Month: June 2023

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

On the surface, there seem to be plenty of reasons as to why the Right should support, directly or tacitly, the quixotic bid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President of the United States.

The hopelessness of his campaign might be the biggest one.

The Enemy of My Enemy?

Many conservative commentators suggest that RFK Jr. is worth supporting because he represents a more “conservative” brand of Democrat than any presidential candidate since Jim Webb in 2016.

And indeed, on a handful of cultural touchstone issues, the son of the late senator and would-be president of the same name does seem to agree with the Right: Most prominently, he has been critical of efforts to mandate COVID-19 vaccines. He also has spoken out against the rise of transgenderism. And he has engaged with such free-thinkers of the Internet as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, which in turn have led to him getting censored by Big Tech, an achievement often limited exclusively to conservatives.

Furthermore, his status as the latest standard-bearer of the outsider Democratic candidate waging a one-man war against the party machine also will naturally draw a lot of conservative sympathy, if not support, due to the Right’s universal opposition to Joe Biden. The previous symbol of this resistance to the Democrat Party elite was Bernie Sanders, who also had the race for the nomination rigged against him not once, but twice.

But, ironically, the aging socialist senator from Vermont was probably more ideologically aligned with President Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden – or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for that matter. Sanders, for his many flaws, was nearly in complete agreement with Trump when it came to trade and tariffs, as both were opposed to such free trade deals as NAFTA and TPP. They shared a similar outlook on foreign policy, in favor of non-interventionism. And, once upon a time, Sanders was just as critical of open borders and mass immigration as Trump was.

Kennedy, by contrast, harbors views that are just as dangerous as Sanders’, if not even more so. He once advocated for passing a law that would “punish” anyone who doesn’t accept the pseudo-scientific belief that is global warming. He tows the party line on many other issues too, including his pro-choice stance when it comes to the ongoing abortion battle.

And, for a man who claims to be in complete opposition to the Deep State, JFK’s nephew once eagerly parroted all of the same DNC talking points when it came to the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory against Trump, thus propping up one of the biggest Deep State lies of all time.

RFK’s Pyrrhic Victories

If conservatives shouldn’t support RFK Jr. based on his politics or ideology, then perhaps they’d be better off supporting the idea of his campaign rather than what he actually stands for: Giving Biden a political black eye ahead of the 2024 general election.

In principle, Kennedy represents a rare formidable challenge to a sitting president. As far as politics go, it’s practically a law of physics that an incumbent president who faces a serious primary challenger goes on to lose re-election. Just ask George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. The most recent of these, when the great Pat Buchanan challenged Bush Sr. in 1992, saw Buchanan take 23% of the GOP primary vote; despite not even winning a single primary, his strong showing revealed cracks in the elder Bush’s armor, and he went on to lose the general election to Bill Clinton.

Kennedy is, for the time being, on track to not only win several primaries, but to win the very first two contests. In a blatant effort to pander to black voters by moving states with greater black populations, like South Carolina and Georgia, to the front of the DNC’s 2024 primary calendar, the overwhelmingly White states of Iowa and New Hampshire, the historic first-in-the-nation caucuses and primaries, respectively, have effectively been told by Biden and the national Democratic Party to shove it.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, all four states at the heart of the intra-party feud – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Georgia – are completely controlled by Republicans, from the legislatures to the governors. Naturally, none of them appear ready to formally change their respective primary dates to align with the DNC’s wishes, thus meaning that Iowa and New Hampshire will still go first, with South Carolina and Georgia set further back where they belong.

In a stunning display of arrogance, Biden and his team have declared that, if their demands for the primary calendar are not met, his campaign will deliberately stay off of the ballots in Iowa and New Hampshire in a show of “solidarity” with the DNC, effectively conceding these races to Kennedy. But, as Axios notes, the party apparatus has a plan in place for this too: In the event that Kennedy takes the first two contests by default, the DNC will simply reduce the total number of delegates awarded to the winner of these states.

Pulling Back the Curtain

What this means is that, in the end, the party machine apparently doesn’t even care if Biden is embarrassed on the national stage by losing the first two primary contests, a feat that has never been achieved by a sitting president in modern history. If he does indeed lose these states, the party will essentially just change the rules to ensure that they don’t even mean that much in the grand scheme of things.

