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While social media makes its best attempt at trying to get Joe Biden elected by censoring stories about his son, YouTube is facing another dilemma: the platform is so inundated with political ads it has nowhere to put them.

As advertising campaigns flood the platform, YouTube has “struggled” to place the ads in front of the desired audience for each, according to Bloomberg. 

Interestingly enough, YouTube is experiencing the shortage most in “critical swing states”, where ad prices have doubled as a result. This, obviously, makes political advertising far more lucrative for Google, who saw ad revenue fall this year and will announcing its earnings next week. 

Cat Stern, media director for Lockwood Strategy Lab, a digital campaign agency focused on Democratic candidates and progressive advocacy organizations, told Bloomberg: “There’s a crunch. All political advertisers are buying in the same states, to similar audiences.”

YouTube viewers have risen during the pandemic and while commercial ads have been “anemic”, political ads have spiked heading into November 3. In highest demand are the ads that users aren’t allowed to skip through. There are also ad “reservations” for YouTube’s most popular videos that are in high demand. 

Reid Vineis, vice president of digital at Majority Strategies, a Republican political ad firm, said: “The reserves tend to be gobbled up by well-funded campaigns.”

While this occurs, other less-well-funded campaigns have turned to platforms like Hulu and Roku to run their ads. 

Some states, like Iowa, are usually entirely sold out on YouTube. Tim Cameron, co-founder of FlexPoint Media, said: “A lot of late money that’s coming on board — it’s difficult to find anywhere to put it.”

At some points, YouTube has been unable to place up to 75% of the amounts that people are willing to spend. YouTube didn’t comment for Bloomberg’s article, but the article notes that a “code yellow” was assigned to Google’s staff regarding the inability to place ads, meaning Google was increasing the resources it was deploying to try and solve the issue. 

Google has sole more than $139 million in political ads over the last month alone. 

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Every now and again, when a sense of doom falls suddenly upon them, the bulls turn to bears.  That is to say, they turn from buying stocks to selling.  What is it that prompts them to panic?  What turns emotions so quickly from greed to fear?

The answers to these questions come a dime a dozen.  You can certainly dream up answers that are at least as good as anything professional analysts put forward.  The most convincing answers, whether true or not, are often those tied to current events.

For example, on Monday stocks sold off.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 410 points.  The popular rationale was that stocks sold off because of gridlock in Congress over passing a new stimulus bill.  On Tuesday the DJIA was up 113 points.  Apparently, this was because stimulus talks were back on.

But that was before Wednesday, when the DJIA dropped 97 points because the imminent stimulus agreement was still imminent.  Then, on Thursday, the DJIA jumped 152 points because stimulus talks were getting warmer.

Do you see the connection?  Do you see the correlation?  Does it imply causation?  Or is it all a great game of chasing the wild goose?

Moreover, what if the new coronavirus bailout bill passes, but it’s only $1.9 trillion?  Is that less bullish for stocks than a $2.2 trillion handout package?  These are the sorts of inane questions one must ask in a world where the stock market’s been corrupted by government intervention.

How It Works

Government intervention can take many forms.  At the moment, one of the more popular forms of government intervention involves printing up trillions upon trillions of fake dollars.  The Treasury then hands these fake dollars out like they’re handing out breath savers.

The Treasury, of course, borrows the fake money from the Fed.  The Fed gets the fake dollars to loan to the Treasury by creating new credit from thin air.  The symbiotic disharmony of fiscal and monetary stimulus is doomed to fail.  But, in there interim, the stock market loves it.

Yet as more and more fake dollars are doled out to somehow stimulate the economy, the existing stock of dollars is diluted.  The dollar’s value becomes worth less and less.  John Maynard Keynes, in his 1919 work, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, elaborated how it works:

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.  By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.” 

You see, something both strange and awful is taking place.  The new fake dollars look and feel like real dollars.  They still show up in your bi-weekly paycheck.  You can count them up.  You can see them in your bank account.

But when you go to spend them.  When you use them to buy your family a week’s worth of food at the supermarket, or to pay your monthly utility bill…the dollars no longer work the way they used to.  They’ve been corrupted.  Their value has been confiscated by Washington’s inflationism.

Inflationism Has Overturned Society

The debasement of money by governments has been going on for thousands of years.  The current corruption of your dollars has been going on since the passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.  And it has been going on in earnest since 1971, when Nixon terminated the convertibility of the dollar into gold by foreign governments.

The dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value since 1913.  That means, today’s dollar would be worth less than 4 cents back in 1913.  How much longer this dollar corruption can continue is uncertain.  But there are limits, even if they cannot be strictly defined.

