Chief Justice John Roberts is said to see defending the Supreme Court as an institution as pivotal to his role on it.
On its face then, the Court’s silence some two months after Justice Roberts announced an investigation into what he termed an “egregious breach”—the assault on the institution of the Court that was the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion that would prevail, returning the question of abortion to its rightful place within the states—is itself an egregious breach.
As the Associated Press recently reported, the Court is at present mum on whether it’s still even investigating the leak, as well as on a host of other basic questions about the probe.
There were already glaring outstanding questions regarding those few elements of the investigation to which we were privy.
For example, we do not know why the marshal of the Supreme Court was particularly well-equipped to lead it, nor the resources the marshal was bringing to bear.
We do not know what the probe entails, or entailed, beyond the fact perhaps that rankled staff at the Court leaked that it was asking of clerks that they provide cell phone records and sign affidavits in connection with it, and that reportedly the marshal obtained electronic devices “from some permanent employees who work closely with the justices.”
We do not know whether the Court will publicly announce the findings of its investigation in whole or part—starting with who the leaker was—nor the punishment the leaker will face, and the steps the Court will take to ensure such a leak never happens again.
Now the universe of people who could have obtained and leaked the opinion—the leaker described as “a person familiar with the court’s proceedings” in the Dobbs case—is small.
If the Court does not by now know who leaked the opinion, it would seem to constitute a breathtaking display of incompetence.
If the Court does know who leaked the opinion, yet for whatever reason is sitting on its findings, it would seem to constitute a breathtaking display of politics.
That’s because, on the merits, the silence is indefensible.
What could be of greater import to the institution’s integrity and credibility than to demonstrate that it will stop at nothing to, and with great haste, find and bring to justice an individual who would so grievously undermine the Court’s ability to do its most basic duty: deliberate, discreetly and insulated from political pressure and intimidation.
Silence on the leak probe only compounds the error of not ruling expeditiously in the wake of the leak, which fueled what else but a campaign of political pressure and intimidation up to and including threats to the life and limb of the judges.
Does the chief justice, so attuned to public opinion about the Court, think the probe can be cast as some kind of internal matter to be handled privately, and made to fade into the ether?
Do the findings implicate one or several justices, and as such, is the chief justice unsure how to proceed with the public?
The longer he remains silent, the greater the speculation will grow. Surely the chief justice does not think promoting such speculation is in the interest of the Court as an institution.
Or could it be that the Roberts Court’s silence is representative of the fact that the chief justice’s understanding of protecting the Supreme Court as an institution differs from ours?
Chief Justice Roberts’s past attempts to protect the Court as an institution can be seen in his: rewriting of Obamacare as a tax, lest President Barack Obama’s signature achievement be properly rendered unconstitutional; failed attempt to split the baby in issuing a similarly tortured Dobbs concurrence, while also failing to flip Justice Brett Kavanaugh towards his position and away from that of Justice Samuel Alito; and in the overarching “incrementalist” approach reflected in many of his rulings, whereby Chief Justice Roberts eschews hewing to the law if in his view the results would be too practically jarring, or not deferential enough to precedent, no matter how wrongheaded.
For the purported institutionalist, the chief justice’s continued silence on the Dobbs probe will perpetuate the damage of the “egregious breach” the longer it persists.
It strains credulity to think that after two months the Court would still be in a posture of neither confirming nor denying anything about an investigation that it already announced, and one of the utmost importance.
This is about more than meting out justice to an individual for a single act.
That act was, in Chief Justice Roberts’s own words, a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court” – a singular blow against this most hallowed of institutions.
CDC Gave Big Tech Platforms Guidance On COVID Censorship
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave censorship ‘suggestions’ to social media companies and Google in order to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which obtained a trove of internal communications obtained by America First Legal.
The emails, between the CDC, Google, Twitter and Meta staffers – some of whom (as Just the News notes) were former Hill and White House aides – were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and show extensive cooperation which included thinly veiled threats for failing to more aggressively remove content.
Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over “vaccine misinformation.” At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as “example posts.”
In one email to a CDC staffer, a Twitter employee said he is “looking forward to setting up regular chats” with the agency. Other emails show the scheduling of meetings with the CDC over how to best police alleged misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. -Free Beacon
In one April 2021 email between a CDC staffer and Facebook, concern was raised after “algorithms that Facebook and other social media networks are apparently using to screen out posting by sources of vaccine misinformation are also apparently screening out valid public health messaging, including [Wyoming] Health communications.”
Another email from March 2021 from a senior CDC staffer states: “we are working on [sic] project with Census to leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor social media for vaccine misinformation.”
What’s more, one email chain reveals that a CDC official showed up at Google’s 2020 “Trusted Media Summit” conference, which was held for “journalists, fact-checkers, educators, researchers and others who work in the area of fact-checking, verification, media literacy, and otherwise fighting misinformation.”
When asked by an organizer if the senior CDC official would allow her remarks on YouTube, she declined, saying she was not authorized to speak publicly.
In the same email chain with a senior CDC official, a Google staffer offers to promote an initiative from the World Health Organization about “addressing the COVID-19 infodemic and strengthen community resilience against misinformation.” That same Google staffer offers to introduce the CDC official to a Google colleague who is “working on programs to counter immunization misinfo.” -Free Beacon
Meanwhile, Facebook gave the CDC $15 million in ad credits to use on the company’s platforms in April, 2021.
“This gift will be used by CDC’s COVID-19 response to support the agency’s messages on Facebook, and extend the reach of COVID-19-related Facebook content, including messages on vaccines, social distancing, travel, and other priority communication messages,” reads an internal memo.
As the Beacon notes, the level of coordination between government and big tech raises questions over what extent other private companies are working with the federal government in order to censor the public – including payment processors, Uber and other platforms which have banned the unwashed for wrongthink.
The revelations have also caused the New Civil Liberties Alliance to file a Thursday court document seeking to revive their lawsuit against the government on behalf of deplatformed users.
New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney Jenin Younes told Just the News it incorporated “the revelations about the CDC emails” into a filing Thursday seeking to reopen its case against the feds on behalf of deplatformed users.
