuit McCable filed in 2019 over his firing, he will also receive around $200,000 in missed pension payments.

The DOJ has also agreed to expunge any mention of his firing from FBI personnel records, and that he would receive special cuff links given to senior executives, along with a plaque bearing his mounted badge and FBI credentials.

The Justice Department did not admit any wrongdoing. But the settlement amounted to a rejection by the Biden administration of how Mr. McCabe’s case had been handled under Mr. Trump, who perceived Mr. McCabe as one of his so-called deep-state enemies and repeatedly attacked him. A notice of the lawsuit’s dismissal was also filed in federal court. -NYT

McCabe’s lawyers will also receive over $500,000 in legal fees, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

This, of course, is on top of more than $540,000 he got from just one of several GoFundMe campaigns, as well as income from his 2019 book, “The Threat.”

McCabe, who was caught lying four times to the DOJ and FBI (twice while under oath) over leaks to the press, was fired in March, 2017 –  days before he was set to receive his full pension.

Specifically, McCabe authorized an FBI spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal, just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation – at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry McAuliffe. 

During a November, 2020 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, McCable dismissed the FBI’s abuse of power under his watch as mere mistakes.

McCabe said he was “shocked” by the “significant number of errors and failures related to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] applications” to spy on Carter Page, a former adviser on candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. His claim was reminiscent of Captain Renault in the film “Casablanca,” who pretended to be “shocked, shocked” at the gambling in Rick’s Cafe as he pocketed his winnings. –Fox News

McCabe also never bothered to speak with Christopher Steele – the former UK spy ultimately paid by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to fabricate a now-discredited dossier designed to smear then-candidate Donald Trump. McCabe knew the dossier was fake before the election and did nothing, claiming he was oblivious to the exculpatory evidence before the agency used the dossier when applying for a surveillance warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

Before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, McCabe’s agents tracked down Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, who promptly discredited the dossier as nothing more than multiple hearsays and rank speculation, some of which emanated from Danchenko’s drinking buddies.

It was also determined that parts of the dossier were likely Russian disinformation and that the Russia Hoax itself was invented by none other than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to smear Republican candidate Trump with an alleged scandal.  –Fox News

Also recall that McCabe’s team, under Director Comey, heavily altered the language of the FBI’s 2016 opinion concerning Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information – effectively “decriminalizing” her conduct. Comey’s original draft – using the term “grossly negligent” would have legally required that the FBI recommended charges against Clinton. Instead, McCabe’s team changed it to “extremely careless” – a legally meaningless term.

According to documents produced by the FBI, FBI employees exchanged proposed edits to the draft statement. On May 6, Deputy Director McCabe forwarded the draft statement to other senior FBI employees, including Peter Strzok, E.W. Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an employee on the Office of General Counsel whose name has been redacted. While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey’s statement in at least three respects. –Letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)

After he was fired, McCabe said he was “confused and distracted” when he was talking to investigators, and charges were never filed against him. Former Trump National Security Adviser Gen. Mike Flynn was notably not afforded the same luxury.

“I answered questions as completely and accurately as I could. And when I realized that some of my answers were not fully accurate or may have been misunderstood, I took the initiative to correct them,” McCabe wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

In the wake of his firing, McCabe – an central figure in the Trump-Russia investigation, received over $540,000 from just one of several GoFundMe campaigns.

Looks like Andy’s in the club…

New car prices hit a new all-time high in September due primarily to snarled supply chains, according to Kelley Blue Book.

At $45k, the average transaction price for a new car was up 12.1% (or $4,872) from one year ago in September and monthly up 3.7% (or $1,613) from August. Here are car prices for individual carmakers. 

“The record-high prices in September are mostly a result of the mix of vehicles sold,” said Kayla Reynolds, an analyst for Cox Automotive. 

“Midsize SUV sales jumped in September compared to August, and full-size pickup share moved up as well. Sales of lower-priced compact and midsize cars, which had been commanding more share during the summer, faded in September,” Reynolds said. 

All-time-high prices come as the entire industry endures a slowdown in sales. Total sales last month were approximately a million cars, a 7.3% monthly decrease, and one of the lowest volumes in the past decade.