For example, how much bread can be added to a meatloaf before it’s fully corrupted?  How many printing press dollars can be added to the economy before they’re rejected as payment by foreign trade partners?

We may soon find out…

The U.S. national debt’s over $27 trillion.  Yet gross domestic product is only $19.5 trillion.  The budget deficit for 2020 alone was $3.1 trillion.  The forthcoming coronavirus bailout bill ensures that at least $2 trillion more will be added to the debt in 2021.

This debt will never honestly be paid.  But it will be dishonestly paid.  And you’ll get to pay it.  In fact, you already are.  You’re paying it through inflationism.

The dollars you hold.  The dollars you earn.  The dollars you use to buy the things you want and need.  They’ve been corrupted.

Here Keynes, in agreement with Lenin, explains what’s going on:

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.  The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

As goes the money, so goes society.  When money’s corrupted, society soon follows.  No doubt, with each passing day, this natural axiom is being clarified with exacting rigor.

Ron Perelman, who we reported months ago definitely, certainly, almost positively wasn’t selling all of his assets because he was in a cash crunch is now in the process of selling his $106 million superyacht. 

The yacht, called C2, has been listed by broker Burgess for 90 million euros, according to Bloomberg. It was built in 2009, sports 15 cabins, can accommodate 31 guests and and a crew of 27, and also has a swimming pool. If that wasn’t enough, it includes a retractable movie screen and “fold out balconies” that flank both sides of a “beach club”. 

As they did last month, his spokespeople declined to comment on the listing.

Recall, we wrote last month that Perelman was in the process of selling his Gulfstream 650 and “crates” of his artwork. We noted he had already sold his stake in AM General, sold a flavorings company he has owned for decades and had hired banks to sell stock he owns in other companies.

Among the art he was selling was Jasper Johns’s “0 Through 9,” worth about $70 million, Gerhard Richter’s “Zwei Kerzen (Two Candles),” worth about $50 million and Cy Twombly’s “Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves,” which is worth about $20 million.

Art adviser Wendy Goldsmith said back in September: “What he’s selling is as blue chip as it gets.”

Perelman has been under pressure due to his crashing stake in Revlon. He has seen his fortune drop from $19 billion to just $4.2 billion over the last two years, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. His investment company, MacAndrews & Forbes, said it needed to “rework its holdings” back in July due to the pandemic.

As we noted in September, that “reworking” looked more like a fire sale of – well – everything.

Perelman said publicly: “We quickly took significant steps to react to the unprecedented economic environment that we were facing. I have been very public about my intention to reduce leverage, streamline operations, sell some assets and convert those assets to cash in order to seek new investment opportunities and that is exactly what we are doing.”

He continued: “I realized that for far too long, I have been holding onto too many things that I don’t use or even want. I concluded that it’s time for me to clean house, simplify and give others the chance to enjoy some of the beautiful things that I’ve acquired just as I have for decades.”

A friend of Perelman’s, Graydon Carter, told Bloomberg in September: “Often when people say this sort of thing, it’s masking something else. In Ronald’s case, it’s true. He has learned to love and appreciate the bourgeois comforts of family and home.” He described Perelman as “crazy about spending time at home”.

Some of his sales will go to pay down loans from Citigroup, though Perelman’s spokesman says they are not “forced sales”. She also denied Perelman is selling his 57 acre estate in the Hamptons. 

Perelman is best known being a fearless financial engineer in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Ken Moelis said of Perelman’s track record: “He was imaginative, aggressive and innovative in ways that changed the financial landscape.”

But the $1.74 billion valuation Revlon had back in the 1980’s when he purchased it has plunged to $279 million. It was $365 million when we wrote about Perelman in September.

Perelman loved the business and said it “defined him”. He had offered it several loans and had catalyzed several executive changes to try and keep the business afloat. Revlon is now losing to smaller cosmetic shops that advertise through social media – while dealing with the effects of Covid. 

Some Revlon bonds trade were trading around 14 cents on the dollar in September and the company has $3.73 billion in debt. 

All told, “at least nine banks” have claims against Perelman’s assets, including his art collection, house in the Hamptons and “various aircraft”. There are $267 million in mortgages linked to his Upper East Side headquarters for MacAndrews & Forbes.

Currently, Perelman’s art collection makes up about a third of his fortune. And that can be tricky, for assets that have an illiquid market. Recently, one painting he tried to sell was pulled from auction at the last minute due to lack of interest. 

MacAndrews & Forbes saw its general counsel, spokesman, head of capital markets and CFO all depart over the last few months. 