And this goes back to the biggest similarity between RFK Jr. and Bernie Sanders: Not an ideological one, but a tactical one. Like Sanders, Kennedy appears on track to have the Democratic primaries completely rigged against him from the top down; a rather ironic twist of fate for a member of the Kennedy family, which has previously rigged elections in its favor.

First the DNC stole the nomination from Sanders in 2016, courtesy of the almighty “superdelegates.” Then in 2020, as Sanders won the popular vote in all of the first three contests and appeared to be on an inevitable march to the nomination at last, the party leadership employed an even more overt method for stopping him: Forcing other candidates to strategically withdraw, while others strategically remained in the race.

Two of the candidates who had performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire – Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, considered more “moderate” candidates who spoiled Biden in the primaries – suddenly dropped out within 24 hours of each other and endorsed Biden. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren – a hardcore progressive who was widely seen as siphoning more votes from Sanders than anyone else – remained stubbornly in the race.

This was no coincidence, and the subsequent results made that clear. After losing three of the four early contests, Biden had a “miraculous” turnaround in the Democrats’ Super Tuesday contests. Of the 14 states that voted on March 3rd, Biden won 10 to Sanders’ 4. However, four of the states that Biden won – Maine, Massachusetts (Warren’s home state), Minnesota (Klobuchar’s home state), and the crucial delegate-heavy stronghold of Texas – were won by single-digit margins. Had these gone to Sanders, he would have emerged victorious on that day, with 8 wins to Biden’s 6, and perhaps the race for the nomination would have unfolded much differently.

From rigging superdelegates to strategically-timed candidate withdrawals, it appeared as if the Democrats had reached their peak in terms of how far they were willing to go to rig their own elections, let alone the general election as they did in 2020. But Kennedy’s campaign proves that they are far from done when it comes to constantly interfering in their own contests, even if it’s for the purpose of stopping a man who, by all accounts, is not going to beat the incumbent president.

The Naked Emperor’s Coronation

Therein lies the single most valuable contribution of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the political discourse ahead of the 2024 election. It is not his stance on vaccines, nor his censorship by Big Tech, or any of the other actual issues: It will be his inevitable suppression by the Democratic Party.

For the third time in a row, one of the two biggest parties in the United States will blatantly rig its presidential primaries in favor of its preferred candidate. It was one thing to do so in order to stop a candidate who had a serious shot at becoming the nominee like Sanders; it’s something else entirely to go after someone who is almost guaranteed to become an also-ran (his likely early victories notwithstanding.)

With the mainstream media fully aligned with the Democratic Party, it’s all too easy for the party to get away with rigging elections against its political rivals, as it did with Donald Trump in 2020. But for many of their own voters, it will be a much tougher sell to explain away yet another example of rigging the election against one of their own candidates.

As some have acutely pointed out, Kennedy represents a long-gone ideal for many older Democratic voters; this perception is almost certainly because of his name, but that’s not the point. A Democratic Party effort to suppress and ultimately eliminate a member of the most famous political family in modern American history will undoubtedly not sit well with many in the party’s base. These disaffected RFK Democrats may not necessarily turn around and vote for Donald Trump as a result, but they are certainly more likely to sit out the general election altogether, which is still a net loss for the party.

Most simply, Kennedy’s greatest accomplishment will be to unintentionally expose just what a sham the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process has become. For all the flaws of the Republican Party, at least they still let the voters decide the nominee.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy will most likely not restore Camelot. But he could expose another corrupt kingdom in the process.

If there’s one thing to learn about climate hysteria and how it functions, it’s this:  Climate scientists love to blame every naturally occurring Earth event on man-made global warming, then categorize those events as a crisis.  Centuries ago ancient Aztec priests used mathematical calendars to predict solar eclipses, then frightened the peasants with claims that the sun would be swallowed by the gods forever if people did not offer submission and sacrifice. 

Global warming cultism is very similar, with climate scientists heavily funded by governments and globalist institutions offering their own tall tale of doom should the public refuse to comply with draconian carbon emissions controls, all based on events that have nothing to do with human interference.  