Dwindling sales are likely a function of two things, a worldwide shortage of microchips that have shuttered many automobile factors and possibly higher prices are creating demand destruction among buyers. 

Over the last year, dealership inventories have been tight due to supply chain difficulties and forced dealers to reduce incentives and discounts to prospective car buyers. Incentives were only 5.2% of the average transaction price last month, compared with 10% a year ago. 

Another issue for buyers is the staggering increase in used cars, which hit a record high last month. 

To sum up, fewer cars were sold last month, but prices continue to hit record highs that may suggest consumers are becoming discouraged to buy because of affordability issues. 

Authored by George Parry via Spectator.org,

Evidence grows that the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC server in 2016 was an inside job…

This is the fifth in a series of articles analyzing the 27 page federal grand jury indictment charging lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false statement to the FBI.

As stated in the fourth article, when the FBI learned of the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee’s (“DNC”) emails, it asked to examine the server.

In fact, at the same time as the alleged DNC hack, there were similar reports regarding the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (“DCCC”) server as well as DNC Chairman John Podesta’s personal email devices.

In testimony before the Senate, FBI Director James Comey stated the following:

Question (by Senator Burr): Did the FBI request access to those devices [the servers and Podesta’s devices] to perform forensics on?

A: Yes, we did.

Q: And would that access have provided intelligence or information helpful to your investigation in possibly finding … including to the Intelligence Community Assessment?

A: Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that’s involved. So, it’s the best evidence.

Q: Were you given access to do the forensics on those servers?

A: We were not. We were … a highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there.

Q: But is that typically the way the FBI would prefer to do the forensics or would your forensic unit rather see the servers and do the forensics themselves?

A: We always prefer to have access hands on ourselves, if that’s possible.

Q: Do you know why you were denied access to those servers?

A: I don’t know for sure. Um, I don’t know for sure.

Q: Was there one request or multiple requests?

A: Multiple requests at different levels and ultimately what was agreed to is that the private company would share with us what they saw.

So, instead of using a search warrant or some other legal process to perform a direct, hands on forensic examination of the DNC server, the FBI agreed to base its investigation on the findings of a private cybersecurity company. And, as discussed in the previous article, that company, CrowdStrike, was to do the investigation pursuant to its contract with Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Think about that. When presented with allegations of a devastating foreign cyber attack on one of the two major political parties, the FBI meekly agreed to allow CrowdStrike and Perkins Coie to do the forensic examination and, for all intents and purposes, run the investigation.

Not even the lowliest local police department would agree to such an absurd arrangement. What if this was a murder case? Would the Smallville PD allow a private investigator and lawyer hired by the murder victim’s family to process the crime scene, do the autopsy, and tell the police and district attorney what they supposedly found? Wouldn’t such findings be subject to attack in court as coming from sources that may have had an interest in shaping and tailoring the investigative results to suit the needs and desires of their client? Wouldn’t there be legal problems with the evidence’s provenance, chain of custody, and the reliability and comprehensiveness of the investigative work that supposedly produced it? Would the police and district attorney ever allow themselves to get roped into such a bizarre, ridiculous, nightmarish, and self-defeating arrangement?

Of course not. No rational person or organization intent on conducting a serious investigation would.

But that, in effect, is precisely what the FBI — the self-proclaimed greatest investigative agency in the world — did when faced with this purportedly monumental foreign attack on the Democrat Party apparatus.

Now keep Comey’s testimony in focus as we review the remarkable appearance of Shawn Henry, President of CrowdStrike Services, before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”).

The HPSCI convened in closed executive session on December 5, 2017. Present were Henry, the Committee members and staff, as well as a lawyer representing CrowdStrike and a lawyer from Perkins Coie.

Under questioning, Henry confirmed that CrowdStrike’s examination of the DNC server was done pursuant to its contract with Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie. Consequently, as explained by the Perkins Coie lawyer, CrowdStrike’s findings were protected by the attorney-client privilege. Therefore, it would be up to Perkins Coie, acting on behalf of the DNC, to decide what information Henry would be allowed to share with the HPSCI.