And despite the spin on Perelman’s fire sales as being a way to spend more time with family, Perelman has his skeptics, including Richard Hack, who wrote a book about him in 1996. 

Hack concluded: “If you want a simpler life, you go buy a farm in Oklahoma, not sell a painting out of your townhouse in Manhattan. If he’s selling his art, it’s because he needs cash.”

We can imagine the same is true about his yacht. 

Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

The Supreme Court declared in 1943, “There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority.” In reality, the cardinal doctrines of contemporary democracy are layer upon layer of mystical claptrap. The phrases which consecrate democracy seep into many Americans’ minds like buried hazardous waste.

If Joe Biden wins the presidential election, voters will be told that our political system is redeemed: the “will of the people” is now clear, Biden will rule with “the consent of the governed,” and Americans are obliged to again trust and obey the federal government. If Donald Trump is reelected, much of the same media will continue howling about imaginary Russian plots. But these notions remain dangerous delusions regardless of who is declared the winner on Election Day.

The notion that election results represent the “will of the people” is one of the most shameless triumphs of democratic propaganda. Rather than revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions. Votes which only reveal comparative contempt for competing professional politicians are transmogrified into approvals for blueprints to forcibly remake humanity.

Americans are encouraged to believe that their vote on Election Day somehow miraculously guarantees that the subsequent ten thousand actions by the president, Congress, and federal agencies embody “the will of the people.” In reality, the more edicts a president issues, the less likely that his decrees will have any connection to popular preferences. It is even more doubtful that all the provisions of hefty legislative packages reflect majority support, considering the wheeling, dealing, and conniving prior to final passage. Or maybe the Holy Ghost of Democracy hovers over Capitol Hill to assure that average Americans truly want every provision on every page of bills that most representatives and senators do not even bother reading?

A bastard cousin of the “will of the people” flimflam is the notion that citizens and government are one and the same. President Franklin Roosevelt, after five years of expanding federal power as rapidly as possible, declared in 1938, “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us.” President Johnson declared in 1964: “Government is not an enemy of the people. Government is the people themselves,” though it wasn’t “the people” whose lies sent tens of thousands of American conscripts to pointless deaths in Vietnam. President Bill Clinton declared in 1996, “The Government is just the people, acting together—just the people acting together.” But it wasn’t “the people acting together” that bombed Serbia, invaded Haiti, blockaded Iraq, or sent the tanks in at Waco.

President Barack Obama hit the theme at a 2015 Democratic fundraiser:

“Our system only works when we realize that government is not some alien thing; government is not some conspiracy or plot; it’s not something to oppress you. Government is us in a democracy.”

But it was not private citizens who, during Obama’s reign, issued more than half a million pages of proposed and final new regulations and notices in the Federal Register; made more than 10 million administrative rulings; tacitly took control of more than 500 million acres by designating them “national monuments”; and bombed seven foreign nations. The “government is the people” doctrine makes sense only if we assume citizens are masochists who secretly wish to have their lives blighted.

Presidents perennially echo the Declaration of Independence’s appeal to “the consent of the governed.” But political consent is gauged very differently than consent in other areas of life. The primary proof that Americans are not oppressed is that citizens cast more votes for one of the candidates who finagled his name onto the ballot. A politician can say or do almost anything to snare votes; after Election Day, citizens can do almost nothing to restrain winning politicians.

A 2017 survey by Rasmussen Reports found that only 23 percent of Americans believe that the federal government has “the consent of the governed.” Political consent is defined these days as rape was defined a generation or two ago: people consent to anything which they do not forcibly resist. Voters cannot complain about getting screwed after being enticed into a voting booth. Anyone who does not attempt to burn down city hall presumably consented to everything the mayor did. Anyone who does not jump the White House fence and try to storm into the Oval Office consents to all executive orders. Anyone who doesn’t firebomb the nearest federal office building consents to the latest edicts in the Federal Register. And if people do attack government facilities, then they are terrorists who can be justifiably killed or imprisoned forever.

In the short term, the most dangerous democratic delusion is that conducting an election makes government trustworthy again. Only 20 percent of Americans trust the government to “do the right thing” most of the time, according to a survey last month by the Pew Research Center. Americans are being encouraged to believe that merely changing the name of the occupant of the White House should restore faith in government.

If Biden is elected, we will hear the same “redemption” storyline that was trumpeted when Obama replaced (temporarily) disgraced George W. Bush. The same media that ignored Biden’s corruption during the presidential campaign will insist that his inauguration purifies Uncle Sam. With Biden in charge, pundits and pooh-bahs will swear that it is safe to expand federal control over healthcare, education, housing, the economy, the environment, and anything else that moves.