JTN further notes that the document dump is also likely to come into play in a lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana AGs against the government for alleged collusion with Big Tech to censor content on the origins of COVID-19, as well as Hunter Biden’s laptop and vote-by-mail election integrity.
The feds filed a motion to dismiss two weeks ago for lack of legal standing and failure to state a claim. The AGs’ responses aren’t due until next week.
Recall that just one day after top health officials had a conference call to discuss a Zero Hedgearticle which highlighted a now-withdrawn paper from researchers in India suggesting “HIV-like insertions” in COVID-19, Twitter banned our account for roughly two months – with the tech giant claiming we doxxed a Chinese scientist (with publicly available information) in another article.
Thanks to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Fauci’s emails, we know that the National Institutes of Health was not only aware of the Indian report, but were actively discussing how to handle it.
A January 31, 2020 email from AFP’s Issam Ahmed asks NIH immunologist Dr. Barney Graham for comment:
“I was told by a contact you may be willing to give an opinion of this paper that has just gone live. It suggests the new Coronavirus has four inserts similar to HIV-1 and this is not a coincidence,” reads the email.
Graham immediately forwards the correspondence to the Office of Communications and Government Relations (OCGR), saying “This is one we don’t want to answer without high-level input, but wanted you to know about the rising controversy.”
Two days later, Jennifer Routh OCGR replies, telling Graham: “OCGR is going to send a note to the reporter to decline, noting that the paper is not peer-reviewed. Please let us know if you receive similar requests.”
That same Sunday morning, Fauci is looped in – with Sir Jeremy Farrar forwarding Zero Hedge‘s article after mentioning how World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom and the organization’s cabinet chief were in ‘conclave’ – ostensibly on how to manage the narrative – noting “If they do prevaricate [bullshit the public], I would appreciate a call with you later tonight or tomorrow to think how we might take forward.”
“Do you have a minute for a quick call?” Fauci replies, after having called the Indian paper “really outlandish.”
Of course, the Indian paper was quickly withdrawn by its authors, and the notion that COVID-19 could have been man-made was rendered radioactive – for a while.
Is it any question how our Twitter (and Google) deplatformings happened, before both companies chose to reverse their decisions?
The founders of 3AC broke their silence this week in a widely publicized Bloomberg piece. The article doesn’t shed light on any new salient information, but is noteworthy because it’s the first we’re hearing from the co-captains that steered a gargantuan financial catastrophe. Here’s a summary of reasons Zhu and Davies gave for 3AC’s downfall in the interview:
They got too close to Do Kwon and overestimated LUNA’s potential
They traded Grayscale BTC successfully “at the right window” but because many crypto firms “copied us into that trade… then the trust went… to a far bigger discount than anyone thought possible.”
Bitcoin went from 30K to 20K and that was “extremely painful for us”
“We had different types of trades that we all thought were good, and other people also had these trades,” Zhu said. “And then they kind of all got super marked down, super fast.”
In short, we made risky trades that went south but it’s not all on us, because, well, everyone else did them too, and we couldn’t have foreseen that Bitcoin crash, so we got caught with our pants down by systemic risk. Well, okay. It’s true that no one can see the future. That’s exactly why an entire industry exists around risk management. They’re called hedging and diversification and every modern financial institution uses them except for 3AC which utterly failed to take them seriously.
And then something that sounded… nothing like an apology:
“People may call us stupid. They may call us stupid or delusional. And, I’ll accept that. Maybe,” Zhu said. “But they’re gonna, you know, say that I absconded funds during the last period, where I actually put more of my personal money back in. That’s not true.”
“The whole situation is regrettable,” Davies said. “Many people lost a lot of money.” “We believed in everything to the fullest,” added Davies. “We had all of our, almost all of our assets in there. And then in the good times we did the best. And then in the bad times we lost the most.”
And then there’s this attempt at signaling humility:
The [$50 million yacht] “was bought over a year ago and commissioned to be built and to be used in Europe,” Zhu said, adding the yacht “has a full money trail.” He rejected the perception that he enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle, noting that he biked to work and back every day and that his family “only has two homes in Singapore.” “We were never seen in any clubs spending lots of money. We were never seen, you know, kind of driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis around,” Zhu said.
By the way, I live in Singapore. The average cost of a car is ~150K USD which explains why the mass majority of Singaporeans commute to work by public transportation. If you’re biking to work, you probably live in the wealthiest estates of the city-state, and we already know that one of Zhu’s home was a 31,000-square-foot home worth $35M. So whatever two humble abodes Zhu was hopping in between, they were more like palaces relative to the average person.
Common y’all. Su ain’t flashy, he rides his bike to work and to the marina where his superyacht is moored.
The big story this week revolves around Coinbase. Here are the quick facts:
Between June 2021-April 2022, former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi who worked on the assets listing team tipped off two others – his brother and a friend – about 25 to-be listed coins and collectively raked in profits of up to $1.5M.
Some early signs emerged in mid-April when Cobie tweeted about a wallet that scooped up 100K+ worth of tokens 24 hours before it was published on the Coinbase Asset listing post.
The US DOJ is charging the trio with “wire fraud conspiracy… in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading in cryptocurrency assets by using confidential Coinbase information”, and calling it “the first ever insider trading case involving cryptocurrency markets.”
Story so far: TradFi insiders making money from insider deals. Nothing out of the ordinary yet, we know that TradFi bad, blockchain good.
But that’s not quite the drama at hand here. The SEC continued to separately file charges of “securities fraud” against the insider traders, alleging that nine of the traded assets listed by Coinbase were unregistered securities (AMP, DDX, DFX, KROM, LCX, POWR, RGT, RLY, XYO). As a result, Coinbase is taking a hit as its stocks are down 21% and Cathie Wood of Ark Invest is reportedly dumping 1.41M Coinbase shares.
To no one’s surprise, Coinbase and the broader crypto community isn’t happy. CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham is calling this a “striking example of regulation by enforcement” or what is sometimes referred to as “rule by law”, a pejorative term to label state authoritarianism.
The crux of the matter is this: The SEC’s charges contain a loaded premise, namely that these handful of Coinbase-listed tokens are indeed securities. Should the insider traders be convicted, it indirectly puts Coinbase and those token-issuers on trial for violating U.S. securities law.
But even if the charges get dropped eventually, the accusation in itself is damning. It kicks up a fog of regulatory uncertainty for dozens of crypto exchanges that are listing the same tokens, as well as token-issuers broadly. This happened when the SEC brought an enforcement action against Ripple (XRP) back in 2020, and it’s happening again now.
Ironically, Coinbase is most conservative in its token listings relative to its main competitors Binance and FTX. (If CZ or SBF reads this humble newsletter, please don’t let any insider traders screw this up.)
But look, Coinbase is a regulated public company operating obediently within the confines of the official rulebook. If regulators have problems with Coinbase who plays nice and is rule-observing, decentralized exchanges that allow any token listing should be quaking in their boots.
Asides from that, crypto being pigeonholed as a tradable security under U.S. securities law would mean being tangled up in the same TradFi regulatory apparatus. That means fines, regulatory burdens, and heightened entry barriers for new players. That’s bad for crypto innovation and goes against the fundamental permissionless ethos of the Web3 project.
More interesting but hard to settle is the normative question of whether digital assets should be considered securities. The U.S. traditionally determines whether something is a “security” based on the Howey test, where the criteria is an investment contract that includes an “investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others”. Asides from a profit motive, regulators also look to the extent of its centralization i.e., whether the token has an active managerial team behind it.
Which tokens would fit both those criteria? Does that exclude L1/L2 tokens like ETH or OP that function as a commodity (gas) to power an ecosystem? How about tokens like DYDX after they migrate to their own Cosmos chain – would that turn the DYDX token into a non-security? What about “reserve currency” tokens like OHM – are they a “store-of-value” asset like gold/Bitcoin, making them a non-security? Let’s not forget NFTs. Most buyers mint them with an expectation ofa profit, but does that make it a security?
It’s all very fuzzy. I’ve written in a previous newsletter about why this debate amounts to a lot of arbitrary semantics.
Stop trying to solve everything w/ regulated crypto banks.
That’s what the Genslers want.
The answer to listing front running is Uniswap where anyone can list.
The way we prevent another Celsius is by using Aave where loans are onchain.
We have the solution it’s called DeFi.
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth 🦇🔊 (@RyanSAdams) July 22, 2022
Web3 News Roundup
Uniswap
Uniswap fees are through the roof this week, with a higher 7 day average than the Ethereum, BNB Chain and Bitcoin networks put together.
At present, Uniswap the DAO does not make any profits as all revenues go to liquidity providers (for more on which DeFi protocols are profitable, see Ben’s article this week). This is part of Uniswap’s strategy to maintain a competitive advantage, until it turns on the so-called “fee-switch” that would let the DAO earn by redirecting fees from liquidity providers.
Recent Uniswapgovernance discussions show the Uniswap community taking its first steps towards flipping on the fee-switch on pools with deep liquidity, relatively high volume and least potential of impermanent loss.
Goerli testnet
The Goerli testnet, the final testnet before the Merge has been announced by Ethereum developers on August 6-12th.
BREAKING:
Ethereum developers announce merge date for Goerli testnet: Aug 6th-12th
The WNBA is using POAPs; Solana has physical stores; Mirror is launching Web3 subscriptions, which lets users subscribe to publications with their wallets; WalletConnect introduces a DM feature connecting users on any chain; Rainbowrolled out support for L2 NFTs; Optimism launches a Get Started onboarding quest.
Biden Tests Positive For ‘Rebound’ COVID, Goes Back Into Isolation
One day after hanging around a bunch of CEOs (without a mask), fully vaccinated President Joe Biden has once against tested positive for COVID-19 in a so-called ‘rebound’ case after being treated with Paxlovid, his physician said in a Saturday letter.
Unlike Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, Biden reportedly “continues to feel quite well,” according Dr. Kevin O’Connor. “This being the case, there is no reason to reinitiate treatment at this time, but we will obviously continue close observation.”
O’Connor added that Biden tested negative on Tuesday evening, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning before testing positive again on Saturday.
A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform. The lawsuit against the search engine giant, which has owned YouTube since its 2006 purchase for $1.65 billion, was brought in early 2021 by Rumble, the free speech competitor to YouTube. Its central claim is that Google’s abuse of its monopolistic stranglehold on search engines to destroy all competitors to its various other platforms is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which makes it unlawful to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize…any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.”
It is rare for antitrust suits against the four Big Tech corporate giants (Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) to avoid early motions to dismiss. Friday’s decision against Google ensures that the suit now proceeds to the discovery stage, where Rumble will have the right to obtain from Google a broad and sweeping range of information about its practices, including internal documents on Google’s algorithmic manipulation of its search engine and the onerous requirements it imposes on companies dependent upon its infrastructure to all but force customers to use YouTube.
Founded in 2013, Rumble began experiencing explosive growth in the run-up to the 2020 election. Americans were encountering escalating and aggressive Big Tech censorship of political content as the election approached. Conservative politicians, followed by a wide range of heterodox voices on the right and left, began migrating by the millions away from Google’s YouTube to Rumble, which has promised and thus provided far more permissive free speech rights. That was at the time when Google and other Big Tech platforms — at the urging of the Democratic-controlled Congress, began aggressively increasing its censorship of political video content on YouTube on the grounds of “disinformation” and “hate speech.”
The explosive user growth which Rumble enjoyed in 2020 has continued to rapidly increase, as Big Tech generally, and Google specifically, clamped down further on dissident views in the name of the COVID pandemic, and now even more so with respect to the US/NATO role in the war in Ukraine. More and more prominent politicians, journalists and commentators, along with smaller content creators, have either been banned by YouTube or left on their own accord to join Rumble as Google’s crackdown on free speech intensifies. The ability to speak more freely on Rumble regarding the most contentious political debates has become one of the key drivers of the exodus of users — both those with large public platforms and ordinary citizens alike — from YouTube to Rumble.
During the COVID pandemic, Rumble allowed far greater questioning of the claims and policies of U.S. health policy official Dr. Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization — regarding the virus’s origins, the efficacy of masks, and the justifiability of vaccine mandates — than Big Tech platforms permitted. For the first year of the pandemic, Big Tech users who questioned or rejected the official story that COVID-19 was zoonotic rather than due to a lab leak in Wuhan were silenced or banned: a censorship policy that was reversed only when the Biden administration itself admitted that it did not know the answer to that question and would officially investigate it.
Similarly, Americans who were stifled or outright barred by Big Tech from citing pre-election revelations about Joe Biden from the archive of his son obtained by The New York Post found a place, on Rumble, where they could openly reference and discuss them. And Rumble has aggressively resisted pressure campaigns from the U.S. government and corporate media outlets and outright legal bans enacted by the EU requiring all platforms to cease allowing “pro-Russian” news outlets such as RT and Sputnik to be heard.
Rumble’s user growth, driven overwhelmingly by growing anger toward Big Tech censorship and de-platforming, has continued to swell this year. As Investor Place’s Ian Cooper wrote in April, “its user base hit a new record of 41 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2022. That is 22% growth quarter-over-quarter.” Moreover, “Rumble is setting user engagement records. In the first quarter of 2022, Rumble users watched about 10.5 billion minutes per month.”
As discussed on this page and as was reported byThe Washington Post, I was one of a group of nine journalists and commentators, along with former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), to make Rumble my primary home for video journalism in mid-2021 based on support for its free speech principles and the need for alternatives to centralized Big Tech repression. Though the purpose of that Post article was to predictably malign Rumble as a cesspool of hate speech and disinformation — relying on and extensively quoting a “disinformation” expert who happens to partner with U.S. and British intelligence agencies and Big Tech platforms such as Google and Facebook — The Post was forced to acknowledge how significant Rumble’s growth has been (and since that August, 2021 Post article, the growth has increased further):
Rumble has grown from 1 million active users last summer to roughly 30 million, said the site’s chief executive Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian tech entrepreneur who worked a brief internship at Microsoft and founded a viral-joke website before launching Rumble in 2013. And its traffic has exploded: According to data shared with The Washington Post by the analytics firm Similarweb, visits in the United Statesto the site grew from about 200,000 in the last week of July 2020 to nearly 19 million last week — a 9,000 percent increase.
Though Rumble’s audience size is still significantly smaller than YouTube’s, the threat posed by Rumble to YouTube is real. Rumble’s imminent merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) CF Acquisition Corp. VI will effectively make Rumble a public company and is likely to arm it with far greater capital to compete even more robustly with YouTube.
But the major obstacle to competing with Big Tech giants generally, and Google specifically, is that these companies have acquired such extreme market dominance in so many key areas of the internet that they abuse that power to prevent competition and crush any competitors who pose a challenge. That these four Big Tech giants are classic monopolies in violation of the antitrust law was the emphatic conclusion of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law’s comprehensive 2020 report, a conclusion that now has ample support from leading members of both parties.
The lawsuit brought by Rumble against Google is designed to ensure free and fair competition, so that the public is not effectively forced to use YouTube but can instead fairly choose among Google’s competitors as well. The primary allegation is that Google abuses its power as the dominant search engine and destroys free competition for online video platforms by manipulating its algorithms to prevent YouTube’s competitors, including Rumble, from being found by the public.
Attempts to find Rumble videos through Google searches are purposely thwarted by burying Rumble’s videos and instead redirecting the user to YouTube, the lawsuit alleges. Google’s “chokehold on search is impenetrable, and that chokehold allows it to continue unfairly and unlawfully to self-preference YouTube over its rivals, including Rumble, and to monopolize the online video platform market.” I often am unable to find my own videos using Google’s search engines even when I recall the title of the video more or less perfectly, and have frequently heard the same complaint from viewers.
Further illegal monopolistic acts alleged by the complaint include Google’s manufacturing of its Android phones with a pre-installed YouTube app as the default video setting, and imposing agreements on other Android-based mobile smart device manufacturers to pre-install YouTube, place it in the most prominent position, and prevent users from deleting it. The court summarized the alleged anti-competitive results of Google’s behavior this way (citations omitted):
[Google] “requires Android device manufacturers that want to preinstall certain of Google’s proprietary apps to sign an anti-forking agreement.” [Rumble] alleges that once an Android device manufacturer signs an anti-forking agreement, Google will only provide access to its vital proprietary apps and application program interfaces if the manufacturer agrees: “(1) to take (that is, pre-install) a bundle of other Google apps (such as its YouTube app); (2) to make certain apps undeletable (including its YouTube app); and (3) to give Google the most valuable and important location on the device’s default home screen (including for its YouTube app).”
As another example, [Rumble] asserts that “Google provides share of its search advertising revenue to Android device manufacturers, mobile phone carriers, competing browsers, and Apple; in exchange, Google becomes the preset default general search engine for the most important search access points on a computer or mobile device.” And, by becoming the default general search engine, Google is able to continue its manipulation of video search results using its search engine to self-preference its YouTube platform, making sure that links to videos on the YouTube platform are listed above the fold on the search results page.” [Moreover], Google’s revenue sharing agreements allow it to maintain a monopoly in the general search market and online video platform market).
As a result of the denial of Google’s motion to dismiss the complaint, the lawsuit will now proceed to the discovery stage. After denying Google’s request to dismiss the lawsuit prior to discovery, the judge scheduled a conference at which a discovery plan would be established. This phase of the lawsuit is when one party can obtain a broad range of documents from the other relevant to the claims of the lawsuit.
The antitrust specialist Matt Stoller, Research Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said about the ruling: “Getting past the motion to dismiss stage is quite meaningful, and depending on what turns up in discovery Google could be in serious trouble.” This ruling should enable Rumble to acquire and utilize extremely revealing documents about how Google exploits its algorithms to manipulate search results on its dominant search engine, as well the burdensome requirements it imposes on other companies dependent on Google’s infrastructure to ensure prominent promotion of YouTube.
Google did not respond to requests for comment on the judicial ruling. Rumble’s statement was naturally celebratory: “We welcome the court’s decision, which is a significant step toward ending Google’s unlawful preferences for YouTube and helping to put creators first. We look forward to starting discovery.”
When Rumble first filed the suit, its founder and CEO, Chris Pavlovski, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the company’s data specialists had determined that, with its search engine algorithmic manipulations, “Google has redirected up to 9.3 billion visitors to YouTube instead of to Rumble.” These anti-competitive practices by Google, he argued, destroy the possibility for innovation and competition: “Imagine being a tech entrepreneur trying to build an online video platform. You absolutely do not have a shot. You do not have a chance. You have pre-installed YouTube apps on phones. You have a rigged search engine. You have no ability to compete in this market.”
Lawsuits like these have the ability to unite people across the political spectrum. Stoller, one of the nation’s leading scholars on the question of Big Tech monopolistic dominance, noted that “the case leverages antitrust action by the government pursued under both Trump and Biden. It’s also notable that this ruling came from an Obama-appointed judge. Clearly concentrations of power worry both sides.”
Regardless of whether one is an avid admirer of the modern iteration of capitalism, there is nothing to cheer when a tiny group of corporate giants can corner a market and prevent competition. That is particularly true when — as is obviously the case for Big Tech — the “market” in question is now the primary means by which Americans gather information, politically organize, receive and disseminate news, and question and debate the most consequential political controversies. The political and propagandistic aspects of these anti-competitive practices substantially elevate the public interest in fostering free and fair market competition. To allow a tiny number of tech giants to maintain a stranglehold on the digital public square is self-evidently dangerous, especially as they escalate their censorship regime, due to some combination of their own political interests, the demands of the majority political party in Washington, and the incessant grievances of their own work force.
These dangers are not abstract. Perhaps they were most vividly seen in January, 2021, when Parler — designed as a free speech alternative to Facebook and Twitter — became the most-downloaded app in the country, fueled by anger over the pre-election censorship of the New York Post‘s reporting on Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China as well as the banishment of President Trump by a consortium of Big Tech giants. As soon as Parler rose to the top spot, Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and censorship activists groups such as Sleeping Giants demanded that Google and Apple immediately remove Parler from their app stores, preventing any further downloading. Other Democratic lawmakers then demanded that Amazon Web Services, the dominant hosting company that had enabled Parler’s website, terminate its agreement with Parler.
Within forty-eight hours, all three Silicon Valley monopolies complied with these demands. Parler instantly went from the most popular app in the country — thanks to the free speech principles it upheld — to utterly crippled if not destroyed. It attempted to come back but never really recovered. That was as brute and stark a display of Big Tech’s ability and willingness to destroy any successful competitors as one might imagine. And in the process, they not only abused their anti-competitive dominance to destroy one of their few successful competitors but also, heeding the demands of Democratic Party politicians, abolished one of the few significant venues on the internet where Americans could gather to freely question and dissent from the orthodoxies and pronouncements of their leaders.
There are other antitrust actions currently pending against the Big Tech giants from both private companies and, increasingly, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But this suit from Rumble has enormous potential to open competition in the vital video uploading market and, perhaps even more importantly, shed substantial light on the extremely opaque and guarded algorithmic manipulations Google uses to force down the public’s throat the content it wants them to see while hiding that which it does not want them to see.
Food Banks Across America Report Record Demand And Record Shortages
Food pantries and food banks are a key economic indicator for tracking poverty levels and financial instability in the US, and in the past few months they have been ringing alarm bells.
Stagflationary pressures have all but wiped out the savings of the average American and driven up credit card debt to historic highs. Only in the past month have credit spending and debt levels begun to slide, but this is more a sign that consumers are tapped out rather than a sign of a return to normalcy. High prices are slowly but surely overwhelming lower wage workers in particular. The average living wage across most US states is around $16 an hour; over 30% of American workers make less than $15 an hour.
Democrats and leftists will of course claim that this is because the Federal Minimum Wage is too low and needs to be increased, but the minimum wage has become irrelevant in the post-covid economy. Many retail and service companies now pay around $11-14 an hour, well above minimum wage, in order to retain workers. And STILL prices are too high for many of these people to keep up with expenses.
Can average workers demand more money? Probably not. Low skill and no-skill workers are going to have a hard time rationalizing $16-$20 an hour for flipping burgers, brewing coffee or running cash registers. Such a broad wage increase would also trigger even higher prices on most goods, defeating the purpose of higher pay.
The notion of a low wage worker revolt is a bit of a fantasy, and in some ways it can be dangerous for those that believe in it. The trillions of dollars in covid stimulus unleashed in 2020 may have boosted retail sales and employment for a couple of years, but that’s coming to an end quickly. Workers can only opt out of certain jobs for a short time (as long as their parents will let them freeload), and bargaining for more money is dependent on their ability to get employment elsewhere. It’s a sure bet that by mid-2023 many “wage revolutionaries” will be begging for their old burger jobs back.
Stagflation is not a wage issue so much as a money supply issue. There are too many dollars chasing too few goods. This is coupled with numerous supply chain problems caused by covid hysteria in export nations like China that are holding up a large number of cargo ships for weeks or months at a time. When it comes to food in particular, there are weather issues, war issues and governments sabotaging food production within their own countries using nonsensical climate change restrictions (as we are seeing in places like the Netherlands).
So, if people aren’t going to get higher wages, and prices are going to continue climbing, what are they going to do? They generally turn to charities to help get through the month.
Food pantries usually don’t offer enough supplies to fully feed a family, but they do supplement your existing income by adding a week or two worth of sustenance per month. Many people will visit more than a couple food pantries at a time in order to stock enough for their families. The problem with price inflation is that it tends to directly affect and reduce the amount of donations that pantries receive and the amount of food they can give away.
In the past month there has been a steady stream of reports from pantries across the US stating that they are now hitting record high demand and record low supply. From New York to Wisconsin to Ohio to Missouri to Florida to Arkansas to California and beyond, pantries are running out. On top of that, it’s the middle of summer – The busiest time for food banks and the Salvation Army is during the winter holidays.
The majority of pantries indicate that they are most in need of cash donations and that these have started to fade out. When it comes to necessities, most people will not or cannot reduce the frequency of their purchases. Food, gas, housing, utilities, etc. are fixed income costs, and when these costs rise workers must cut costs elsewhere. Charities are usually the first to see the chopping block.
The avalanche of reports suggests that this winter will be high in food demand and dismal in terms of supply, with little relief from charities. The most advisable option would be to stock dry and canned goods with a long shelf life now while they are still available and prepare for the cold season when demand skyrockets even higher. Even people in financial distress can utilize pantries today and stock supplies for the months ahead if they plan carefully. Those same pantries may not exist when winter rolls around, so now is the time to act.
Clear economic thinking and lucid communication via the written word tumbled out of fashion nearly 100 years ago. The fall from grace was triggered by the 1936 publication of John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
Not only is the book is rigorously indecipherable. It also has the ill-effect of making those who read it dumber. Unfortunately, Keynes’ drivel became the standard for foolish economic thinking, which still infects economic discourse to this day.
Many politicians and establishment economists remain enamored with Keynes’ gibberish. They love what it offers. In short, it provides academic rationale for governments to do what they love to do most – borrow money and spend it on ridiculous programs.
For example, Keynes advocated filling bottles with money and burying them in coalmines for people to dig up as a way to end unemployment. According to Keynes, this would provide jobs and money for the unemployed. Somehow, these public works egg hunts would create an economic boom and make everyone rich.
Over the years this reasoning has inspired countless government stunts to save the economy from itself. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the American Rescue Plan of 2021 are two mega Keynesian inspired spending bills passed this century. The U.S. will never be able to overcome the consequences of these asinine programs.
Just over a decade ago, Keynes devotee, Paul Krugman, took the logic of Keynesian economics and ran with it to the outer limits of deep space. In the process, he lost his mind.
Following his righteous departure from planet earth, Krugman went on cable television and explained that the proper way to propel an economic growth chart up and to the right is to borrow massive amounts of money and spend it preparing for an alien invasion.
Only a Nobel Prize winning economist could come up with such nonsense.
A Very Bad Call
Paul Krugman, of course, is a complete madcap. His days contemplating apparent aggregate demand insufficiencies and perceived supply gluts turned his brain to mush. His time staring at graphs while pondering possible government policies to make the graphs show what he wants transformed him into a moron.
Krugman has unwittingly experienced a higher learning glut from within the confines of Princeton University. In the pursuit of theory, he forgot one critically fundamental thing…how to think.
Yet occasionally, when buckets full of ice cold reality are repeatedly thrown in his face, Krugman has a brief moment of clarity. Consumer price inflation raging at an annual rate of 9.1 percent appears to delivered that moment.
On July 21, 2022, Krugman penned on op-ed in The New York Times titled: “I Was Wrong About Inflation.” In the article, Krugman focuses on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was passed in March of 2021 to counteract the economic consequences of government ordered coronavirus lockdowns.
In the op-ed, Krugman mentioned that some economists warned it would lead to rising inflation. But that he, like many other Keynesian economists, was “fairly relaxed” about the stimulus package. “As it turned out, of course, that was a very bad call,” admitted Krugman.
The experience over the last 18 months has shown the Keynesian nirvana of countercyclical stimulus spending to be absolute bosh. Somehow, with all his liquidity trap graphs, Krugman couldn’t see what was so clearly obvious…
That printing trillions of dollars and directly injecting them into the economy via stimmy checks, PPP, and lavish unemployment checks would cause raging consumer price inflation.
Broken Models
Did Krugman think this would be another instance of pushing on a string, like the 2008 bailout of the big banks via AIG? Did he think the fake money would largely remain within the financial sector like TARP funds did, and only slowly drip out into the real economy?
Maybe so. Here’s Krugman’s rationale for his “very bad call.”
“Historical experience wouldn’t have led us to expect this much inflation from overheating. So something was wrong with my model of inflation — again, a model shared by many others, including those who were right to worry in early 2021.
“In any case, the whole experience has been a lesson in humility…But in retrospect I should have realized that, in the face of the new world created by Covid-19, that kind of extrapolation wasn’t a safe bet.”
Apparently, Krugman’s model of inflation is a great big dud. It failed to forecast the greatest consumer price inflation blowout in over 40 years. If it couldn’t do that, then what good is it?
To be clear, a model is only as good as its inputs. The Keynesian approach of using aggregate data to identify apparent demand insufficiencies and perceived supply gluts is flawed. Unemployment. Gross domestic product. Price inflation. These data points are all fabricated up and fudged out to the government number crunchers liking.
For each headline number there are a list of footnotes and qualifiers. Hedonic price adjustments. Price deflators. Seasonal adjustments. Discouraged worker disappearances. These subjective adjustments greatly affect the results. So what good are they?
And why’s The New York Times still giving Krugman a platform?
Paying the Price for Krugman’s Terrible Mistake
Now, where the rubber meets the road, failed Keynesian policies coupled with monetary madness have positioned the U.S. economy and financial system in an extraordinarily unfavorable place. Where consumer price inflation is raging while the economy is contracting.
Just yesterday (Thursday), second quarter GDP data was released by the Commerce Department. Between April and June the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.9 percent. This is on the heels of a first quarter GDP contraction of 1.6 percent.
Two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP meets the technical definition of a recession. So, with shrinkage occurring in both Q1 and Q2, the U.S. economy is without a doubt in a recession.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen may say, “this is not an economy that’s in recession.” But the facts – the government’s own fudged data – say otherwise.
Yet here’s where things really get interesting…
Because professional economists like Krugman and Yellen were wrong about inflation, and the Federal Reserve let it get away, the Fed is having to hike the federal funds rate in the face of a contracting economy. This week the Fed hiked the federal funds rate another 75 basis points to bring it to a range of 2.25 to 2.50 percent.
How much higher can the Fed go before something breaks?
We’ll find out soon. Moreover, we expect a mega disaster to arrive before inflation subsides. At this point, the Fed will have to trigger a massive, 1930s-style depression to stop inflation in its tracks.
Here’s the point: Krugman was wrong. He admitted it. And we all get to pay the price for his terrible mistake.
* * *
Don’t let the mistakes of Krugman and other professional economists destroy everything you’ve worked so hard for. This is a dangerous time. For this reason, I’ve dedicated the past 6-months to researching and identifying simple, practical steps everyday Americans can take to protect their wealth and financial privacy. The findings of my work are documented in the Financial First Aid Kit. If you’d like to find out more about this important and unique publication, and how to acquire a copy, stop by here today!
British National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove warned late this week that there is a greater risk of nuclear war today than there was during the Cold War due to a lack of communication channels.
“The Cold War’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR (Soviet Union) and NATO — though not without alarming bumps — were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” Lovegrove said.
He said during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open.
“This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war,” Lovegrove said. “Today we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in future — particularly with China,” he said.
Today, there is only one remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, the New START, which limits the deployment of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines, and missiles. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US has abandoned diplomacy with Moscow, and US officials have said they can’t imagine negotiating a replacement of New START before it expires in 2026.
The US has no nuclear arms control treaties with China, which has a vastly smaller arsenal than the US or Russia. Current estimates put Beijing’s arsenal at around 350 warheads, while the US has 5,550 and Russia has about 6,200.
During the Trump administration, the US tried to get Beijing to take part in trilateral arms control talks with Moscow and Washington. But China has little interest in such talks while its arsenal is so much smaller. If the US were serious about getting China involved, it would need to work with Russia to significantly reduce its stockpiles.
Besides the lack of communication, the risk of nuclear war is significantly higher today because the US is funding a war on Russia’s border and helping Ukraine with intelligence to carry out attacks on Russian forces. The US is also stoking tensions with China by deploying more military forces in the South China Sea and increasing support for Taiwan.
Canada Unveils “Mandatory” AR-15 Buyback Program; US House Passes Assault Weapons Ban
The Canadian government wants people’s semi-automatic rifles. They unveiled a new gun buyback plan to purchase “assault-style” weapons that the federal government banned in early 2020.
Public Safety Canada released a statement last week indicating that the gun buyback program is “mandatory for individuals to participate,” according to CTV News.
AR platform firearms will be bought under the mandatory buyback program for $1,337 per rifle. The price reflects what owners paid for them pre-2020. Here’s a list of prohibited firearms and what the government is offering gun owners:
AR Platform firearms such as the M16, AR-10, and AR-15 rifles, and the M4 carbine: $1,337
Beretta Cx4 Storm: $1,317
CZ Scorpion EVO 3 carbine and CZ Scorpion EVO 3 pistol: $1,291
M14 Rifle: $2,612
Robinson Armament XCR rifle: $2,735
Ruger Mini-14 rifle: $1,407
SG-550 rifle and SG-551 carbine: $6,209
SIG Sauer MCX, MPX forearms such as the SIG Sauer SIG MPX carbine, and the SIG Sauer SIG MPX pistol: $2,369
Vz58 rifle: $1,139
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s aggressive campaign to disarm Canadians hasn’t stopped with prohibiting the sale and use of AR platform firearms and other types of weapons. He has proposed a countrywide “freeze” on the sale, import, and transfer of all handguns.
Trudeau appears to be following the blueprints of authoritarians: confiscate guns.
In 1959, Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba and immediately removed all guns from citizens. His communist regime went door to door to force citizens into turning over their firearms.
Totalitarianism and gun confiscation are always intertwined. The most disturbing part is that it’s already happening to our neighbors in the north and could soon be coming to the US.
On Friday, the US House of Representatives passed an assault weapons ban (217-213 vote included 215 Democrats and two Republicans, with five Democrats voting against the bill). However, the bill is all optics for Democrats ahead of midterm elections in November with low probabilities of passing the Senate. The bill bans importing, selling, manufacturing, or transferring semi-automatic assault weapons.
History provides alarming proof that when regimes disarm their citizens, a slippery slope of the loss of liberties soon follows. Just look how communist Cuba turned out…
George Mason of Virginia, the father of the Bill of Rights, famously warned Americans that disarming the people is “the best and most effective way to enslave them.”
Perhaps more than anything else, the one question that is going to determine whether or not people make money in the market in the second half of this year is whether or not bad news is once again good news. So, let’s discuss the setup: what the macro picture looks like to me, and what I see as possible outcomes going forward.
Heading into the inflationary crisis that we are in, back on December 17, 2021, I wrote an article talking about why the “bad news” of inflation was simply just bad news. In other words, it couldn’t once again be a prompt for the Fed to swoop in and save markets, as they have done over the last several decades. In that article, I called the taper a non-sugar coated directional negative for markets.
The day prior, CNBC led with the headline:
Dow futures up nearly 200 points following Fed decision to aggressively wind down asset purchases
My article ridiculed market participants, analysts and financial media for suggesting that inflation wasn’t going be a problem and that winding down asset purchases was somehow going to magically propel stocks higher.
Since then, the S&P has seen an -11.57% plunge, the Russell has fallen about -13.63% and the NASDAQ, as I first predicted would happen back in November 2021, has been pasted to the tune of -19.4%.
Since then, inflation has spiked out of control. Sadly, the only piece of “good news” we have gotten recently is that CPI blew through the roof last month with a 9.1% YOY print – a number so high and so inconceivable that I felt forced to postulate that we may have seen the peak.
That prediction is not to say that inflation is over, but rather that comps are going to get “easier” (which is what happens when you have a year of nosebleed growth and you’re comparing year-over-year). Drawdowns in some commodities over the past month should help, acting as temporary headwinds.
On the month, crude is down about -9%, metals are down between -3% and -12%, wheat and lumber are down -12% and -16%, respectively and, while food has bucked the trend and risen for the month, the CRB commodity index basket is down about -3.8%.
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The saying “bad news is good news”, of course, comes from the fact that shitty macroeconomic news often prompts central bankers, Pavlovian-style, to start or accelerate quantitative easing and other easy money policies.
This, in turn, usually boosts the stock market regardless of actual underlying economic activity.
This was essentially how we got the freakishly indecent and obscene rally off the March 2020 pandemic lows.
Over the last week, it has become clear that the market seems to think that the Fed raising by 75bps and GDP confirming that we are in a recession, as expected, are both bullish pieces of news. This is what has sparked the rally in both equities and precious metals over the last couple of days, as I predicted would happen in my July 2022 portfolio update:
I think it’s likely the 9.1% print is the peak, for a little while at least, based on current spot prices. Used cars are down, new cars are down, home prices are starting to come down as more inventory comes on the market, oil has sold off over the last 2 weeks, etc. This doesn’t mean inflation is over, not does it mean stocks won’t still move lower in the longer term once the effect of rate hikes put into place in 1H 2022 finally surface in credit markets, but it means we could be at a lull for the time being (1-2 quarters).
I think equities are going to rally on this sentiment (the fact that stocks didn’t crash spectacularly in the last 48 hours on that 9.1% print says something to me). The market is forward looking and the inflation numbers are backward looking, as much as I absolutely hate to admit it.
The key questions from here become:
How long will this rally last?
What type of an impact will these macro factors have on Fed policy?
There’s certainly seems to be a growing case for allowing inflation to just take hold and run rampant. For example, Bernstein said on Thursday that a “policy pivot” from the Fed would be “completely appropriate”.
Those comments were echoed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was busy lobbing grenades at Fed Chair Powell via Twitter.
But inflation, even if it comes down from 9% and starts to subside on a year-over-year basis heading into 2023, is still going to be elevated no matter what direction we go in.
The objective idea of a successful soft landing by the Fed, as defined by a sane person looking from the outside in, would be for real rates to once again go positive and for inflation to head back down to the Fed’s arbitrary, totally dumbass, 2% “target”.
What I’m predicting is far more likely, however, is that inflation backs off only slightly, real rates stay negative and the Fed declares success heading into the second half of the year anyways, beginning to ease its hawkish posture.
In other words, for now, it looks as though between letting inflation run rampant and crashing the economy, I’m leaning more towards the Fed allowing inflation to run rampant going forward. The Fed will have the perfect excuse to do it as CPI moves lower, maybe to 7% or 6%.
It will in no way be a “win” in the war against inflation, but that won’t prevent the Fed from conjuring up a word salad of bullshit talking points to make the everyday American believe that it is. Simultaneously, and likely most important to the FOMC, it’ll get the Central Bank out from the crosshairs of politicians.
And so, as I’ve said, forecasting which way the scales are going to tip is going to be key to navigating markets over the next year. While I am not claiming that the Fed is going to take the inflationary course of action as a certainty, I wanted to lay out my thoughts in terms of how I would position in either scenario.
If the Fed does decide to declare victory and let inflation run, despite real rates being negative, I definitely want to stay long gold and silver, as well as risk assets like cash flow generative tech companies that have been beaten down significantly over the last 8 to 10 months.
If the Fed decides to hold course and continue defiling the corpse of the economy through planned rate hikes, I would hedge a bit more by selecting my favorite cash burning tech ShitCo “story stocks” (i.e. they don’t generate cash, so they survive just off hope and narrative – like the Treasury). I’d also focus more on buying dividend paying value stocks and staples that I’ve already pointed out as they plunge.
The scales obviously tip more towards value in the event of a prolonged recession and more towards growth and risk in the event of the Fed allowing inflation to run rampant.
Additionally, there are a few names that I’ve outlined in my most recent portfolio update that I want to own, no matter what. A conversation with my FinTwit friend @FredMcFeely days ago reminded me of one sector I have been bullish on for a year now: Aerospace and Defense. While I’ve often talked about Lockheed LMT 1.63%↑ and Maxar MAXR 3.49%↑, both of which I own, other names in this sector include RTX 0.40%↑, LDOS 1.99%↑, NOC 3.66%↑ and GD 0.99%↑ , as well as small caps like RADA -0.20%↓.
Along the same lines, I continue to absolutely love cybersecurity names like IHAK -0.27%↓ and PANW 0.67%↑. While there isn’t as much deep value in cybersecurity, there are still marquee names like Palo Alto Networks that I think, despite their growth profile, will still be in great demand going forward. The next major geopolitical conflict will be fought not only in person, but also online.
And for better or for worse, it still feels like we’re tiptoeing around World War III.
I’d love to be able to tell you that I know exactly what the Fed is going to do, but we are at an unprecedented crossroads, for which there is no historical precedent.
We have never had so much outstanding gross federal debt relative to GDP and our Fed has never faced this type of inflationary crisis before.
We don’t have the luxury of moving rates like Paul Volcker did. In fact, we haven’t even felt the brunt of the last several rate hikes in my opinion, the aftershocks of which will likely take another couple months to make their way through the financial system.
Put it this way: if the market crashes again, like it did around Christmas in 2018, I won’t be surprised. The key question is: what will the Fed do when this happens?
Rather than try to guess the outcome of this unprecedented situation, the only thing that I can do is try to accurately frame what I believe the problem and the potential outcomes to be. For now, it seems the likelihood of going inflationary crisis instead of recession is at about 60% to 40%.
I’ll try to keep my readers updated on my thoughts on this as they change, but be aware that, like anything else, I am just a lagging indicator to how the Fed decides that they randomly want to posture themselves this week. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is out there telling people that the recession is transitory, the White House and economists are lying to people and telling them that this week’s GDP print doesn’t mean that we are in a recession and President Biden is blaming inflation on Vladimir Putin.
Let’s be honest: you absolutely can’t fucking reason with these people and they exist in such a distorted field of twisted reality that trying to predict their next move, and then how the market will respond to it, is like trying to figure out what a drunk crackhead at stumbling around at the Market-Frankford subway station is going to yell out next.
Even in the one-in-a-million chance that you guess it right, it’s still going to be completely incoherent. Welcome to the current state of the market and the economy.
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Disclaimer:I own positions as disclosed above. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities. I own or may own all crypto/stocks I mentioned or linked to in this piece. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes.