First up was Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) who wanted to know why the FBI hadn’t taken “the lead in this investigation.”

And that’s when the fun and games began.

Once it was established that the FBI did not have access to the server, Stewart asked, “Could they [the FBI] conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?”

To that Henry went out on a limb and firmly replied, “Maybe.”

Undeterred, Stewart asked, “Are you comfortable that someone could complete a thorough investigation, using other tools, without direct access to the hardware or equipment?”

Up to the challenge, Henry proceeded to answer a question that wasn’t asked.

“Could they come to a conclusion? You’re asking a nuanced question. And I’m not being cagey. I want to be clear, because this is an important point.”

But would it be better if the FBI had access?

Henry replied, “The more information you have access to, the better any investigation. But it doesn’t mean that a lack of a piece of information precludes you from coming to a conclusion.”

The determined Stewart tried again. If you “could have a better investigation if you had access to all of the equipment or hardware” would there be “reasons for not making that available [to the FBI] that override the benefit of having a more conclusive investigation?”

To which Henry replied, “You’re asking me to speculate. I don’t know the answer.”

At which point, an exasperated Stewart said to the Perkins Coie lawyer, “By the way, you need to pay him well, because he’s obviously serving you well today as you guys have your conversations back and forth.”

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) in 2019

So just what evidence did CrowdStrike find on the DNC server?

Over the course of the hearing, Henry grudgingly gave ground with answers such as these:

“Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data [the DNC emails] was (sic) exfiltrated [taken by hackers off the server]. We did not have concrete evidence that data was (sic) exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated…. There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence … we didn’t have direct evidence. But we made a conclusion that data left the network.” (Emphasis added.)

Okay, there was no direct, concrete, or other proof that the emails were actually taken from the DNC computer. But what were these “indicators” that led CrowdStrike to conclude that the emails were hacked?

According to Henry, CrowdStrike found “indicators of [server] compromise, which are pieces of malware, et cetera.” He then explained that CrowdStrike’s investigative report states that the data [emails] were “staged for exfiltration” by the purported Russian hacker.

He added, “There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears that it (sic) was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.” (Emphasis added.)

Got that? With no evidence that the emails were actually hacked, CrowdStrike nevertheless concluded that the Russians hacked the emails.

Despite the spin, the whole DNC hack story had just flatlined.

But there was one more issue to be addressed: exactly what evidence was shared with the FBI?

I will spare you the tedious details of the interrogation. The questioners kept asking Henry what information CrowdStrike provided to the FBI, and he repeatedly said that they got whatever they asked for.

But the problem with this line of questioning is that it failed to consider the fact that CrowdStrike was working for Perkins Coie. Consequently, the questions should have focused on what information Perkins Coie allowed to be transmitted to the FBI.

The closest anyone came to getting at this issue was when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) asked, “Did the DNC restrict anything that you shared with the FBI or that the FBI asked for? Did they tell you ‘no’ at any point?”

Henry replied, “No, I have no recollection. Again, I know that there are redacted reports and there was some restriction on the reports. That’s the only thing that I can recall.”

Wait. What? Redacted? Restriction? Does this mean that the DNC withheld some of CrowdStrike’s findings and work product from the FBI?

The answer to that question can be found lurking in the pre-trial pleadings in the case of United States v. Roger Stone. In an effort to debunk the DNC hack story, Stone’s lawyers requested that the Department of Justice produce the full, unredacted CrowdStrike investigative report.

And that’s when the cowpie hit the fan. It turned out that, in addition to not examining the DNC server, neither the FBI nor the DOJ actually saw the full, final CrowdStrike report.

The following is lifted directly from the prosecution’s response to Stone’s discovery request:

Ponder  that carefully. The referenced “counsel for the DNC and DCCC” is Perkins Coie. The reports provided were marked “draft” and had redactions. But the FBI and DOJ had the assurances of Perkins Coie that the  drafts were, in fact, the last version of the report and “no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

So, was there a hack of the DNC server? Don’t ask the FBI or the DOJ. They only know what Perkins Coie — which was representing a client that was heavily invested in spreading the Russian hack story — allowed them to know.

But thanks to the release of Shawn Henry’s testimony before the HPSCI, what we now know is that CrowdStrike never found any “direct,” “concrete,” or other evidence that proves the DNC emails “actually left” the DNC server.

Or, as we used to say in the old Justice Department: turn out the lights, the party’s over.

There’s more to come, but this article is already too long.

So stay tuned for the next episode.

Last month, the August retail sales surge was a surprise to many… but not to us. With consensus expecting a modest drop in both headline and core, we tweeted moments before the data was revealed to expect a “big retail sales beat.”

Expect a big retail sales beat pic.twitter.com/tZbpFHYTMi

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 16, 2021

How did we know? Because Bank of America, which instead of relying on the hive “knowledge” of a handful of recent Econ PhD grads and a reversion to the mean impulse uses real-time credit and debit card spending data to asses precisely how much Americans are spending at any given moment, knew, and in its preview of the September retail sales print, the bank correctly forecast a big beat.

It wasn’t the first time BofA was right: in fact the bank has been accurate every single month since this spring, usually going against the onsensus herd and coming on top every single time like in August, when it correctly predicted a big drop in the July print…

… the month prior when it and consensus agreed, and both were spot on…

… the month before when BofA once again was correct in calling for a sharp drop and consensus was wrong…

… one month earlier as well…

… and so on.

In short, when it comes to predicting the upcoming retail sales print, toss consensus which has been wrong on 5 out of 6 previous occasions, and listen to the flawless BofA.

So what does the bank forecast the Census Bureau will report tomorrow at 830 when the September retail sales data drop? Well, it will be another miss, with headline coming in about three times worse than the consensus est of -0.2% and ex-autos coming in flat, also missing estimates of a 0.4% bounce.

According to BofA, retail sales ex-autos were unchanged month over month seasonally adjusted (SA) in September.

After accounting for the sharp collapse in unit auto sales to 12.2 million saar (seasonally adjusted annualized rate), as measured by Wards, BofA predicts that tomorrow’s Census Bureau total retail sales will end up down -0.6% mom SA. This follows the sharp swings over the prior two months which owed to a variety of special factors including the timing of the Prime Day promotions.

While the delta between BofA data and Census is small, in a market where a miss is a miss, and a beat is a beat, will certainly be felt. This is how the delta between BofA’s numbers and the Census Burea has looked over time.

In any case, BofA’s chief economist Michelle Meyer contends that this month’s report should give us a cleaner picture of the consumer.

Drilling deeper, within retail ex-autos, spending on furniture and building materials staged a comeback, reflecting the latest turn higher in home sales. BofA also observed a pop in spending on airfare, consistent with the weekly data, working to offset the sharp drop in August. However, spending on lodging continued to contract mom SA (travel related spending is not in the retail ex-autos aggregate).

Also in September, spending at daycare centers was 52% above last year’s level and only 13% below the same time in 2019. BofA sees this as an encouraging sign as reliable childcare is critical for the recovery of the labor force.

While retail sales may miss consensus, it will be modest. Meanwhile, the good news and confirmation that the US consumer remains generally strong, BofA continues to see gains in leisure spending with spending on travel and entertainment, in particular, improving. The bank’s aggregate for leisure spending is running at 1% over a 2-year period, up from the recent low of -8% in mid Sept.

The improvement is not felt evenly across the country, however: in NY and PA spending on entertainment services has been particularly weak (-20% and -12% over a 2-year period, respectively) vs. FL where entertainment is up 16% over a 2-year period.

Once again, it is the south that knows how to party while the northeast excels mostly in locking itself down.

The US Treasury Department slammed “misinformation” over a provision in President Joe Biden’s tax plan which would require banks to report aggregate inflows and outflows of at least over $600 to the IRS.

“Congressional consideration of this proposal has been marred by misinformation, as opponents have elevated the pernicious myth that banks will have to report all individual customers’ transactions to the IRS,” said Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, Natasha Sarin in a Thursday blog post. “This is unequivocally false, and an incorrect representation of the proposals under consideration.”

So it won’t be ‘all’ customers.

As Bloomberg suggests, “The plan would require financial institutions to report information about some bank accounts to the Internal Revenue Service in an effort to determine if Americans are underreporting their income on their tax forms.”

While the blog post offered no clarity on who exactly would be targeted by the $600 provision, we can probably assume they mean ‘people who pay taxes.’

According to the Tax Policy Center, 61% of Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2020, up from 47% .

“This proposal has been seriously mischaracterized,” said Treasury Secretary Janey Yellen in a Tuesday interview with CBS Evening News.

Of course, despite what the Treasury says, Democrats have been walking it back:

House Democrats excluded the idea from their version of the tax-and-spending bill they wrote last month, partly because of opposition from members in their own party. However, Democratic leaders continue to work on the plan, which could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to fund an expansion of social programs.

House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden have said they are working on scaling back the administration’s plan so that only account flows totaling $10,000 or more would be reported and other carveouts so that only high-income taxpayers would be in the scope of the plan. Lawmakers are looking at ways to exclude some common transactions, such as payroll deposits or mortgage payment withdrawals. –Bloomberg

According to the Independent Community Bankers of America, a banking trade group, the Treasury’s proposal violates consumers’ privacy and would require banks to “perform a police function on behalf of the IRS.”

The Treasury, meanwhile, insists that this additional information will help them track down high-earning tax cheats. The IRS estimates that people pay 99% of taxes due on their earnings when there is third-party reporting, vs just 45% when there’s no verification.

“The proposal would direct banks to report basic, high-level information on aggregate account inflows and outflows,” reads the Treasury blog post. “Banks would add just a bit of additional data to information that they already supply to taxpayers and the IRS: how much money went into the account over the course of the year, and how much came out.”

You know it’s bad when you’ve lost Larry Summers…

It appears the so-called ‘progressives’ push to ever more signaling of their virtue and cradle-to-grave dependence on bigger and bigger government (as long as you ‘obey’ the narrative) is just too much for the former Treasury Secretary who warned that monetary policy makers in the U.S. and elsewhere for paying too much attention to social issues and not enough to the biggest risk to inflation since the 1970s.

Speaking to a virtual conference organized by the Institute of International Finance, Summers rebuffed the newly ‘woke’ Fed:

“We have a generation of central bankers who are defining themselves by their wokeness,” Summers, who is now a professor at Harvard University, said on Wednesday.

“They’re defining themselves by how socially concerned they are.”

Read that again and consider the source – Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and head of the National Economic Council in the early years of the Obama administration!!

His fear is simple: Fed talking heads are too focused on social justice that they are taking their eye off the ball that is their mandated job of managing inflation and jobs.

“We’re in more danger than we’ve been during my career of losing control of inflation in the U.S.,” the 66-year-old Summers, a paid contributor to Bloomberg, said.

“We’ve gone even further towards losing it in Britain and I think we’re at some risk in Europe.”

Summers also – quite ironically for someone who has supported fiscal expansion as a means of promoting macroeconomic stability – blamed the Fed and other central banks for not preparing investors for the tough steps policy makers will probably have to take to rein in inflation.  

“If those actions come, they’re going to be very shocking and very painful in financial markets,” he said.

This is not the first time Summers has raised a red flag. As James Caton writes at The American Institute for Economic Research, in February, Summers participated in a discussion with Paul Krugman where he outlined his concerns. He notes that:

1. The stimulus of 2020 was about twice the size of the output gap in the same year. The proposed stimulus for 2021 was, at the time, 4 times the size of the projected output gap.

2. Unemployment compensation provided to the bottom 30% of earners was more than double their losses from Covid-19.

Elsewhere, Summers explains that the current labor shortage will drive up wages and that we have already seen monthly rents for new tenants increase by 17 percent, on average, above the rents paid by previous tenants. 

Summers believes that the “toxic side effects of QE” are not being recognized by policymakers. In an interview, Larry Summers used a rather peculiar metaphor to describe this situation.:

So, I look at that dwindling hole. Then I look at expenditures that aren’t hard to add into the multiple trillions, and I see substantial risk that the amount of water being poured in vastly exceeds the size of the bathtub.

When I heard Summers use this metaphor, my mind was drawn to a passage I first read over a decade ago from Benjamin Anderson in his reflection on the Great Depression. In referring to monetary policy that preceded the initiation of the Great Crash in October 1929, he wrote:

When a bathtub in the upper part of the house has been overflowing for five minutes, it is not difficult to turn off the water and mop up. But when the bathtub has been overflowing for several years, the walls and the spaces between ceilings and floors have become full of water, and a great deal of work is required to get the house dry. Long after the faucet is turned off, water still comes pouring in from the walls and from the ceilings. It was so in 1928 and 1929. 

Consistent with both statements is the belief that the monetary policy provided more stimulus than was merited by prevailing economic conditions. And consistent with Summers’ belief that excessive monetary support can be toxic, Anderson bemoans the extensive damage that can occur when the water spigot is left on for too long.

Instead of racial ‘equity’ or climate change, The Fed needs to concentrate on monetary policy. This is a serious job that requires serious focus. Perhaps Summers recognizes that the post-2008 monetary framework has created a fiscal Fed. Or maybe he will. 

Summers’ demands for limits to the aims of monetary policy might be politically feasible under the old Volcker-Greenspan regime. Under that monetary regime, inflationary pressure placed strict limits on the expansion of the balance sheet. The political incentives now faced by both politicians and Fed officials promote precisely the sort of oversized fiscal expansions that we have observed in the last two years, the same expansions that Summers decries. 

The post-2008 framework has incentivized the destabilization of monetary policy. The sooner we recognize this fact, the sooner we can seriously discuss a solution to the problem.

As bitcoin prices surge in anticipation of the SEC finally approving a bitcoin ETF (after years of turning down one application after another), one top crypto regulator from Treasury – Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang – offered a frank explanation for why the Treasury Department sees stablecoins as an important locus for crypto regulation. The issue is that stablecoins solve a critical problem for crypto: they’re rarely volatile, by design. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that tether, one of the biggest stablecoins, appears to be a massive Ponzi scheme. Although it saw some volatility in response, on Thursday, tether was trading right around $1.

Why is it that tether didn’t collapse after being accused of being a Ponzi scheme (not like this is even the first time)? Because stable coins like tether have become a central part of the crypto-trading economy, allowing traders to move easily into and out of positions in different coins without ever needing to re-convert their crypto to US dollars. As Liang put it, stablecoins play a “foundational” role in the crypto economy. While they’re mostly used for trading right now, the Treasury is keeping a close eye on whether stablecoins start being used for commerce, something that might trigger a backlash from the Treasury since it would be a sign that a real competitor to the US dollar might actually be emerging.

As Liang added, stablecoins being used for payments (like Mark Zuckerberg infamously tried to do) “raises a whole set of issues”.

“We believe they’re kind of foundational to crypto and future crypto services,” Liang said Thursday during a virtual event sponsored by the Institute of International Finance. “They’re being used mostly for crypto trading currently. They also have the potential and have started to be used for payments — and may be widely used for payments, and that raises a whole set of issues that the President.”

“They’re being used mostly for crypto trading currently. They also have the potential and have started to be used for payments — and may be widely used for payments, and that raises a whole set of issues that the President’s Working Group wanted to focus on,” she said.

At this point, more regulation for the crypto community seems virtually inevitable with Janet Yellen running Treasury and Gary Gensler running the SEC. President Biden and his advisors have even considered imposing an entire new regulatory framework for crypto via executive fiatn (no pun intended).

Liang  is a member of the President’s Working Group on crypto regulation. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the working group includes the heads of Treasury and several other federal agencies. The group is planning to issue a report on stablecoins by the end of the month. In addition to the policy-setting team, the DoJ has put together a task force to combat cryptocurrency-related crime as well.

Media reports have suggested that the Biden Administration plans to regulate stablecoins like banks. He’s also reportedly considered hiring a “crypto czar”

But whatever happens, keep in mind: whatever lip-service federal policymakers give about stablecoins (including the FedCoin which is being studied by the central bank) being a key part of innovation, in reality, they see it as one thing: a threat.