Tag: finance

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

Are you ever confused when Republicans vote for more welfare spending?

Do you wonder why America’s wars always seem to start under Democrats?

During the aftermath of the Presidential election did it anger you that long-serving Republicans refused to take President Trump’s complaints about the election seriously?

Did their final betrayal of him hit you like a punch to the solar plexus, knocking all the wind out of your chest?

I can honestly say none of this surprised me at all. I know, bully for me, right?

Well, no, actually. It makes me sad to have been right for all these years.

I’ve seen the pantomime in D.C. as both sides hand off control to each other every few years but always ‘govern’ with the same over-riding purpose; to build an unassailable wall of power between the political elite and the people they rule.

This is true because there is no divide between the two parties in D.C. The GOP and the DNC are, in the great words of libertarian commentator Tom Woods, “Two wings of the same bird of prey.”

And one of the very best things that has come about from this election cycle, where clear and pervasive voter fraud occurred, is that so many more people have come to that same conclusion.

If you are one of them, believe me, it gets easier to accept every day.

I hear from well-meaning, thoughtful conservatives all the time. They are good, decent people and they are regularly so disappointed by the Republicans who campaign on the correct rhetoric but get into office and give into the pork spending, the assaults on our culture and never stand up to the Democrats’ insane ravings about race and inequality.

It’s because they are part of The Club folks…

..and The Club exists for their benefit, not yours.

Team Red and Team Blue are constructs. They are false opposites.

Yes, there are members who are more aligned with one philosophy than the other. AOC is definitely a crazy commie and Rand Paul a mostly principled libertarian, but they aren’t the party leadership.

Well, in AOC’s case, not yet.

The rank-and-file Republicans are either too weak, too compromised or just plain in it for themselves to do anything but put up token resistance on the Road To Serfdom described by F.A. Hayek more than seventy years ago.

The leadership, however, of both parties are perfectly aligned and only pretend to fight in public. This is why Mitch McConnell makes the “mistakes” he makes.

In fact, it’s why Mitch McConnell is still in a leadership position in the GOP, to ensure that no major policy program is curtailed.

And we’ve known this implicitly for years. The GOP was the false and controlled opposition to the Democrats who set the agenda the people who stand behind them wanted them to set.

In the post-COVID world, we can see their plan very clearly and it is a frightening one.

The slow realization that we don’t really control Washington lay dormant until awakened by Ron Paul back in 2008. It led to the Trump revolution in 2016.

A lot of people understood that there was something terribly wrong in Washington but, like Trump, didn’t realize just how bad things were.

There was a certain naivete in both the Bernie Bros on the left and the MAGA Dudes on the right. They both yearned for an America that gave them a fair shake, that didn’t pile burdens and guilt on them for being white or middle class or, worse, heterosexual.

I’ve talked to plenty of liberals who aren’t godless, gun-hating tyrants. They are just as appalled by what’s happening as the conservatives are.

Both groups believed that the system of America still, at its core, worked in their favor. That if they just picked a champion and made their voices loud enough the pols in D.C. would have to listen to them.

The Bernie Bros were disenfranchised in 2016 and, likely, in 2020 as well. And the MAGA Dudes just learned the same lesson on a much grander scale.

And that was my fervent hope for the 2020 election. Because The Club in D.C. told us how they were going to steal the election. They told us Trump would be ‘fumigated’ from the White House, in the words of Nancy Pelosi.

The only way to beat that would be a landslide of such immense proportions that it would force the cheating out into the open, exposing the lies.

That’s exactly what happened. Anyone with any shred of intellectual integrity or a basic understanding of math knows this. And yet, they stole the election anyway.

And this, to me, has created the perfect moment of transition for America.

Because this has now collapsed the false dyad of Red vs. Blue in the minds of millions. A country that has never been more divided is also now strangely united in their contempt for not only our government but also the media which openly supports its most brazen lies.

There are still plenty of people on the left side of the political spectrum who think that their “winning” this election will bring them everything they ever wanted.

They think, if the screeching on Twitter is to be believed, that a complete repudiation of Trumpism will usher in a new golden age of enlightened embracing of trannies, and the final dispersal of the vestiges of community and family in America.

And in the short run they may be completely right.

By the same token, however, the collapse of Red vs. Blue means the wholesale rejection of the GOP by tens of millions of Trump supporters.

That destroys the myth they are the only viable opposition to the insanity of the Democrats.

Seventy-five million Trump voters were just cured of their Stockholm Syndrome to their GOP captors.

This was a necessary illusion which needed to be dispelled and could only be torn down with the GOP’s betrayal of Trump when the country’s future was on the line.

It paves the way for a new American political landscape, one bereft of the false hope of a GOP savior at the next election. The GOP only ever acted as the relief valve for the anguish and frustration of two generations of nominally conservative Americans to pour their money into and in doing so feed The Club even more power.

Trump brought the party Hispanics and Black people in record numbers. He appealed to their better angels and desire for an honest job and a stable community to raise their families in.

The Democrats will hold a sham impeachment trial with the Republicans’ consent to reinforce their dominance over the people — the Deplorables, MAGA Dudes and Bernie Bros who made the mistake of thinking they had hope of getting off their reservation.

For better or worse Trump blew apart the lie that Republicans stood for freedom and the Democrats for socialism. They both just believe in power, theirs.

Now that Red Vs. Blue has collapsed it’s revealed the far more sinister and dangerous reality that America is now the land of Us vs. Them.

And that is a fight Politics-As-Usual cannot settle.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if you aren’t on Team Red or Team Blue

Donate
BTC: 3GSkAe8PhENyMWQb7orjtnJK9VX8mMf7Zf
BCH: qq9pvwq26d8fjfk0f6k5mmnn09vzkmeh3sffxd6ryt
ETH: 0x1dd2e6cddb02e3839700b33e9dd45859344c9edc
DCR: DsV2x4kJ4gWCPSpHmS4czbLz2fJNqms78oE
DASH: XjWQKXJuxYzaNV6WMC4zhuQ43uBw8mN4Va
XMR: 48Whbhyg8TNXiNV2LNkjeuJJU55CNt5m1XDtP3jWZK2xf5GNsbU2ZwHLDJTQ5oTU3uaJPN8oQooRpSQ2CPMJvX8pVTqthmu

After data was shared last week suggesting that the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine is substantially less effective against the new COVID variant first isolated in South Africa, it looks like more questions about the efficacy of the first wave of vaccines are about to be raised, as the FT warns of a new study showing that the AZ vaccine is even less effective against the SA variant than initially believed, and often fails to prevent infections involving the new strain.

According to the FT, although none of the more than 2K, mostly healthy and young patients in the study died or was hospitalized with serious illness, the findings ‘could complicate the race to roll out vaccines as new strains emerge.”

That’s definitely bad news for one of Europe’s top vaccines, and it couldn’t come at a worse time, as the West finally admits that the Russia-developed vaccine ‘Sputnik V’ is surprisingly effective.

The strain of the virus that first emerged in SA has been described as “more worrying” than other mutant strains, including the B117 strain first isolated in Kent. And AZ isn’t alone in this: Vaccines from JNJ and Novavax were also found to be less effective against the SA strain.

In both the human trials and tests on the blood of those vaccinated, the jab showed significantly reduced efficacy against the 501Y.V2 viral variant, which is dominant in South Africa, according to the randomised, double-blind study seen by the Financial Times. “A two-dose regimen of [the vaccine] did not show protection against mild-moderate Covid-19 due to [the South African variant]”, the study says, adding that efficacy against severe Covid-19, hospitalisations and deaths was not yet determined. While all Covid-19 vaccines so far have largely held up against the B.1.1.7 variant that emerged in the UK, the strain that originated in South Africa has been more worrying. Both Johnson & Johnson and Novavax have said their vaccines were less effective against the strain in clinical trials conducted in South Africa. In trials, both vaccines offered complete protection against severe disease and death in relation to Covid-19.

While the study data is being taken seriously, there are certain caveats, though one scientist who spoke with the FT still described the findings as a “wake-up call”.

There are caveats to the Oxford/AstraZeneca study, as the sample sizes were relatively small. The study, led by South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford university, enrolled 2,026 HIV negative individuals, with a median age of 31. Half the group was given at least one dose of placebo, with the other half receiving at least one dose of vaccine. Tulio de Oliveira, who heads the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, told the Financial Times the findings were a “wake-up call to control the virus and increase the response to Covid-19 in the world”.

With the new study set to publish Monday, another round of media coverage of the vaccine’s shortcomings is almost guaranteed. Is this the start of another round of vaccine-related fearmongering to justify more lockdowns in Europe? We’ll just need to wait and see.

Authored by Robert Aro via The Mises Institute,

The word “technocrat” is seldom used by the liberty crowd. It invokes the idea of a bureaucracy using technical experts to somehow make the right decisions on behalf of the entire nation and stands as the antithesis of a free society. Sadly, it captures the essence of central banking as well. This week, news came out of both Italy and Australia showcasing how this works. Starting with Italy, on Tuesday, the New York Times praised the technocrat when announcing that former head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi was summoned to Italy in hopes of becoming the next Prime Minister. Described in the paper as the “pie-in-the-sky wish of many of Italy’s European Union-friendly politicians,” Draghi appears to be the man destined to guide the nation out of the current pandemic. As explained:

By officially bringing in Mr. Draghi as a potential leader in a critical moment, Italy seemed poised to return to the model of the technocratic government that has the reputation of bailing out the country when its political forces fail.

The press tells us politics has failed the country, but salvation can be found through electing a better, more skilled and experienced leader. In this case, it becomes the job of one of “Italy’s highest profile international officials,” who it said to have once steered Europe out of crisis almost a decade ago:

He is credited with easing interest rates and proclaiming in 2012 that he would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro as the Central Bank’s president during the eurozone debt crisis.

The value of the technocrat lies in his ability to do “whatever it takes,” especially in time of crisis. Understand, the “whatever it takes” attitude of a central banker will invariably include more debt issuance, making it ironic that the Euro Zone debt crisis was solved by creating more of the existing problem. As we see, his remedy:

Months later, he promised unlimited purchases of eurozone government bonds to deeply indebted countries, including Italy, effectively relieving crushing financial pressure.

At the moment, high debt levels don’t concern our planners as rates are either low or negative. However, this does not solve any crisis so much as it prolongs it with the inevitability of it being more severe in the future.

In this regard, Europe today resembles the situation in the USA, stuck where keeping rates low forever must eventually meet the reality that rates must rise one day; it is our central planners who must take the credit for this.

On the other side of the globe, in Australia, we see that the explanations given by our leaders are not always true. This was reiterated on Tuesday when the head of the Central Bank of Australia, Governor Lowe announced an additional $100 Billion AUD bond buying, in addition to the $300 Billion AUD stimulus on the fiscal side. CNBC notes:

The stimulus has ignited a fire in the housing market where prices are at record highs…The resurgence in the property market supports household balance sheets and encourages spending through positive wealth effects, Lowe said.

If true, and the “positive wealth effect” refers to government stimulus which created currency debasement causing asset prices to increase, then it’s hardly a cause for celebration. How this wealth effect can be measured is unknown to even the Governor himself. It fails to consider that if everyone’s house increases in price, we cannot then claim we are all better off. Nor are the effects of the debt burden considered as the focus remains on assets, not liabilities, as well as spending over savings. No one seems to consider the repercussions of having the housing market “cool off” after a sustained period of being on “fire.”

Like a young adolescent who wants to be treated as an adult, but who cannot fully comprehend that all actions carry consequences, those charged with planning our future constantly seem incapable of planning beyond the things they find most gratifying in the present. Whether it’s a former central banker on the way to manage the affairs of Italy, or the current head of monetary policy for Australia, the technocrat is paid handsomely to do the impossible; probably due to the manner in which they are trying to make our lives better. It is quite literally, impossible.

French President Emmanuel Macron is once again floundering as he struggles to placate starkly contrasting views on the coronavirus pandemic among the French electorate, giving the French people the impression that he is merely “reacting” to each new twist in the virus saga.

According to a series of recent polls highlighted by the FT earlier, Macron has seen his support – compared with that of his former second-round presidential rival Marine Le Pen, still the leader of the National Rally party – decline markedly since the start of the crisis.

A Harris Interactive opinion poll published last week showed Macron had lost ground to Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National, his main rival, polling 23-24 per cent against her 26-27 per cent in voting intentions for the first round in April next year.

A more incendiary finding, leaked to the French media but not published by Harris, showed that in a hypothetical contest between the two in the second and final round, Macron was set to beat Le Pen by only 4 percentage points at 52-48, compared with his convincing 66-34 victory in the 2017 election.

Other polls, however, are less dramatic, with a new Ipsos poll giving Macron a 12-point lead in the second round, and political commentators are cautious about drawing too many conclusions about election outcomes more than a year ahead of the vote — even if they criticise Macron’s performance.

One analyst went so far as to say Macron’s weak handling of the pandemic has seemed too much like his government is just reacting. Recently, the French leader decided against invoking a third lockdown, and opted instead to tighten travel restrictions.

“Is there even a [French Covid] strategy?” asked Virginie Martin, a political analyst at Kedge Business School, pointing out that France was ranked 73 out of 98 countries in the Lowy Institute’s Covid Performance index based on the number of cases, deaths and tests. “We have the impression of being always reactive, of being half a step behind.”  Martin said almost half of France was angry with Macron’s government and the situation, but added that this polarisation of society had not translated into a common front against the president because people were angry about different and sometimes contradictory things.

The problem, the FT added, is that the French people are intensely divided about the pandemic, on everything from how it should be handled, and whether vaccines should be viewed as safe, or suspect.

Many do not want vaccines at all, while others complain France is vaccinating too slowly (just over two doses per hundred people so far, compared with five in Denmark and 15 in the UK). Some reject lockdowns and masks as infringements on their liberty, while others want the government to be stricter; and some believe the whole pandemic is a plot. 

Despite all of this, the famously establishment FT, which has long treated the European alt-right with horror and contempt, polished off the article with a series of quotes from political experts warning that the outlook for Macron isn’t all that bleak, and that he would still likely win re-election because of the lack of options (text: the FT):

• Other analysts, supported by several recent opinion polls, agreed that opposition parties were also not having a “good” coronavirus crisis, especially the Socialist party and the centre-right Les Républicains whose voters were lured en masse by Macron’s “neither right, nor left” campaign four years ago. Party leaders were struggling to gain traction for next year’s election when so much news coverage and public debate remained focused on the pandemic.  “People say no one would necessarily do better than Macron — or worse,” said Chloé Morin, an analyst at Fondation Jean-Jaurès think-tank. “Nobody really knows what should be done or shouldn’t be done . . . Covid has acted as a way of freezing the political landscape.”

• “Radical positions going from the extreme left to the extreme right are not always along the same lines,” said Martin. “He [Macron] is winning it — not well, and the situation is bad — but he’s not losing.”

• “I don’t think Macron is damaged politically so far, at least no more than he was before. But this ‘hyper-presidency’ is not a good way to deal with pandemics,” said Martigny. 

• “Nowadays one has the feeling that everything derives from the president . . . It’s good when you have to take quick decisions in the short term, but not when the pandemic lasts more than a year and people are starting to get tired and angry.”

In summary, by the time all of this is over, the French people will forget their grievances and line up to hand the famously unpopular president another term. After all, what’s the alternative? Actually electing Marine Le Pen?

Brussels wouldn’t be too thrilled with that.

Authored by Brendan Brown via The Mises Institute,

Never mind that the US Treasury’s indictment late last year of Switzerland as a currency manipulator rested on some flawed evidence and does not identify the crime. The clash between Washington and Berne marks another episode in this alpine nation’s dark history of trucking with foreign repression rather than developing its potential as a global haven and beacon of freedom. Occasionally there have been bright interludes but none so far with respect to the last quarter century of growing monetary repression as led by the US and now prevalent throughout the world.

The Trump administration’s Treasury based its indictment of Switzerland on crossing the three boxes on the ridiculous checklist for manipulation inherited from the Obama Treasury—current account surplus, bilateral trade surplus with the US, and foreign exchange intervention during the past year all above the permitted ceilings. There was no mention of the strongest basis for the charge of manipulation—failure to reverse huge past intervention and the deepest subzero interest rates in the world. The smugness of the top Swiss monetary bureaucrat’s response to the indictment, declaring that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) would continue with its massive interventions as appropriate, seems to have impressed markets where the Swiss franc (CHF) is well below its pandemic high point against the euro. The bureaucrats may yet have to eat humble pie if the Swiss government is serious about striving for a free trade deal with the US.

It could have all been so different. Think back to the early and mid-1970s when Switzerland was ahead of Germany in defying the repressive inflationary monetary hegemony of the Arthur Burns Federal Reserve. The SNB instituted a strict monetarist regime and allowed its franc to float freely and sharply higher. 

Monetarism as practiced in the 1970s, however, was not a secure basis for a Swiss pathway to sound money through the 1990s and beyond. The SNB totally failed to build an alternative firmer foundation. Instead, in 1999, it followed the US and the global central bankers’ club in adopting an inflation target, albeit somewhat lower in effective terms than that of the US and the European Central Bank, jettisoning in the process the automatic mechanisms and monetary controls which functioned during the monetarist era.

What the Swiss Should Have Done

If serious it had been about the franc’s future as a sound money, the SNB would have redesigned its monetary system so as to broaden and deepen the demand for monetary base (sometimes described as high-powered money). Then there would have been grounds for confidence that strict control of monetary base expansion within a low annual limit would imply a tendency for domestic goods and services prices to revert to an unchanged mean over the long run. One promising element of redesign would have been to eliminate deposit insurance while simultaneously modifying regulations so as to permit banks to issue a new category of supersafe sight deposits backed 100 percent by either banknotes or reserves (all non–interest bearing) at the central bank.

Under this redesigned monetary system there would have been no carry trade boom in Swiss francs during the years 2000–07, which was a testament to the SNB’s inflationary stance at that time. It was the bust of the carry trade during the Great Crash of 2008 and then the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010–12 which generated huge upward pressure on the franc. The SNB responded to that with massive foreign exchange intervention, which it justified as countering disorderly markets.

Devaluing the Franc

When the crisis passed, however, the SNB did not embark on any normalization of its massive foreign exchange reserves back to normal levels. Instead, the SNB turned itself into one of the world largest sovereign wealth funds, financing this by issuing franc certificates subject, in effect, to a high monetary repression tax. Persistently the SNB has added to its mass of foreign exchange holdings (reaching 130 percent of GDP in 2020) so as to continually stabilize the franc-euro rate, albeit at times losing control.

Under the hypothetical sound money regime, the franc might well have climbed to lofty summits amid much volatility – perhaps even above 1.40 euros/franc (0.93 end January). This would have caused some pain to certain businesses in Switzerland concentrated in the export sector or import-competing areas. Businesses there might well have cut overall wages as quoted in nominal francs sharply at first. In these early stages import prices in francs would have fallen steeply; wages in francs as averaged across all sectors would also have declined but by less than prices in general. The internal and most of all the external purchasing power of franc-denominated assets would have risen. In the long run these price falls in Switzerland would have gone into reverse as the expansion of the monetary base continued. 

The Benefits of a Strong Franc

Crucially, the huge surplus of Swiss savings would have seeped to a considerable extent into foreign assets purchasable with the benefit of a sky-high price for the franc rather than flowing directly or indirectly into SNB debt at repressed subzero interest rates. With the Swiss currency at the mountain summits, there would have been broad expectations of a long-run tendency for it to descend somewhat over the long run. Hence from the viewpoint of Swiss investors the rate of return on nonfranc assets, as on franc assets, would have been higher than from the perspective of individuals in the interest income famine universe outside Switzerland.

The franc itself would have enjoyed a renaissance as a global investment money, bringing considerable advantage to the Swiss financial sector. Foreigners who had adopted the franc early on would have gained too. The Swiss would have avoided the stress and toil or residential real estate inflation, with houses remaining much more affordable. Swiss households would have been sheltered in some degree from the setback to prosperity which will follow the virulent global asset inflation of the past decade and beyond. Malinvestment globally, though, would also have exerted its toll to some extent on Switzerland. Even so, the example of Switzerland would have been a beacon for when the policies of inflation failed. 

Back to the real world: there is now much political force in Switzerland behind maintenance of the monetary status quo. A sudden transition to sound money would trigger a collapse in the Swiss real estate market, inflict massive losses at the SNB, and in effect bankrupt vast sectors of the pension fund and wealth industry, where the dominant strategy has been salvaging yield by buying foreign assets.

So how could Switzerland as a nation repent for its recent past and open a brighter chapter in its history as a haven for freedom, in this case monetary?

A Gold-Based Solution

Here is a suggestion which draws on this nation’s key position in the world gold market. Switzerland could break with the globally pervasive regulations which suppress the potential of gold to develop fully as a non-state money. Swiss banks, already expert at servicing gold deposit accounts for their clients, would get permission to establish a clearinghouse in Zurich for settling transactions between themselves in the yellow metal (in, say, kilogram gold bars deliverable in Switzerland), thereby facilitating direct payments in gold by their clients for goods or assets without having to pass through the US dollar.

All regulatory restrictions on making gold-denominated loans would lapse.

Alongside this deregulation with respect to gold, the SNB would end negative interest rates, returning to permanent zero rates on bank reserves. Small steps on their own, perhaps, but the start of big progress. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AMGreatness.com,

The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter Reformation of reformist and more zealous Catholics.  

The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring 20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression. 

The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.” 

So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions – and sometimes counterreactions.   

The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years (from 1993 through 2015) cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state. Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda were its pushback.  

The counter-reaction to the populism of the Trump reset—or Trump himself—is as of yet unsure.  

Joe Biden’s tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years. Or more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory. 

Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders—a tactic candidate Biden condemned. 

On almost every issue—open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees—Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support. 

When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues. 

But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.

Now they – and the country – are in a revolutionary frenzy.

• The San Francisco school district has canceled over 40 schools honoring the nation’s best – Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln – largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males. 

• Statues continue to fall. Names change. 

• The iconic dates, origins, and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands.

• And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.

• Social media are banning tens of thousands.

• Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.  

• A wrong word destroys a lifelong career.

• Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment.

• Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.

If Trump’s pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden’s reset promises to become far more radical than Obama’s entire eight years. 

Trump likely lost his second pushback term for two reasons – neither of which had anything to do with his reset agenda.

First, the sudden 2020 pandemic, quarantine, recession, summer-long demonstrations and riots, and radical changes in voting laws all ensured that 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, derailed a booming economy, and finally wore the people out.  

Second, Trump underestimated the multitrillion-dollar power and furor of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, Hollywood, and the progressive rich. Those forces all coalesced against him and swamped his outspent and outmanned campaign. 

With 24/7 blanket ads, news coverage, endorsements, and social media messaging, Trump sometimes was easily caricatured as a twittering disrupter. The inert and mute Biden in his basement was reinvented as the sober and judicious Washington “wise man” antidote to Trump’s unpredictability.

Had Biden continued his moderate campaign veneer, the current left-wing radicalism might not have prompted a counterreaction. 

Instead, Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation’s history. 

Pundits thought Biden’s prior hints of a single four-year term would make him a weak lame duck.  Instead, the idea of just one term has liberated the 78-year-old Biden. We forget that septuagenarians can be as reckless as 20-year olds. Some old guys can feel their careers only have a few remaining years and might as well go out with a bang—and a legacy. 

For now, Biden enjoys a congressional majority for the next 24 months. He has no plans to run for reelection. He sees both realities as a liberating blank check to accomplish what the much more heralded rockstar Barack Obama never could. 

Experts assured voters that Joe Biden would work on a bipartisan consensus and bring back “normality.”

He would “unite” the country.  

That will not happen. How ironic that Biden will not just be pushed and pressured by the radicals whom he brought to power, but he may be leading them forward to cement an even harder Left legacy.

Will there be a reaction to this extremism?  

The Left is assured that radical changes in voting laws and demography, the fears of COVID-19, the Antifa-Black Lives Matter uprising, and anger at Trump over the January 6 Capitol riot have all permanently changed the electorate – and pushed it far leftward. 

If they are wrong, they have instead alienated and insulted the American people, and will reap the whirlwind in 2022 of the wind they are now sowing.

The Australian government has possibly obtained a rare, partial victory in its standoff with Google. The US-based tech giant has appeared to reverse course as Australia holds hearings aimed at enacting legislation that would effectively force Google to pay local sources for news it links to and features in its search engine. 

Google last month threatened to pull its search engine off the continent altogether, with Canberra counter-threatening that they won’t budge. But on Thursday Google made the following official announcement: “To meet growing reader and publisher needs, last year we increased our investment in news partnerships and launched Google News Showcase.”

The ‘Showcase’ app is the result of the company negotiating to pay some Australian news producers who sign up for the program. It’s an attempt to undercut legislation being proposed to require the company to pay for all such content. It’s not likely to stop the new legislation, however, but Google is offering it as an ‘alternative’. The move shows that the tech giant is arguably feeling the pressure and is looking to compromise.

The Google announcement continued, “Today we are happy to announce we are rolling out an initial version of the product to benefit users and publishers in Australia, with a keen focus on leading regional and independent publishers given the importance of local information and the role it plays in people’s everyday lives.”

“News Showcase is designed to bring value to both publishers and readers by providing a licensing program that pays publishers to curate content for story panels across Google services, and gives readers more insights into the stories that matter,” it said. 

While the details have yet to be revealed, for example just which publishers will eventually be enabled to join the platform, it’s being reported as a significant compromise which is likely to first reward major national Australian outlets, as Reuters details:

With the legislation now before a parliamentary inquiry, Friday’s launch of News Showcase in Australia will see it pay seven domestic outlets, including the Canberra Times, to use their content.

Financial details of the content deals weren’t disclosed, and Canberra Times publisher Australian Community Media didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The months in the making Australian initiative seeks to ensure companies and content providers are compensated fairly for the value their content generates for Google and parent company Alphabet Inc. at a moment the domestic industry is in crisis, with traditional newspapers and content producers under threat of having to shut down altogether.

WATCH: As Google considers pulling out of Australia due to a recent legal tussle with the government, companies are looking at how to reshape their online business models to survive https://t.co/ySzE4cTLCX $GOOGL pic.twitter.com/BKxfOxzWXh

— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) February 4, 2021

Last month Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison hit back in the wake of the threatened Google shutdown in the country, saying, “We don’t respond to threats.” He added at the time: “Let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia.”

It’s commonly estimated that Alphabet Inc. oversees at least 94% of all search traffic in Australia, similar to many other countries globally, at a time it’s coming under increased accusations of using its monopoly power to bully content providers and smaller competitors. 

Twitter has permanently suspended the account of Jim Hoft, founder of the popular conservative website The Gateway Pundit, for reportedly violating the social media giant’s “civic integrity policy.”

Twitter has suspended The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft. pic.twitter.com/a3dzXrysWB

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) February 6, 2021

Hoft’s account @gatewaypundit, which had over 375,000 followers, served as the outlet’s primary presence on Twitter. The ban comes one day after TGP posted election night surveillance video of Detroit’s TCF Center of what the outlet reports is a van dropping off “tens of thousands of illegal ballots,” after which “Joe Biden took the lead in Michigan.”

Oh shit they got my boss pic.twitter.com/seMjYSG8Bl

— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) February 6, 2021

According to a spokesperson for Twitter, “The account was permanently suspended for repeated violations of our civic integrity policy,” according to Citizen Free Press.

Following the ban, The Gateway Pundit said of the surveillance footage that they have “much much more on this incident to report on in the coming days,” as they have yet to release all of it. Hoft posted the following tweet hours before his suspension:

And while liberal Twitter celebrates Hoft’s banishment – and the founder of pro-censorship organization Sleeping Giants is now calling for their complete demonetization, The Gateway Pundit can still be found on the following platforms:

Telegram
Gab
SafeChat
MeWe
Clouthub
Minds
Politichatter

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez had a phone call with Elon Musk on Friday about digging a tunnel underneath Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard to alleviate traffic. 

Following the phone call, the Miami Herald spoke with Suarez about the Musk-owned Boring Co. building a $30 million tunnel under the Brickell Avenue Bridge. He said the tech billionaire told him the tunnel could be built in six months. 

“For him, it’s not about the money, it’s about creating a solution, creating something that creates happiness and prosperity to the people,” Suarez said.

Suarez said the tunnel would only be accessible to electric vehicles because a major cost-savings of the tunnel is the lack of ventilation systems. He said the call lasted about 30 minutes. 

“I think we have a unique opportunity to create a signature project, not just for Miami, but for the world,” Suarez said in a video statement on his Twitter account. 

Just had my call w/ @elonmusk regarding @boringcompany tunnels coming to MIA

DETAILS BELOW👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/NsJFYcvGeQ

— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) February 5, 2021

Musk has also spoken with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava about the project. 

Suarez said the next step for him is to speak with DeSantis about the idea considering Miami-Dade County transit officials have already considered building a more expensive tunnel under the city. 

Already, Boring has found success in completing a third of a mile transport tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center at the cost of $52.5 million. 

Last week, San Bernardino County Transportation Authority in Southern California approved plans to connect a train station in Rancho Cucamonga, California, to Ontario International Airport with a Boring tunnel.

… and good luck to Miami officials, who believe Musk can deliver them a tunnel under budget and in six months. Musk has been notorious for overstating promises. 

We’re still waiting for the million robotaxis Musk promised on the road by 2020. 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,

Over the years, I have written extensively about the concept of economic “decentralization” and localization, but I think these ideas are difficult for some people to visualize without proper motivation. By that I mean, it’s not enough that the current centralized model is destructive and corrupt; it has to start breaking down or show its true totalitarian colors before anyone will do anything to protect themselves.

Sadly, the majority of people tend to take action only when they have hit rock bottom.

In recent months the pandemic lockdown situation has provided a sufficient wake up call to many conservatives and moderates. We have seen the financial effects of pandemic restrictions in blue states, with hundreds of thousands of small businesses closing, tax revenues imploding and millions of people relocating to red states just to escape the oppressive environment.

Luckily, conservative regions have been smart enough to prevent self destruction by staying mostly open. In fact, red states have been vastly outperforming blue states in terms of economic recovery exactly because they refuse to submit to medical tyranny.

I outlined this dynamic in detail recently in my article Blue State Economies Will Soon Crumble – But Will They Take Red States With Them?

The data is undeniable: the states and cities that enforce lockdown mandates are dying, the states that ignore mandates are surviving. However, with a Biden presidency there is a high probability that the federal government will now seek to force compliance from all states. In other words, lockdowns will become a national issue rather than a state issue.

For now, Biden is pretending as if reopening is right around the corner, but as I have noted in the past, the Reset agenda will never allow this. A reopening, if it happens at all, will be short and lockdowns will return. We are already seeing a new narrative being introduced to the public involving “COVID mutations”, which are supposedly “more deadly” than the original COVID-19 outbreak. So, there is a brand new and useful threat and the establishment will exploit it as a rationale for more lockdowns and restrictions.

Beyond the pandemic mandates, there are also numerous Reset agenda policies that will be implemented under the Biden administration, including insane Green New Deal related executive orders and legislation claiming to reduce carbon emissions. What they will really do is annihilate resource production. Millions of jobs will be lost and entire industries will be erased unless conservatives act to stop Biden in his tracks.

This means doing far more than stalling through political maneuvers. We are going to have to use concrete strategies to retake control of resource management within the states. Pointless globalist carbon policies composed by entities like the UN have no place in American economic planning. A message needs to be sent that they will never be accepted here.

Time is running out to prepare. Lockdowns will return within a few months and this time they will be federally enforced. Conservatives must be ready to defy these orders if they have any hope of saving their local economies. This is going to take individual efforts to stock necessities and secure their finances, but ultimately wider organization is going to be needed to weather the storm.

Conservatives must establish coalitions of counties and states, and certain economic measures will have to be applied to insulate from damage. The federal government and Biden will attempt to punish red states for refusing to submit, and we need to be ready for that eventuality.

Here are some ways that conservative communities can stop the Reset agenda…

Localization

On a smaller scale, conservatives can accomplish a lot by simply changing their buying habits. If you do 80% of your retail spending with big box stores and online outlets like Amazon and only 20% at local small businesses, then try to switch that ratio. Spend 80% at local businesses and 20% at corporate outlets. Yes, small businesses tend to cost a little extra, but who do you really want your money going to? Do you want your money filling the pockets of international corporate moguls that are working to destroy your freedoms and undermine your economy? Or, do you want your cash to circulate locally?

Individuals can also start their own business from home focusing on production of necessities or necessary skill sets. They can establish a small business co-op and encourage the community to buy locally. Often, people just don’t know how many services are available from small businesses in their area, so they automatically go to big box providers. Small businesses must work together to change the dynamic.

This strategy also extends to local farms. Consumers and grocery stores need to buy more of their produce from farms in the area and less from chains which ship in produce from other countries. There are millions of acres of farmland in the U.S. that do not grow food at all because these farms are paid by the federal government not to. Encouraging local food production is paramount to remaining free from centralized control.

Organized Refusal To Comply

The problem with conservatives is that we tend to be so independent that we avoid organization. This is a problem because it leads to self-isolation. During the pandemic lockdowns in blue states, some conservative-owned businesses refused to comply, but they were left mostly to fend for themselves with no aid from the wider community. If more businesses were to ally with each other and protested in tandem, dozens or hundreds of defiant businesses working together would be a lot harder to shut down than just a few.

By extension, it’s not enough for conservatives to merely argue against the lockdowns and demand businesses stay open, we need to also defend those businesses that take action. We need to support them with our dollars and stand in the way of anyone trying to close them down. They are taking a big risk for us, so we need to be willing to take risks for them.

Imagine if Biden tried to assert a national lockdown order and more than half the businesses in the country ignored him? What if patrons refused to allow federal agencies to intimidate those businesses? The lockdowns would be nullified, and Biden would have little recourse.

Establish Barter Networks

In the event that the U.S. economy breaks down completely, we must create contingencies to prevent total trade disruption. Without trade, populations become desperate because no one has the ability to provide every necessity all the time. People have to be able to barter goods and services in an open market.

Barter networks are a base fundamental, the universal go-to solution during economic collapse. Every society in modern history has used barter markets to stay afloat during financial crisis and to bypass government economic controls. We must be willing to do the same.

Conservatives must start organizing barter networks within their communities now. It does not matter if you are trading with a couple of people or hundreds; the process needs to start somewhere.

Why is this so important? Because there is a very good chance that the federal government will try to fiscally punish any state or county that opposes lockdown measures and Reset policies. This means that the government will first seek to cut off federal funding to red states. In the midst of economic crisis, many regions have become reliant on federal stimulus as a crutch, and this dependency makes them vulnerable to control.

To truly rebel against the Reset, local economies need to be free from federal oversight or consequences. With barter networks in place along with possible local scrip and alternative currencies, the public will be less fearful of economic retaliation.

Take Back Management Of Local Resources

We have already seen attempts by Biden to disrupt production of carbon based energy resources like oil and coal. Frankly, the time is long past due for states and counties to take back control of federal lands. The government has been stifling American production for decades and this has hurt rural communities in particular.

In my area, the EPA has essentially destroyed the timber harvesting industry through unfair regulations. This has led to federal mismanagement of forests to the point that fire hazard has become a major issue. All the young men in the county used work as lumberjacks to support their families; now they have to leave, or work as wildland firefighters. It’s completely backwards. And this is happening while U.S. lumber prices are skyrocketing.

Conservative counties and states need to take back land and resource management and allow reasonable production to return. Biden should have no say in whether or not oil wells in North Dakota stay operational, or coal mines in West Virginia stay open, or trees Montana are selectively harvested. As long as the bulk of wealth from the resource production stays within the state where the resources were harvested, I see no downside to this kind of response.

If the federal government tries to retaliate by cutting off federal funds, it won’t matter because the states will be producing jobs and wealth for themselves independently.

Immunity From Cancel Culture

In our current political environment, it is becoming a fact of life that the hard left can and will try to harm people that oppose their ideology. Big tech companies and government are helping them to do this. Now more than ever, conservatives that wish to remain free to voice their views and share facts that are contrary to the leftist narrative must seek protection from cancellation. But how do we do this?

For one, we can work for ourselves. Being self employed means never having to worry about being fired because of your political opinions. Or, conservatives need to work for conservatives. This means conservative companies need to focus on hiring conservative employees, and if the leftist mob tries to attack an individual, those companies can easily ignore them. Of course, this also means that conservative consumers need to start making a list of conservative companies that have proven themselves to be immune to leftist pressure. We need to support these companies.

Conservatives should also look into the possibility of campaigns to build more platform alternatives to Big Tech and social media. We need more web service providers that are owned by people who respect free speech rights. We may even need our own internet.

All of these things are possible, but it takes organization and effort. Conservative communities can become safe havens for civil liberties, but this means we cannot be isolated from each other anymore. We have to be connected by more than our principles, we must also be connected through actions.

*  *  *

With global tensions spiking, thousands of Americans are moving their IRA or 401(k) into an IRA backed by physical gold. Now, thanks to a little-known IRS Tax Law, you can too. Learn how with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals how physical precious metals can protect your savings, and how to open a Gold IRA. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.