But the benevolence of government rarely transcends the perfidy of politics. Washington will remain as venal as ever, regardless of the hallelujah chorus of PBS NewsHour panelists. When scandals erupt, citizens will be told to trust politically approved fixes to the system—even though most Washington reforms are like fighting crime by hiding the corpses of victims.

It is time to demystify democracy. The surest effect of exalting democracy is to make it easier for politicians to drag everyone else down. Until presidents and members of Congress begin to honor their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, they deserve all the distrust and disdain they receive. Americans need less faith in democracy and more faith in their own liberty.

Real Vision CEO, Raoul Pal, arrives to the Daily Briefing frothing at the mouth with Bitcoin bullishness. Senior editor, Ash Bennington, tries in vain to contain Raoul’s enthusiasm, but with Bitcoin up over 20% this month, Raoul’s zeal simply cannot be restrained, and he proceeds to go at length about how this asset will become a global reserve asset as the world moves along an adoption curve of trust. Raoul and Ash proceed to discuss the ongoing progress to make crypto-assets easier to own for RIAs and institutional investors, and Raoul reflects on the relative risk/reward profile of bitcoin at a time with record low bond yields and a stock market at all-time highs. In the intro, editor Jack Farley breaks down the new Frankenstein of the fixed income world: the CLO ETF.

Who would have guessed that residents of U.S. cities wouldn’t want to see their streets and businesses burned to the ground, with civil unrest and riots persisting as a result of Democratic leadership and a media who continues to embolden the behavior?

That is why in Minneapolis, at least, it is being reported that the summer’s chaos is leading to silent support for President Trump in the upcoming election. This comes as Trump trails Joe Biden in Minnesota, according to polls, and as Minneapolis has slashed its police budget by $14 million. 

But as Fox News points out, the issue of civil unrest and property destruction may wind up “Trumping” what is being reported in the polls for the state thus far. 

Minneapolis was ground zero for riots and looting after the death of George Floyd and prompted – with the help of a mainstream media that gave the riots relentless coverage – similar unrest around the country. 

Now, voters are remembering what happened to their city as they approach the ballot box. Minnesota GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan told Fox News that the state “had been through a lot”.

She continued: “The riots in Minneapolis and the impact and devastation and all of the fallout that is continuing as we enter October are going to be on the ballot in Minnesota when voters go to the polls, whether they’ve already voted or will vote on Election Day.” 

Both Minnesota’s Democrat Farmer-Labor party (DFL) and city council members didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

So far, in 2020, the city has seen an uptick in violent crimes and homicides, up to 4,234 and 65, respectively, from 3,379 and 35 one year prior. Analysis from the local Star Tribune newspaper showed that the uptick is coming in the least diverse neighborhoods in the city. In addition, carjackings are on the rise in the city. 

While remaining residents will consider this while voting, it has prompted others to simply leave the city.

Former resident Zach Hudson, who recently moved out of the city after experiencing a break-in, said: “Prior to George Floyd, we were actually pretty happy with our neighborhood. I grew up in the suburbs and had preconceptions of what living in Minneapolis would be like, and when we decided to move here, it turned out to not be as bad as I had thought it might be. Our neighbors are fantastic, and we never had issues with people trying to break in. We didn’t really have much violent crime near us.”

But after George Floyd died, “it was a week of mayhem,” he said. “We had our house [almost] get broken into, we’ve had tons of cars on our streets get their catalytic converters stolen. Just a couple weeks ago, I witnessed a shooting on the street next to my house … at six o’clock on a Sunday afternoon.”

Another former resident commented: “There were parts of Minneapolis that were liveable and still are, to a certain extent, but it just became more and more apparent over time that there were obviously more crimes happening. We heard police helicopters more often.”

Carnahan concluded: “You have so many business owners that were adversely impacted … where some of these folks — their buildings — their businesses were just completely decimated to the ground and don’t even exist anymore. It was a lot of minority-owned businesses and people and communities that — this has been their livelihood, through not only their families but perhaps the generations before.”

Speaking of the rise in crime, one former resident said: “You never really get used to it. Everyone’s kind of on edge right now. Even though we’ve experienced so much trauma in the city and there has been so much rioting and looting that has happened already … most people feel like we’re sitting on a powder keg, and the worst is not over in the city.”

Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

Read How To Steal An Election, Part 1: The Left’s Plan here…

Read How To Steal An Election, Part 2: The Right’s Response here…

We are less than two weeks from election day, so here is your final installment to help you understand the theft of the upcoming presidential election. We previously established the Left’s documented plan to disrupt the 2020 presidential election, and then examined some of the information operations techniques deployed against the American public to persuade and influence the election “season” ahead.

In the past few days, we have been treated to an information suppression operation by the Left and their public relations arm (the “journalists” of the news media and social media tech giants) — that perfectly demonstrates the countermeasures that can be deployed to actively deny the truth. This important defensive technique — swarming and shutting down reporting on a subject by furiously ignoring it, or reporting it as “debunked,” “discredited,” or “foreign intervention.” The offensive application is discussed below, but first, some context.

There is little doubt that Gatestone Institute readers are the sort of folk who will have successfully gained access to the reports, first broken by the New York Post, of the Hunter Biden laptops and the damning records contained therein. The social media tech titans are doing their best to make sure the story does not spread. Twitter has suspended the New York Post’s account because of the story and locked the Trump campaign’s account over a Hunter Biden-related video.

Hunter appears to have explicitly leveraged his father’s position as Vice President — and there was “consideration” planned for the “Big Guy.” It seems as if Joe Biden knew or should have known what was going on. Forget the idea that reporters would pressure the Biden campaign to give substantive answers to any questions regarding this scandal. The only tough question Biden has been asked recently was what flavor milkshake he bought. You are supposed to believe this is “normal.”

Here is why you are supposed to unblinkingly swallow this nonsense: You have been psychologically conditioned to accept it. Zero analysis. Zero questioning. Consume. Digest. Accept. Ask for more, politely. Be satiated.

In previous election-theft articles, we explained how the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) report and the subsequent news media reporting about it are components of psychological warfare within the broader Leftist national information warfare campaign. We reviewed how the goal is to break down and weaken Trump support before, during and after election day. We explained how TIP has coordinated a dishonest storyline as the official narrative of the 2020 presidential election and alerted the militant wing of their movement to seize control of the lead-up to election day and beyond.

Here comes the offensive information campaign. Election night results indicate a Trump victory. The Left wants to keep counting and counting and counting ballots until they get the number that lets them claim victory — they want election “season.” Trump and his campaign have sufficient state election returns and polling data to claim victory. Trump tweets: “VICTORY!” Twitter takes it down and locks his account, and those of his campaign. He goes out to the campaign hotel ballroom for a victory speech and only OneAmerica News Network carries the speech. Trump’s proclamations are branded “fake news.” Zero coverage. Networks and other news media outlets show poll workers and election officials counting and counting and counting “contested” ballots. The news media and the social media giants will not let Trump win. That is not the headline they will allow. Efforts by the Trump campaign to claim victory and certify election results are subjected to endless lawsuits — all of which are reported on by media outlets, because Trump has (supposedly) been caught cheating, of course.

You see how this plays out. When the truth cannot be reported, it is worse than being lied to about what is truly happening. The insidious plot of the Left can irretrievably twist the constitution and the nation in just a very few days. Fight for the truth.

Back in June, the generally cheerful investing icon Jeremy Grantham unleashed fire and brimstone, taking his $7.5BN portfolio to a net short position for the first time since the financial crisis, and summarizing his dire assessment of the current unprecedented situation simply by saying “this will end badly.”

Doubling down on his apocalyptic message, the one-time value investing guru told CNBC at the time that the US stock market is in a unprecedented bubble and investing in it is “simply playing with fire.”

“I have been completely amazed,” the veteran bearish investor said in an interview Wednesday on CNBC.

“It is a rally without precedent – the fastest in this time ever and the only one in the history books that takes place against a background of undeniable economic problems.”

His advice to an entire generation of young daytraders jumping into the market now was to sell U.S. stocks, buy emerging market equities and “throw the key away” for a few years, he said, adding “this is becoming the fourth real McCoy bubble of my career.”

Turns out, Grantham was only getting started. In a lengthy interview this week, cranked up the fear factor to ’11’ as he warned that “we are in a bubble,” the value-investing legend said, “but it is unlike any other,” adding that he is looking for signs of “crazy” to signal the peak.

Grantham note that “the stories [of crazy] are everywhere and are what you need for a bubble to break,” focusing his attentiojn most specifically on the recent resurgence in SPACs: “give me your money and trust me that I will do something useful with it.”

“That is a real testimonial to the speculative nature of the market,”

“Everything is overpriced,” he said, and while he could obviously offer no certainty as to the timing of the bubble bursting, Grantham warned:

“My bet is that reality will catch up with the high P/Es… it is a matter of weeks or months, not years…”

Watch the full interview below: