“You Should Go To Fuc*in’ Jail”: Chaos Ensues As Schiff Accused Of ‘Treason’ At California Event
A Glendale, California town hall event hosted by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) became less than civil on Saturday, after hecklers accused the House Intelligence Committee chairman of “treason” and being a “liar,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
As Schiff began speaking, a man and two women held up signs reading,”Don’t Impeach.” When they were asked to take down the signs, they refused. -LA Times
Around a dozen Trump supporters attended the event to discuss the House’s recent recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Scattered throughout the audience, the protesters began yelling “Liar!” at the de facto ringleader of House Democrats’ efforts to impeach President Trump.
After some aggressive shushing from Schiff supporters, the audience members yelling at Schiff removed their jackets, revealing pro-Trump shirts. One of them then said, “you should go to fuckin’ jail … you will be going to jail, for treason.”
“This man is a fuckin’ liar!” shouted another.
Watch:
The outburst lasted around 15 minutes, before the event continued. Three Glendale police officers were present, and no arrests or injuries were reported.
The event was organized by the Armenian National Committee of America — Western Region to thank the U.S. House of Representatives for recently passing a resolution affirming its recognition of the Armenian genocide and celebrating the U.S. Senate’s passage of the resolution.
The measure’s passage is considered a rebuke to Trump, who had sought its delay, and to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had lobbied the White House to block the designation. The Turkish government disputes that a genocide took place.
Erdogan, in an Oval Office visit last month, warned of dire consequences for the Washington-Ankara relationship if the “genocide” term were to be formalized. The Senate resolution declared it U.S. policy “to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance” and “reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States government with denial of the Armenian Genocide or any other genocide.” -LA Times
“I was grateful for the opportunity to share in the community’s celebration of the historic passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in both the House and Senate, and thankful for the recognition of the efforts of so many people who made this day possible,” Schiff said in a statement following the event.
“Unfortunately, some came to the event with the intent to disrupt, but the Armenian community has had to overcome far greater challenges along the road to recognition than to be deterred by a few angry voices.”
There are more than just a few, from what we gather.
In following the Democrats’ impeachment effort, I have listened to both sides with an open mind, tried to do some original research, and put a lot of thought into the arguments and claims.
If what the Democrats allege is true, it’s disturbing, indeed.
Democrats claim President Trump is corrupt and that he abused his power, primarily because he called the new president of Ukraine and demanded that he find dirt on a Trump political rival — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — to bolster Trump’s chances of winning the 2020 presidential election. The U.S. president acted solely in his own personal political interest, they say, and selfishly sacrificed the nation’s interest.
Furthermore, Democrats say, what Trump held out as leverage — a quid pro quo — was U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Ukraine. They say people died while Ukraine waited for this critical aid, and that it was released only when Trump realized he was in trouble and under investigation. And finally, they say Trump held up a White House meeting with the Ukrainian president until he would commit to announcing an investigation into Biden, in a very public interview with CNN. It’s bribery. Treason. Impeachable.
The issue I have is that to prove their points, Democrats require us to believe they can read minds.
President Trump said nothing about a quid pro quo during the phone call in question. He didn’t threaten to hold up aid or a White House meeting. But Democrats say that’s exactly what he meant.
President Trump didn’t make any expressions of demands in the call. But Democrats say that’s what he meant.
President Trump didn’t mention the 2020 election or political dirt on the call. He spoke of getting to the bottom of any 2016 foreign election interference under the Obama administration, as Democrats and Republicans have pressed him to do. On the call, Trump spoke of his desire for Ukraine to investigate corruption and whether the Bidens may be connected to any of it. This, said Trump, particularly concerned Joe Biden’s public admission that he demanded a Ukrainian prosecutor be fired and threatened to hold up U.S. taxpayer-funded aid unless it happened within hours. (Biden says the prosecutor wasn’t working hard enough to investigate corruption; Biden’s critics say there was a conflict of interest because the prosecutor was investigating the energy company where Biden’s son was paid to sit on the board.)
But Democrats say something different than what was said was actually in President Trump’s mind: He was secretly attempting to impact the 2020 campaign. Trump didn’t mention 2020 but, Democrats say, he meant 2020 in his own mind. Trump didn’t allude to political dirt but, they say, that’s exactly what Trump was thinking about.
Some of the Democrats’ witnesses stated that Trump likely wanted Ukraine’s president to publicly announce a corruption investigation to hold his feet to the fire because the Ukrainians have a habit of committing to one thing but doing another. But Democrats insist Trump had something else in his mind: Trump wanted the public announcement to embarrass and use against Biden in the 2020 campaign.
The president of Ukraine has publicly stated, and put in writing, that he felt no pressure from President Trump. But Democrats say the opposite is true. After all, they can read minds.
President Trump explicitly stated in a private conversation with one of the Democrats’ witnesses that he wanted “no quid pro quo.” But the mind-reading Democrats know Trump meant the opposite; Trump did want a quid pro quo.
Though Ukrainian experts say a holdup of U.S. aid would not have impacted their ability to fight the Russians, since they manufacture their own lethal weapons (and sell a lot to other countries), the Democrats can read minds: They say people died because of the delay.
Seeming to disprove the Democrats’ allegations on their face, the Ukrainian president made no public announcement of a corruption investigation on CNN, but the U.S. aid was released anyway. Yet Democrats say they know that President Trump released the aid only because he knew at that point that Congress was investigating him.
And it’s not just Democrats.
Each of the Democrats’ witnesses also drew conclusions about President Trump, his supposedly corrupt motivations and thought processes, that would require them to read minds. (Most of them said they’d neither met nor spoken to Trump.)
Lastly, Democrats can read Joe Biden’s mind, too. They know that when Biden insisted on the firing of the prosecutor investigating his son’s company, that his son didn’t factor into the decision.
Democrats could be correct on all counts.
But I think that from a practical standpoint, it’s difficult to prosecute a serious case based almost solely on the idea that you claim to know what the other guy was thinking.
750 Billion Reasons Why Goldman Is Rooting For Greta Thunberg’s Success
Having lost much of its central banker incubation skills over the past decade, and handing over the crown of Wall Street’s most profitable trading desk to Morgan Stanley, in recent years Goldman Sachs has been best known for enabling and profiting wildly from Malaysia 1MDB criminal fraud, which culminated with the arrest of former Malaysia PM Razak, but not before Goldman made billions in illicit profits from selling bonds offered by the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
And while Goldman is still waiting to learn its criminal and civil fate, and more importantly, how many billions it will have to pay Malaysia/the DOJ to put its 1MDB fraud in the rearview mirror, the company – which a decade ago was hoping to make billions from aggressively entering the carbon credit/offset market as profiled delightfully in Matt Taibbi’s “The Great American Bubble Machine” – is already scheming how to profit from the latest round of anti-climate change euphoria, conveniently spawned by a 16-year-old child with Asperger’s Syndrome.
On Monday, Goldman Sachs said it will provide $750 billion in financing, advisory services and investments for initiatives that fight climate change, as well as those that foster economic opportunities for under-served people over the next decade. What Goldman did not say is that it will pocket a generous commission, somewhere in the 3-5% ballpark, by peddling “green” products to naive investors (including central banks) who have fallen for the whole ESG virtue signalling charade.
The bank also updated its internal environmental policy framework to rule out providing financing to any new projects that will drill for oil in the Arctic or that create new thermal coal plants or new thermal coal mines. Of course, the destructive consequences of the bank’s involvement in the 1MDB scandal would be quietly excluded from this virtuous charade.
Ironically, Goldman’s policy changes come just as the United Nations concludes a conference that failed to ramp up efforts to combat global warming, according to Reuters.
Goldman CEO David Solomon announced the plans in an editorial in the Financial Times, where he wrote that there is “a powerful business and investing case” for the bank to take steps to address climate change and the growing worldwide opportunity gap. Very powerful: having failed to make almost any money from the bank’s last foray into carbon tax and cap-and-trade, Goldman is now seeking to directly appeal to fellow fake virtue signalers, who in turn will hope to extract capital from naive investors pursuing the oh so noble goal of only investing in green, renewable, and “clean” (whatever that means) projects. Goldman’s bottom line, assuming a blended 3% commission on the $750BN in financial services it sells to gullible clients, works out to about $22.5 billion – a “powerful business case” indeed.
Additionally, Goldman emphasized that it will not pass up any significant amount of revenue as a result of the $750 billion commitment and the ban on financing certain drilling and coal activities. A Goldman Sachs executive said on a call with reporters that the bank has not financed any projects like those in recent memory. However, since US shale producers, most of whom are funded by the ultra-generous US junk bond market, are hardly losing sleep, it only means that other, less “virtuous” banks will be delighted to pocket a far higher commission by stepping into the “dirty” market where ESG virtue signalers now refuse to tread.
And speaking of drilling and coal activities, the bank said it has a rigorous due-diligence process that takes into consideration, among other things, impacts on endangered species and indigenous populations, the executive said.
The $750 billion commitment will be deployed in several ways, including by investing in and advising companies to take steps to reduce their carbon emissions and become more sustainable, the bank said. For example, earlier this year Goldman worked with Italian electricity company Enel to raise $1.5 billion through a bond offering that linked the investments to Enel’s commitment to increase its renewable energy base by 25% before 2022.
Translation: Goldman made about $15 million selling a bunch of bonds to a bunch of “green” liberals managing other liberals’ money. Because when central banks have taken over the market and Goldman’s own trading desk is shrinking quarter after quarter, and when the coming negative rates will make Goldman’s recent investment into retail banking a disaster, one can always make money betting on liberal guilt, and nobody knows this better than Goldman Sachs… and Greta Thunberg.
And just in case Thunberg falls short of sparking the next major revenue driver on Wall Street, there is always the Fed. On Monday, the San Fran Fed published a paper titled “The Economics of Climate Change: A First Fed Conference” in which the authors concluded that “the economic consequences of climate change are likely to be substantial and will require responses from a wide range of policy institutions”. More importantly, they will make tens of billions in revenue for such idealistic, progressive, “green” organizations as Goldman Sachs.
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In parting, we remind readers what Matt Taibbi wrote about “the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” almost a decade ago: “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again.” Fast forward ten years when, with the help of Greta, Goldman is about to do it all over again.
Is there any saving the Democratic Party? This wretched concatenation of ill-will, bad faith, false witness, and sore-loserdom lurches from one defeat to the next like some mindless monster from an ancient fable of ruin, seeking a final spectacular spasm of self-annihilation. Let’s face it: only an exorcism will do, some spiritual emetic to induce the projectile vomiting of all that borscht the monster has swallowed.
The “progressive” (not) Resistance took two body-blows last week, one foreign and one domestic.
Its cousin in Britain, the Labor Party, led by the red-headed stepchild of a Marxist-Jihadi chimera, Jeremy Corbyn, got such an unexpected and mighty thrashing at the hands of BoJo that it virtually dissolved into a little puddle of bile on the floor of parliament. Corbyn was a piece of work, a cheerleader for Hezbollah and other enemies of western civ, with a zealous antipathy to economic reality, spreading the virus of identitarian Wokesterism that has infected Britain like a plague of yore. Surely the American Dems noticed how that went down.
The Horowitz report also staggered the monster lurching across America, though it took a few days to absorb the blow of countless incriminating details in the fine print. UkraineGate maestro Adam Schiff went on TV Sunday to declare that he had been “unaware” of abuses in the FISA warrant process. Gee, ya think? We are left to wonder who exactly pulled the wool over his goggle-eyes. In fact, his self-unawareness extends to virtually every utterance flying out of his pie-hole since 2016. The IG report left the FBI and DOJ in such a shambles of criminal odor that it dispelled all the narrative curses conjured by sorcerers in the news media for three years running. And as everyone in the country knows now, the IG report is hardly the end of the story. Mr. Horowitz labored under — as they say — an extremely narrow purview that will not constrain the legal audit to come.
Meanwhile, the impeachment dumbshow put on by hobgoblin Jerrold Nadler enters a most interesting zone of suspense this week as fate propels it towards a floor debate and then a vote by the whole house on Wednesday or Thursday. That’s a lot of time for members to reflect on the message sent to the voters by last week’s IG report — namely, that the investigative arms of government are so deeply corrupt and malicious that only fools and cads will go along with their findings, and that the distrust extends to the committees in congress who swallowed all that seditious malfeasance in pursuit of impeachment. That might give the vapors to enough congresspersons in swing districts to bring the actual floor vote for impeachment up short. If the case against General Michael Flynn is dismissed as it should be by the IG’s report of broad prosecutorial misconduct — and possibly at any moment now — that could seal the deal against an impeachment vote.
How much ignominy can they endure? Have they not grasped the reality that the Mueller investigation failed? That it appears to have been only one part of a larger criminal enterprise to defraud the public? That the Resistance was just an effort to cover up swales of wickedness in a greater swamp of government-gone-rogue? And now, to come to this: two articles of impeachment so transparently empty that they look like windows into vacated soul of the Democratic Party.
And now consider all this vectoring into the catastrophe that the Democratic primary has become heading into election 2020. Joe Biden? Really? Are they serious? He left a slime trail as wide as the DC Beltway around his doings as Veep, with enough video evidence to make the College of Cardinals weep for his post-mortal prospects. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders might be moved to study up on what just happened in the UK election, and weigh how US voters might be disposed to another four-year beat-down with the cudgels of inclusion and diversity plus the shady blandishments of free everything. And what else can you show me? Mayor Pete and Cory Booker, two pieces of defective merchandise cluttering up the showroom?
This solemn holiday may be the Democrat Party’s last chance to avoid suicide. They need to have a conversation with someone on the cosmic hotline, come to the realization that they’ve truly hit bottom now and must, as Rep Devin Nunes suggested Sunday to his colleague Adam Schiff, sign into rehab.
US Secretly Expelled Chinese Officials Who Breached ‘Sensitive’ Virginia Facility
The United States quietly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials from the country after a September incident in which they were caught entering a sensitive US military facility in Virginia.
According The New York Times, at least one is believed to be an intelligence officer under diplomatic cover. Interestingly, the officials’ wives were accompanying them when they drove onto to the as yet unidentified military facility, and the group actually attempted to flee military personnel pursuing them.
They were reportedly apprehended after fire trucks blocked their path, according to the report. Their subsequent expulsion by US authorities marks the first time Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage have been booted from the country in over three decades. The last such episode happened in 1987.
File image of Naval Station Norfolk, via Yelp. Multiple sensitive military and government facilities are in the area, and it’s as yet unknown exactly which site was breached.
The Times report says the strange incident is part of a broader pattern of “bolder” efforts by Chinese diplomatic personnel to infiltrate government and research facilities:
The episode in September, which neither Washington nor Beijing made public, has intensified concerns in the Trump administration that China is expanding its spying efforts in the United States as the two nations are increasingly locked in a geopolitical and economic rivalry. U.S. intelligence officials say China poses a greater espionage threat than any other country.
In recent months, Chinese officials with diplomatic passports have become bolder about showing up unannounced at research or government facilities, American officials said, with the infiltration of the military base only the most remarkable instance.
The incident resulted in the State Department imposing stricter travel regulations on Chinese diplomatic personnel in the US, resulting in a protest from Beijing.
This included new requirements for the embassy to notify US authorities anytime a meeting with US or state officials is arranged, or anytime a visit to a government or educational facility will take place.
Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., via Getty Images.
Beijing has for years imposed even stricter requirements on US personnel in China. And we can only imagine the outrage and major ‘international incident’ headlines which would ensue if Americans did the same inside China, based on the following further details of the September incident:
The Chinese officials and their wives drove up to a checkpoint for entry to the base, said people briefed on the episode. A guard, realizing that they did not have permission to enter, told them to go through the gate, turn around and exit the base, which is common procedure in such situations.
But the Chinese officials instead continued on to the base, according to those familiar with the incident. After the fire trucks blocked them, the Chinese officials indicated that they had not understood the guard’s English instructions, and had simply gotten lost, according to people briefed on the matter.
Military personnel said they were skeptical of the “gotten lost” excuse, and suspected they were conducting an experimental breach of the base’s security.
The report only identified the location as being near Norfolk, Virginia, and as housing Special Operations forces. One such base in the area described includes the headquarters of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six; however, it’s as yet unconfirmed the precise facility which was breached.
Despite complaining about a lack of money, King County leaders used taxpayer dollars to fund the performance of a transgender stripper at a recent conference on homelessness.
Yes, really.
Beyonce Black St James was hired to twerk in attendees faces and expose his/her breasts as the audience cheered and handed over dollar bills. The stripper also gave lap dances and kissed attendees.
The theme of the conference was “decolonizing our collective work,” yet another illustration of how obscure, radical, identity politics social engineering is infecting everything.
“For years, Seattle has claimed that it “needs more resources” to solve homelessness, but as the video shows, they find it totally appropriate to pay for a transgender stripper to grind on members of the region’s homelessness nonprofits and taxpayer-funded organizations,” commented Christopher F. Rufo, who posted a video of the performance.
Last week, Seattle and King County leaders hired transgender stripper Beyoncé Black St. James to perform at their annual conference on solving homelessness.
The event was organized by All Home, the coordinating agency for homelessness in King County, which is headed up by Kira Zylstra who earns roughly $123,000 a year. Zylstra has been put on paid leave pending an investigation.
For years, Seattle has claimed that it “needs more resources” to solve homelessness, but as the video shows, they find it totally appropriate to pay for a transgender stripper to grind on members of the region’s homelessness nonprofits and taxpayer-funded organizations.
Seattle has huge problems with homelessness which will not be solved by transgender stripper performances.
As we highlighted earlier this year, a leftist council member recently tried to stop feces being cleaned off the streets of Seattle with a power washer, arguing that it was racist.
According to Larry Gossett, power washing “brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.”
Seattle parks are also becoming no-go areas for the general public because of spiraling problems with aggressive homeless people and trash.
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Carly Fiorina: ‘Trump Should Be Impeached But Not Removed, And I Might Vote For Him In 2020’
Former Republican presidential candidate and HP boss Carly Fiornia just gave a bizarre interview to CNN in which she said impeaching President Trump is ‘vital,’ before massively hedging on whether Trump should be removed from office.
“I think it is vital that he be impeached,” Fiorina told “Boss Files with Polly Harlow,” before saying of removal, “this close to an election, I don’t know.”
She then didn’t rule out voting for Trump again in 2020 despite her ‘bitter disappointment’ – saying “It depends on who the Democrats put up.”
“Some of this conduct, like publicly berating a decorated war veteran who shows up in response to a lawfully issued subpoena of Congress, I think that conduct is not just unbecoming, I think it’s destructive to our republic,” Fiorina added.
Last week, House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump over his efforts to convince Ukraine to open an investigation on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as other matters. Neither of which mentions ‘bribery, extortion, quid pro quo’ or any of the other scary words hurled at Trump for several months. They also don’t include a chargeable crime. Meanwhile, Ukraine had already opened a new investigation related to the matter, unbeknownst to Trump – while Ukraine’s President, Volodomyr Zelensky, had no idea that US aid was being held up until the Trump administration investigated corruption in the notoriously corrupt country.
In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we feature a timely conversation with Dr. George Selgin, senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia. He is the author of a number of books, including Floored! How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession (The Cato Institute, 2018) and writes frequently on monetary policy, payments and related topics for Alt-M. We spoke to Dr. Selgin last week from his office in Washington.
The IRA: George, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Let’s start with the snafu in the world of repurchase agreements and short-term money markets and then move to the equally important question of payments. First thing, how do you explain the liquidity problems seen in the REPO market over the past year to ordinary citizens and particularly members of Congress? More important, how do you link the policy narrative coming from the Federal Open Market Committee with what the Fed is actually doing in the markets? The two often seem disconnected.
Selgin: Those are some big questions. You start by observing that for some decades now the Fed like other central banks has insisted that its task is to regulate short-term interest rates. So, when interest rates do something that the Fed has not planned for them to do, that’s a problem. If the Fed isn’t able to control interest rates, then what is it doing and what is it able to do? I’d start with that premise, that the Fed is supposed to be able to keep interest rates on the desired target or target range, but in fact has been having trouble doing so. It had trouble keeping rates in line in September and it may soon have trouble doing so again.
The IRA: Well, investors may not cooperate. The whole idea of targeting interest rates, as you noted in your book “Floored,” essentially amounts to the nationalization of a heretofore private financial market. But do continue.
Selgin:The second point to make is that under the post 2008 system, banks are supposed to have all kinds of liquidity; they should have so much liquidity that they never have to resort to borrowing from other banks to cover shortfalls in reserves. But things haven’t turned out that way. It was the desire of some banks to cover reserve shortfalls, for example, plus the unwillingness of other banks to lend was the proximate cause of problems in September and may become one again.
The IRA: Indeed. Isn’t it remarkable to see Fed Governor Randal Quarles at the Fed and Zoltan Pozsar at Credit Suisse (CS) each put various pieces of the puzzle forward for our consideration, but no one really talks about your point namely the idiosyncratic behavior of individual banks. Wells Fargo (WFC), for example, has 15% more liquidity than it needs to fulfill the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and other tests. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) likewise is no longer providing liquidity to the markets as year-end approaches. Trillions of dollars in liquidity is essentially out of the market.
Selgin: That’s right. There are two ways to understand why reserves ended up in short supply. One which the Fed has tended to emphasize is that the Fed miscalculated how many reserves would be required to keep the system flush, particularly in making plans for reducing the size of the balance sheet starting in October 2017. Consequently, it seems to have overdone things a little bit.
The IRA: Ya think? Do our colleagues in the Fed system appreciate just how close we came to running the ship aground? Last December particularly?
Selgin: I think they do now! What they don’t appreciate enough, but are coming around to appreciating, is that the problem is not simply that there are not enough total reserves in the system, but that those reserves are concentrated in a few large banks, including Wells but also others. And they failed to reckon with the fact that, even though these banks on paper had sufficient liquidity to meet the LCR rule and other liquidity requirements, in fact they did not feel comfortable lending out what seems to be a surfeit of reserves—not even in response to high rates and for short periods.
The IRA: Or even to their own people. We reported on one case where the bank side of a certain money center essentially told the capital markets desk of the same bank that they had to pay those elevated market rates.
Selgin: There are subtle regulatory constraints, including some rules that are unwritten, or written as it were on the margins of the regulations. Those rules are constraining banks more than the Fed and other regulatory authorities, or the bankers’ themselves, expected. The Fed is learning that the banks are interpreting the rules in such as way that they really need to keep more liquidity than was once thought necessary.
The IRA: To that point, isn’t the “island of liquidity” notion adopted by the Fed and other prudential regulators, where a large money center bank need not transact with the market for 30 days or more, a little extreme? It reminds us of the ridiculous requirement in the Volcker Rule that banks not trade around their treasury portfolios, a requirement that killed liquidity in the bond market. The cumulative effect of all of these rules is to reduce market liquidity.
Selgin: I think it probably is a little excessive. After every major financial crisis, the tendency isn’t just for the regulatory authorities to shut the barn gate after the horses have bolted. They slam the gate shut so tight that you can’t get new horses out for exercise. That’s what’s happened since the 2008 crisis; that the regulatory pendulum has swung too far in the direction of stringency. Now we have a system where in theory there are plenty of reserves, way more than 2008, but various requirements, some interacting in subtle ways, mean that all of that liquidity is frozen. It does not move around that way it did pre-2008. So, you have large amounts of reserves that can’t go where they’re needed. As I said in a Tweet recently, something can be liquid or it can be frozen. Today the liquid reserves of the banking system aren’t really liquid because they’re frozen.
The IRA: Hasn’t this been the approach all along, going back to the 1990s to reduce liquidity via regulation? In the 1990s, when the SEC changed Rule 2a-7 and essentially made it impossible for nonbanks to sell pass through securities to money market funds, we created a monopoly on short-term funding for banks. The regulators keep taking functionality out of the money markets, then they wonder why there is a liquidity problem to your point.
Selgin: That’s right. But you can go back a lot further than the 1990s. You can go back to the 19th century, when countries, including the United States, started to experiment with various types of reserve requirements. What most nations eventually discovered is that, when you make these requirements strict enough, the reserves simply don’t do what you want them to do. That is, the banks can’t use them when it would benefit them and the economy for them to do so. Uniquely among industrialized nations, the United States still has nominally fixed reserve requirements for banks. Most other nations got smart and dispensed with them years ago. They came around to the view that, while liquidity is very important, rigidly enforced reserve requirements did not make banks more liquid. If anything, they made them less liquid. History now seems to be repeating itself in the US, where Basel and other rules have made banks less rather than more liquid.
The IRA: Based upon the Fed’s clumsy handling of the liquidity issue, we’ll not hold our breath waiting for a comprehensive fix of the problem you describe. Moving now from the money markets to payments, let’s talk about why the Fed seems intent upon creating a new payments system to compete with the Clearing House Association. The Fed today enforces a monopoly on payments reserved exclusively for insured depository institutions, but now the central bank seemingly wants to compete with the private sector.
Selgin: It’s generally true that if you want to have innovation in payments, you must have a system that interacts with the established banking system payments network. That is the big one. There are other networks out there that could potentially support important payments systems, such as Facebook (FB) with its proposed Libra exchange medium. Still, the banking system has a huge advantage when it comes to dollar-based payments, and when it comes to dollar payments would-be non-bank innovators must be able to tap into the bank-based payments network. This creates a huge problem for non-banks that want to get a piece of the action in payments without needing the cooperation of a potential rival. That’s one challenge. The other challenge for innovation is that banks themselves have to work with the Fed. The big challenge for banks is that the Fed can itself compete with their efforts to expedite payments. Everybody is talking about FedNow, the Fed’s plan for a new real-time retail payments system. FedNow will compete with RTP, a private real-time payments network created by The Clearing House (TCH). which has been up and running since 2017. Another challenge is getting the Fed to improve those portions of the dollar payments system that it monopolizes upon which other payments service providers depend. This is really the elephant in the room when it comes to payments.
The IRA: Well, the future of payments is FedNow, right? The Fed is a GSE just like Ginnie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Banks. No private entity, even a big bank, can compete with a GSE.
Selgin: Not easily. And the Fed regulates the banks behind RTP, the system FedNow will compete with TCH.. Does competition from the Fed help or hurt consumers of payments services? There is a fundamental conflict of interest for the Fed to be competing with the banks that it regulates. But the bigger issue is not FedNow or the huge amounts of money that the Fed is likely to spend creating its alternative instant payments system. It’s what the Fed is not planning to do. There needs to be more discussion of how the Fed can improve the payment services it already provides, especially by extending the operating hours of its wholesale payments services, FedWire and the National Settlement Service. By enhancing those systems it would help to support private-system payment system innovations, like RTP. Instead of competing with RTP, the Fed would do more good by improving the speed and efficiency of the wholesale payment services upon which all existing non-cash retail dollar payments depend. All of the payments systems that exist or are contemplated depend upon one or both of the Fed’s wholesale payment services.
The IRA: So how should the Fed proceed?
Selgin: The entire legacy payments system sits atop the FedWire and the National Settlement Service foundation. All ACH payments, all check payments, are settled using one or both of those services. Why is it that ordinary payments between two US banks can take days to clear? Hold onto your hat: FedWire and the National Settlement Service are not open on weekends or holidays. In fact, the business-day hours are so limited as to substantially reduce the extent to which ACH payments can be completed on a single day.. Simply extending those services’ hours, including keeping them open on weekends and holidays, would enormously enhance the speed and efficiency of traditional payments. Just keeping the system open another 30 minutes each weekday would make a great difference. Instead of working on a controversial, expensive and possibly redundant FedNow system, why doesn’t the Fed first improve its existing, core payments services?
The IRA: And who knows, accelerating the velocity of payments might even have economic benefits! Imagine that! Thanks George.
Trump’s DoJ Blocks Construction Of ‘Private’ Texas Border Wall
President Trump’s Justice Department has shut down an effort to build three miles of private border wall just north of the Rio Grande after the US Attorney’s Office for Texas’s southern district warned that the project could impact the border river and potentially violate a treaty with Mexico.
Despite Trump’s claims that his administration has nearly finished the wall, in reality, Trump has only built 90 miles of border wall. His supporters (who of course blame the Democrats for stymying President Trump at every turn, are now scrambling to finish it to try and cut down on crime and make the border more secure.
An effort to build a privately funded wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as the Trump administration’s efforts progress slowly, is running into trouble over concerns that its design may alter the border itself.
Construction of the three-mile section in South Texas was halted last week after a U.S. attorney for Texas’s southern district obtained a temporary restraining order Dec. 5 against its builder, Fisher Industries, a North Dakota-based contractor.
The attorney’s office argued that the wall is being built too close to the Rio Grande and could violate a treaty with Mexico by eroding soil and potentially altering the course of the waterway, which demarcates the U.S. border in Texas, when it floods.
One organization, called We Build The Wall, has raised roughly $25 million for the cause. The organization, founded by a military veteran and triple amputee Brian Kolfage.
A we’ve pointed out before, the notion that Trump’s supporters could pitch in the pay for a large portion of the wall isn’t so far-fetched he explained: If every person who voted for Trump were to pitch in $83, the government could use the money to build the entire wall.
Kolfage has become the face of the movement to build more of the private border wall.
Interestingly, the organization that spearheaded the movement for private citizens to build part of Trump’s promised border wall has been removed from the lawsuit because it actually has little to do with the company building the wall.
Brian Kolfage, who founded We Build the Wall, said in an interview that his group didn’t hire Fisher Industries, doesn’t have any authority over the project and has paid only about 5% of its projected cost. He said his group didn’t want to invest more because he knew “it was going to be dicey” with potential lawsuits.
However, Mr. Kolfage defended his group’s public association with Fisher Industries’s wall. “We created this movement,” he said of the private-wall movement. “It doesn’t matter how much money we put down, we’re taking ownership.”
Instead, a mysterious North Dakota-based contractor called Fisher Industries is spearheading the project, helped along by a $2 million “investment” from Kolfage.
Fisher undertook the project to try and demonstrate a different design for the border wall that the contractor claims would be cheaper and, according to the company, more secure.
As the company’s founder, Tommy Fisher, said: “Most people wouldn’t invest $40 million on the fly unless they really believe in it,” referring to the total cost to the small section of border wall he’s putting up.
Readers might be wondering where Fisher got the rest of the money for this little passion project. Well, the company recently won a $400 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to build 31 miles of wall near Yuma.
The border property where the construction is taking place is being donated by a couple who “supports Fisher’s work”, per WSJ. Still, the riverbanks are US government property. Fisher began construction last month by beginning the arduous process of tearing out all the brush lining the property that he wants to build over.
In an interview Kolfage explained to WSJ that he didn’t hire Fisher Industries, and that his company has no association with Fisher.
But he defended Fisher and the group’s decision to invest with it.
However, Mr. Kolfage defended his group’s public association with Fisher Industries’s wall. “We created this movement,” he said of the private-wall movement. “It doesn’t matter how much money we put down, we’re taking ownership.”
They have previously paid for a half mile of private border wall in New Mexico, but whether they have any other privately-funded projects going is unclear.
In Part 1 of this article I tried to link the greed and depravity of those pulling the strings behind the curtain of the Deep State with perpetual warfare being waged by the military industrial complex and the purposeful dumbing down of the populace so propaganda spewed by the Deep State’s media mouthpieces finds fertile ground. Pink Floyd’s lyrics from their existential album – Dark Side of the Moon – continue to resonate today, even more than they did in 1973.
Breathe
Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care
Leave, don’t leave me
Look around, choose your own ground
Long you live and high you fly Smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry And all you touch and all you see Is all your life will ever be
I knew Part 1 of this article would be easier to write than Part 2 because I’m more comfortable writing about financial issues and expounding upon the political and economic degradation of our empire of debt. Pondering my life and choices I’ve made or haven’t made is something I’d rather not think about. But, as I was driving home from getting blood work done last Saturday morning, the haunting chords of Breathe emanated from my car radio, urging me to tackle the rest of my article. Breathe is a very short instrumental piece of less than 3 minutes.
It is the first song on the album, setting the melancholy tone for the rest of the album. To me, Waters’ lyrics are addressing how we all have a choice on how we live our lives. We take our first breath and if we are lucky have about eighty years on this planet. The song seems to be from the perspective of a father, who has the wisdom gained from a long life, giving advice to their child.
It’s the relationships we form and the way we live our lives that matter. Our existence is full of joy and pain; work and play; thinking or believing; leading or following; living and dying. We need to choose our ground. Are we going to live a life worthy of esteem or will we just go with the flow, believing what we are told, and working ourselves into an early grave?
The corporate fascist Deep State controllers want rabbits to run faster and ditch diggers to keep digging ditches. They want you to be propagandized to buy the shit they are willing to sell you, utilizing plentiful amounts of debt, so you are forever beholden to them as debt serfs paying 17% on your credit card balances. George Carlin summed it up well many years ago:
“We know what they want, more for themselves and less for everyone else… and they don’t want an educated citizenry…. they want obedient workers… people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work and just dumb enough to passively accept the increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.”
Let’s face it, “THEY” don’t want the masses to think. They don’t want them to make choices which will free them from working from sun up until sundown until they die. The corporate fascists want you to die at your desk or, even better, develop a disease the sickcare complex can milk for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s all about the dollars. They want it all and we are just the dupes, following their directives, and working ourselves to death trying to keep up with the Joneses. Striving to make the most money, own the biggest house, driving the most expensive automobile, and riding the biggest wave is a recipe for an early grave. What’s the point, as we are all dust in the end.
Run, rabbit, run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
When at last the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one
Long you live and high you fly But only if you ride the tide Balanced on the biggest wave Race towards an early grave
For most of my life I’ve felt disconnected from what is considered important in this society. For the first forty years of my life I strove to climb the corporate ladder, getting the proper degrees and doing whatever it took to get ahead. I believed what I saw on TV and didn’t question the official narratives. There were about five years out of my first twenty years in the working world where I loved what I was doing.
My view of the world changed with 9/11 and the Neo-Con fabricated Iraq War. The Patriot Act and the subsequent expansion of the un-Constitutional illegal surveillance of American citizens changed my understanding of the world. What I thought was important in my life was really inconsequential in comparison to what the government/Wall Street/Federal Reserve/Deep State were doing to the people of our nation.
Like many Americans, with a family to support, I’ve had to dig my holes in increasingly distant destinations. This has been detrimental to my physical and mental health, but sacrificing for our children’s future is the duty of a father. I’ve long since abandoned any ambitions to achieve the success this world declares to be imperative. For over a decade I’ve realized my purpose is to try and influence the direction of our country through writing on my blog, providing a forum for other writers, and trying to live a life which will make my children proud of my efforts.
The decisions we make in the next few years will impact future generations in a profound way. How we touch the lives of others is all our lives will ever be. We are all headed for the grave, so how much money we accumulate, power we wield, or positions we hold are ultimately meaningless. A life lived without positively impacting the lives of others is a life unfulfilled. We can’t let darkness win.
Time
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
Time has always been my favorite Pink Floyd song because it connects with me no matter what life stage I’m living. It’s about finding purpose in life. I think most people can relate to wasting time in our home towns when we were young, waiting for a parent or teacher to point us in the right direction.
Some driven individuals know exactly what they want at a young age and pursue their dreams with reckless abandon. I often think they are being driven by overbearing parents trying to compensate for their failures in life by forcing their off-spring succeed. These are the people who end up running corporations, becoming politicians, and holding positions of power, where they can boss others around.
I was still living in my hometown until the age of 25. I had a college degree, passed the CPA exam, and had a job as a divisional controller for a major corporation. I had met my future wife down the shore in Avalon. I still lived at home with my parents. I still spent my weeknights playing basketball with my friends from the neighborhood. I played on Tony’s Bar softball team with the same guys. I knew most of these guys would never leave our hometown. They didn’t care about education and seemed content just kicking around on the same piece of ground. I think most of those guys never left that town.
Some became alcoholics. Some died far too young. And a couple made it out. Twenty years later when I would come back to visit my parents, I drove through the town to show my kids where I grew up and nothing had changed. It was exactly the same as when I had left. It was kind of sad and still gives me a feeling of melancholy. There are millions of people who have wasted their lives, never daring to leave their home towns, never taking a risk, never reaching their potential and living unhappy unfulfilled lives. They missed the starting gun.
No one showed me the way, but I did know I needed to move on with my life. I got a new job, bought a house, got married, went back to school at night for my MBA, moved up the ladder at work, had three kids, and got fired at 40 years old because truthful analysis was not what the vapid low IQ female CEO (diversity hire) wanted from her underlings. More than ten years had got behind me, when I was left dazed and confused.
This was less than three years after 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Bush, Cheney and Powell had lied us into the Iraq War disaster in 2003. My eyes began to open, as my trust in government, financial institutions, the Federal Reserve, and the media dissipated. Time continued to move relentlessly onward. I was no longer young and foolish. I was drawn to the message being put forth by Ron Paul and will be forever grateful to a true patriot for opening my mind to the truth.
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.
Since 2008 when I started writing and running my blog, I’ve felt like I’ve been running and running to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking. As I approach my sixth decade on this earth, the last two stanzas of Time have more and more meaning to me. I’m still slogging away at a job from when I get up at 5:30 am until I get home at 6:00 pm. It has a respectable title, but as has been true for most of my working life, it’s just a job. I’ve had bills to pay, children to raise, parents to care for, and duties to carry out.
I’ve always had a stoic attitude towards life, doing whatever needed to be done, taking care of my family, and deferring my gratification to some unspecified future time. I live inside my head most of the time, pondering, questioning, needlessly worrying, and trying to figure out my purpose on this earth.
Writing, reading, and encouraging others to find their voice on my blog is what sustains me on a daily basis. I look forward to the day when I can trade in my long daily commute and uninspiring job, to just write and run my blog. That day seems far off with the need for decent health coverage beyond the resources of a self-employed person. The fatalist in me latches onto the concept of being shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter and I have so much left to do. I started the blog as a response to the lies and evil perpetrated by those running the show, whether you call them the ruling class, oligarchs, or Deep State. I don’t want my boys to grow up to be debt serfs in a corporate fascist surveillance state. After ten years of imagining myself as some sort of Paul Revere/Thomas Paine, reality set in.
My youth is long gone. My enthusiasm for promoting the kind of change needed to save this country has waned. Time is running out. I’ve given up predicting the timing of the collapse. The controllers manage to keep the Ponzi scheme going, despite the reality of our situation. My pessimistic nature makes me think my future plans of retiring from the rat race world will come to naught. My decade of scribbled lines has had little impact on the course we are on as a society. Most of the people I now consider my friends, I’ve never met in person. Dark Side of the Moon addresses insanity on a personal level and the loneliness of not fitting in.
Without The Burning Platform, I would probably lose what level of sanity I have left. I don’t feel as alone because I am able to read the thoughts of others just like myself. I’m inspired by the common sense, wisdom, intelligence and fortitude of the men and women who frequent my website. We are all living lives of quiet desperation, seeking truth and preparing for an uncertain future. As this Fourth Turning enters its terminal phase, I believe it will be people like those on my website who offer the hope of a better tomorrow. Before my time is gone and my song over, I think I have more to say. Fighting for my sons will be my driving force until my dying breath, whenever that should be.
Eclipse
All that you touch And all that you see All that you taste All you feel
And all that you love And all that you hate All you distrust All you save
And all that you give And all that you deal And all that you buy, Beg, borrow or steal
And all you create And all you destroy And all that you do And all that you say
And all that you eat And everyone you meet And all that you slight And everyone you fight
And all that is now And all that is gone And all that’s to come And everything under the sun is in tune But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.
Eclipse, which follows and intersects with Brain Damage, is only two minutes long, but perfectly captures the symbolism of the album: light and dark; good and evil; life and death. Musically it is a colossal cascading climax with beautiful harmonies and haunting lyrics. The song represents the lives of all humankind. The use of the words “All” and “You” captures the essence of a human life in relation to all mankind.
To summarize a human life with vivid lyrics in two minutes is an extraordinary feat of musical magic. The song features a loud, repetitive melody that builds up, then ends with a very quiet outro. When the main instrumentation ends, the sound of a heartbeat, which began on the first track, gradually fades to silence. The album represents a long life, from birth through death, encompassing the battle between goodness and dark forces which we all confront during our short time on this earth.
Looking back to the period in which this album was constructed, you can understand why darkness was the theme. The early 70’s was a dark time. The Vietnam War lingered on, while violent protests filled our streets. Nixon had closed the gold window and set in motion the raging inflation for the decade. Political turmoil was about to be unleashed with the impeachment of Nixon.
Oil embargoes resulted in surging gas prices and shortages. Labor and management clashed, with strikes across the land. The Cold War was at its coldest. It simply was not a happy time. Roger Waters’ lyrics reflected the darkness of the time. Ironically, it was the most cohesive and creative period for the band. The album’s success made them rich and famous, which ultimately led to their breakup.
Waters describes the album as “a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them”. The darkness of the moon is a symbolic representation of our dark side and the brightness of the sun is a symbolic representation of all that is good.
We all have both good and evil within our hearts and have the choice to let one or the other dominate our thoughts and actions. Each person on this earth has the option of following an ideology of evil or an ideology of good. When enough people choose to believe in the messages coming from dark forces, the result is tragedy and the loss of millions of lives, as we have seen in the last century under the rule of Stalin and Mao.
As I was again procrastinating on writing the 2nd part of this article because thinking about my mortality is not something I enjoy, I was flipping through the 600 cable channels on my propaganda machine and as a kick in the ass to finalize this article, AXS TV had one of their Classic Album shows on where they delve deeply into the making of the greatest albums of all-time. They were exploring the making of Dark Side by interviewing the band members, Alan Parsons the engineer, record executives, and music critics.
The themes of conflict, greed, war, wasted time, and misplaced priorities were worrisome to Waters and his bandmates. They were trying to reach the listeners with the message we all have doubts, misgivings, failures, and moments of weakness, when the darker forces of our nature eclipse our better intentions. We are just human, with the same weaknesses and faults as those who lived centuries ago.
The video made to accompany Eclipse is haunting, disturbing and clear in its message. We live our lives as individuals within a society of other individuals, living a mostly mundane existence, striving for what we are told is important by those controlling the levers of society. They push materialism and constant conflict upon good decent people who wouldn’t choose such a path without being pushed in that direction through propaganda and social engineering by evil men with evil intentions.
In the video, all that is good is overwhelmed by explosions, scenes of greed, and dictators, while the bright light in the human eye is extinguished, the moon overshadows the sun, and the human heartbeat stops. You are left with an empty feeling of a life wasted.
The voice at the end of the song is that of Gerry O’Driscoll, the doorman at Abbey Road Studios, answering the question: “What is ‘the dark side of the moon’?” with: “There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.” As with all music, it means different things to different people. To me, Eclipse and the video of the moon slowly approaching the sun and ultimately shrouding the light in darkness symbolizes a Fourth Turning. Like an eclipse, Fourth Turnings arrive at predictable times and darken the landscape for a period of time, before yielding to the light once again.
We are currently in the midst of a Fourth Turning and the darkness deepens by the day, with the ongoing coup attempt against a sitting president; a debt crisis being covered up by the Federal Reserve; ongoing wars in the Middle East; a new cold war against Russia and China; an overbearing dangerous surveillance state; climate change hoax used to increase government power; socialists gaining acceptance among the dumbed down masses; gun grabbers trying to overturn the 2nd Amendment; celebration of decadence; rewarding diversity over accomplishment; trillion dollar deficits; and half the country despising the other half.
Darkness is descending across the land as this empire of debt enters its terminal phase. Its heartbeat is weakening and the light of liberty is fading to black
The exploration of individual insanity and societal insanity is as relevant today as it was in 1973 and as relevant as it was when addressed by Aldous Huxley in 1958. If Huxley thought we were a profoundly abnormal society in the 1950s, his head would explode if he were alive today. I always feel like an outcast in this world. I don’t fit in. I don’t value what most people in this profoundly abnormal society value.
The only place where I don’t feel like an outcast is among like minded people who frequent my website. Are we insane in believing our government should be limited, budgets balanced, the Constitution honored, welfare/warfare state restrained, the Fed ended, and the liberties of Americans restored?
If refusing to adjust to what passes for being normal in this abnormal society makes me a pariah, I will gladly inhabit my exile on Main Street. I will not bow to peer pressure, propaganda, or threats. I will keep publishing the truth on my website until THEY shut me down. The real resistance is those who refuse to adapt to this insane culture of debt, delusion, discord, decadence and degradation. I will stay close to home and family, and when I arrive home cold and tired, I’ll warm my bones beside the fire. I hope to see you on the dark side of the moon.
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