Well, they’re at it again with another bizarre claim that the human population is consuming too much ground water, and along with global warming melting the polar ice caps, this is causing the Earth’s axis to shift.  The theory is based on a study by South Korean scientists with the support of the Korea Institute of Marine Science & Technology Promotion (KIMST).  The group is at least partially funded by NASA and KIMST is directly tied to the the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and Marine S&T International R&D Programme.

In other words, the study’s funding is dependent on findings that support the UN’s carbon policy goals (it is likely biased).  The conclusions of the paper are based on correlation, not proof of causation, concerning the depletion of ground water in certain regions along with a shift in the Earth’s axis from 1993-2010. 

In reality, numerous scientific studies show that the Earth naturally “shifts” its axis every 40,000 years.  Then there are the Milankovitch cycles, which describe how relatively slight changes in Earth’s movement every 26,000 years affect the planet’s climate.    

At the peak of the axis tilt more extreme climate changes can result.  The last seven ice ages, for instance, took place at the end of a natural shift in the Earth’s axis, causing longer periods of cold.  The Earth does not have a perfect orbit, nor a constant tilt, nor does it behave in a readily predictable manner at all times.

Even NASA has admitted in the past (before all Earth science was hijacked by climate cultism) that this ancient process leads to extreme weather.  Generally, the wobble of the axis takes thousands of years to play out, though there is evidence to suggest it has changed quickly during massive earthquakes, tectonic clashes and even the eruption of volcanoes.  There’s zero evidence that the Earth’s axis is currently shifting any faster today than it normally would every 40,000 years.  There is zero concrete evidence that human beings can cause the axis to move.   

In the past decade climate science groups have attempted to put the cart before the horse, arguing that it is humanity that is creating the climate events which are then causing the Earth to wobble.  Data of Earth’s climate previous to human industry suggest the opposite.  There is no extraordinary axis shift happening today, nor is there any evidence that the warming of the Earth over the past century is significant or dangerous compared to the eons of warming events that happened long before people walked the planet. 

Real scientists do not enter into an experiment or study with a preconceived outcome (unless they are paid to).  They begin with a theory and then test the parameters of that theory to see if it holds water (no pun intended).  In this case (like most other cases of climate environmental doom mongering) the natural processes of the Earth and the solar system are being rebranded as man-made calamities for the purpose of frightening the public into embracing greater centralization of power.         

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Nearly half of Americans have at least one chronic condition—and that number is growing.

One in three Americans are either overweight or obese.

Why do you think so many Americans are overweight and sick?

Doug Casey: I don’t pretend to be a medical expert. But I can assure you that it’s better to be young, healthy, rich, and smart than old, sick, poor, and stupid.

It’s obvious that the latter increasingly defines Americans.

There’s no doubt that they have problems with weight and lack of exercise. This has been a problem for decades, but things really got out of control with the COVID scamdemic.

Not only were the gyms closed, but you could forget about even going for a walk in many places. You were supposed to stay in your apartment, wear a pathetic little paper mask, and huddle in a corner to hide from some crazy virus trying to hunt you down like a rat.

Americans were not only forced to put their lives on hold but couldn’t even get into a hospital or see a doctor to handle real medical conditions. I’ll guess that the average American gained 10 to 20 pounds of weight.

Weight is easy to gain but hard to lose in today’s America.

The excess deaths attributed to COVID, and a general degradation of health, were not due to COVID itself, however. COVID was just a severe flu that mostly affected old, fat, and sick people. In fact, government actions killed many more people than the vaunted plague, short term, and long term.

Everything that government touches degrades and degenerates. A good case can be made that government is at least partly responsible for the poor health of Americans. Perhaps it started with the invention of the so-called food pyramid.

Bureaucrats told Americans to consume lots of grains, usually in the form of sugary breakfast cereals and white bread. All of it is heavily processed. Fresh vegetables and fruits only played a minor part in the recommended American diet.

Lobbyists from major corporations found it much more profitable to promote convenience foods than fresh fruits and vegetables.

Before World War 2, the average American woman stayed at home to raise a family and manage the household, cooking meals from scratch. It was a full-time job. Women also acted as a backup system if the male, the main breadwinner, couldn’t work.

Now, however, most women work. They no longer have time to take care of the house and children and cook three edible meals a day for the family. This has given rise to convenience foods.

Convenience foods are processed, preserved, and pre-packaged. They’re very heavy in sugar, fat, salt, and processed carbs. Over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, when starvation was the norm, these things were rare. Now they’re ubiquitous. But we’re genetically programmed to seek them out.

Processed, preserved, and packaged food tends to be heavy in calories and light on fiber and nutrients. We don’t really get food from farmers anymore but from large corporations, which are in a partnership with the State.

Don’t worry; I’m not a “granola” or a back-to-nature hippy. But large urban populations in industrial societies require some adjustments, and not all of them are welcome. That said, if an unregulated free market was allowed—which is not the case—there’s every reason to believe foods would be both vastly better and cheaper.

I think those are some reasons people are overweight today.

International Man: What is the relationship between Big Pharma and the government?

How could pharmaceutical companies operate in a free market?

Doug Casey: Big government, which has become as fat as the people that it rules over, naturally likes to deal with big corporations.

A consequence of the unwholesome partnership between big government and big corporations is that when corporations need approvals, favors, or subsidies, they’re in a good position to get them much more easily than the “little people” can.

And subtly, often not so subtly, government employees are rewarded with lucrative corporate jobs, directorships, and consulting contracts for having made their corporate buddies rich. Look at the contemptible Tony Fauci and his coterie. One hand washes the other.

In the US and most of today’s world, Mussolini’s fascist dream of a partnership between big government and big corporations has become reality on a vast scale.

That’s absolutely, maybe especially true for pharmaceutical companies.

How would they operate in a free market?

In a free market, there would be no subsidies. There would be no government purchases of products that corporations want to sell. There would be no Medicare or Medicaid. So, there wouldn’t be a constant pipeline of money from the government to corporations. Obamacare made this much worse.

Of course, in a free market, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) wouldn’t exist. I prefer to call the FDA the Federal Death Authority because they probably kill more people every year than the Defense Department does in a typical decade. Why? The multibillion-dollar costs and the typically 10-year delay they impose on the development of valuable drugs and technologies. Most of it is cover-your-ass procedures imposed by lawyers and bureaucrats, not scientists. They’re not actually protecting the consumer from dangerous food and drugs.

In a free market, entrepreneurs and medical companies would spend those billions of dollars effectively rather than in ways that only make sense because State approval is needed.

What drugs you take should be between you and your doctor, without the dead hand of the government laying on top of both of you.

It often starts with censorship of valuable information, as happened during the COVID hysteria when it became impossible, or at least dangerous, to even discuss the nature of the problem. Doctors were unable to prescribe inexpensive, safe drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Instead, hundreds of millions were squandered on expensive and deadly remdesivir and ventilators at the start of the COVID hysteria. The only thing that stayed healthy was a giant self-sustaining bureaucracy.

International Man: Americans used to be skeptical of Big Pharma.

However, after the COVID hysteria, it seems many have become useful idiots—or worse—for Big Pharma.

What is responsible for this change in attitude, and what are the implications?

Doug Casey: An excellent illustration of the power of government is provided by this video compilation. I urge everybody to watch it.

People have been taught to rely on credentialed experts as opposed to listening to their bodies and doing their own research. Doing your own research—called “reading”—is actively discouraged today. If you’re a thinking person, of course, you’re skeptical of Big Pharma. My co-author John Hunt, M.D., and I go into this in our novel Drug Lord.

The fact is that many of the drugs that they’ve come up with, despite many years and billions of dollars of FDA approval process, are actively dangerous.

An excellent example of this is the over 100 hundred psychiatric drugs which are supposed to assuage mental illness. In most cases, they just cover up psychological problems that have causes in people’s diet or habits. Things like Zoloft, Prozac, and hundreds of others are heavily prescribed. They often turn people into zombies.

Americans should be suspicious of these things. Health is something you achieve for yourself. Medical intervention is something between you and your doctor when necessary. The State should have no role in either.

International Man: The US is clearly experiencing a steep economic, cultural, and social decline.

How does the average American’s health decline fit into the overall trend?

Doug Casey: At this point, it almost seems that the-powers-that-be would prefer to see the useless mouths put in cubicles where food and entertainment can be doled out while they collect their universal basic income, only coming out to vote or riot when called upon.

This seems to be the way things are going. It’s as if life is following the plot of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

I generally don’t believe in conspiracies simply because it’s hard enough to have four friends agree on which restaurant to go to—much less get hundreds of miscreants to conspire.

But ultimately, along with reducing 90% of the population, the kind of people that get into government, or go to Davos, simply want to control other people. State “health” mandates are an important part of that.

International Man: What do you recommend individuals do to buck this trend and stay physically healthy?

Doug Casey: First thing to do is recognize that the words surrounding the subject need to be used accurately.

People conflate “healthcare” with “medical care.” Medical care is what you need and want when you’re confronting an acute illness or a serious accident.

Healthcare is very different. It’s something that you provide for yourself. Your primary possession is your own body, and it’s something that you’re personally responsible for. You—not the government, not Medicare, not Medicaid.

It’s a corruption of language to call medical insurance, health insurance. It makes everybody think that if they get health insurance, their health will somehow be insured.

That’s not the way it works. Your health is something that you are responsible for. The costs of medical care, however, can be insured. But medical care is only necessary when some serious extraneous event overtakes your life. It shouldn’t be a consideration of day-to-day living. For instance, it’s absurd that the average family pays about $2500 a month for “health insurance” provided by a now collapsing medical system.

But that’s a subject for another conversation.

*  *  *

Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of this trend in motion. The best you can do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. Most people have no idea what really happens when a currency collapses, let alone how to prepare… How will you protect your savings in the event of a currency crisis? This just-released video will show you exactly how. Click here to watch it now.

After last week’s surprise and sizable outflows from institutional money-markets (likely driven by corporate tax demands), expectations were for a return to inflows but for the 3rd straight week, money market funds saw outflows (albeit a small $2.9 billion)…

Source: Bloomberg

However, we note that once again retail saw a 10th straight week of inflows (+5.8 billion) while institutional funds saw $8.7 billion of outflows (3rd straight week)…

Source: Bloomberg

Is this corporate tax payments or chasing AI stocks?

There remains a significant decoupling between bank deposits and money market funds…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s balance sheet finally retraced all of the increase from the SVB bailout, shrinking for the 3rd straight week (-$21.1 billion)…

Source: Bloomberg

As far as QT is concerned, The Fed sold a decent $7.9 billion of its securities last week to its smallest since Aug 2011…

Source: Bloomberg

The US central bank has over $106 billion of loans outstanding to financial institutions through its two backstop lending facilities…

Source: Bloomberg

As banks’ usage of The Fed’s emergency Bank Term Funding Program rising once again to a new record at $103.1 billion (up $0.8 billion from last week), while discount window usage was unchanged at $3.2 billion…

The breakdown from The Fed’s H.4.1 table…

• QT: MBS drop by $15BN to $2.538TN

• Discount Window: unchanged at $3.2BN

• BTFP: up $0.3BN to $1.03.1BN, new record

• Other credit extensions (FDIC loans): down $4BN to $168.3BN

The US equity market is starting to catch down to the contraction of bank reserves at The Fed…

Finally, after all the big banks passed the stress test with flying colors, we remind readers that banks have 9 months left under the original 12-month BTFP Fed bailout program to find a way to stabilize their balance sheets.

Not only have they failed to do so, usage of the BTFP facility is at a new all time high, and yields are rising even more (great MTM losses).

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The American post-Cold War order from the Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush administration is over.

Barack Obama began its erosion with his tired lectures about the past sins of the United States.

Obama empowered radical Islamists. He invited Russia back into the Middle East after a forty-year hiatus. He snored while Vladimir Putin swallowed large areas of Ukraine. He nonchalantly allowed ISIS almost to take over Iraq. And he authored the Libyan misadventure.

Joe Biden has greatly amplified what Obama inaugurated. He accentuates the Obama-authored foreign policy disasters by his own family corruption.

If the U.S. had an honest media, a disinterested Department of Justice, and a professional FBI, the Biden family would likely be facing felony bribery charges and an impeachment vote for leveraging the interests of the U.S. for a few millions of Ukrainian and Chinese cash.

Biden has forfeited any moral credibility America once had in sermonizing to the world about the advantages of transparent democracy.

Instead, Washington under Biden went full Third-world. His family got rich from his offices, and Joe Biden warped government agencies in efforts to take out his next possible presidential rival.

Antony Blinken, Biden’s current Secretary of State, is known mostly for meekly accepting a dressing down from Chinese diplomats in 2021 and subsequent ritual humiliations.

Blinken was also the author of the 2020 election shenanigan of soliciting former intelligence authorities to publish a preposterous lie that Hunter Biden’s laptop had all the “hallmarks” of “Russian disinformation.” Blinken’s inspired farce was dreamed up to aid a then struggling candidate Biden in his last presidential debate.

The net result of the Obama-Biden continuum has been the moral and material collapse of U.S. foreign policy.

Americans are bewildered that China is now buzzing our jets. It plays chicken with American warships.

It mocks our homeland defenses by sending a spy balloon with impunity across the continental United States.

It is defiantly mum about its creation of a gain-of-function virus under the auspices of the People’s Liberation Army, despite the ensuing Covid epidemic that killed over 1 million Americans.

The weird reaction of the Biden administration to these affronts is either to contextualize Beijing’s aggression or to ignore them entirely.

Under the earlier Obama-Biden “reset” of Russia, we also paid little attention to the past aggressions of Vladimir Putin, appeased his provocations, and earned the 2014 Russian take-over of the Ukrainian border and Crimea.

Then the resetters flipped during the Trump administration.

They now preposterously claimed that Donald Trump—who had neutered Putin by flooding the world with cheap oil, pulled out of an asymmetrical missile deal with Moscow, killed attacking Russian mercenaries in Syria, and greenlighted offensive weapons to Ukraine—was a Putin “puppet.”

After sleeping when Putin invaded Ukraine twice under Obama, and once under Biden (but not at all under Trump), the Left abruptly adopted Ukrainian resistance as their last chance to prove that Russians should have been guilty of “Russian collusion” and “disinformation.”

Their new legacy is a Chinese-Russian-Iranian anti-American axis.

U.S. arms stockpiles are drained so that a beleaguered Ukraine might have the third largest military budget in the world—and a Verdun-like deathscape of static warfare on the borders of Europe.

Biden desperately sought to revive the failed Obama Iran deal. His subtext was to return to the bankrupt notion that by empowering Iran and its henchmen in Lebanon and Syria, and Hezbollah and Hamas, America could leverage allies like Israel and distance itself from friends such as the oil-exporting Gulf monarchies.

China and Russia loved the Obama-Biden resets. Now both are the guardians of Middle East oil and money, while the U.S. alienated our friends and drove allies away.

The Biden administration abandoned billions of dollars in military hardware as it fled in ignominy from Afghanistan.

It sent billions more in arms to Ukraine, while ending U.S. self-sufficiency in oil and gas, inflating the currency, exploding the debt, and ignoring replacing the arms we have sent abroad or abandoned.

Instead of restocking our depleted arms arsenals, Biden started tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for cheap political advantage on the eve of the midterm elections.

A frail and disorientated Biden may be considered useful by his controllers to implement a hard-left agenda.

But otherwise, an enfeebled Biden personified the decline in American stature that he had wrought.

• He was recently helped to steady himself by a Mexican President.

• He was shuffled into place for a photo-op by a Japanese Prime Minister.

• In a conversation with the British Prime Minister, he forgot the name of Winston Churchill, a British icon.

• And he entered the G-7 summit by falling down the steps of Air Force One.

It would be hard for a Chinese or Russian strategist to come up with a record better than Biden’s to emasculate America’s military and radically reduce its global stature.

A big upward revision to Q1 GDP hid the extent of the weakness in pending home sales data and sent US macro surprise index back near recent cycle highs…

Source: Bloomberg

“This is not the disinflationary slowing economy you’re looking for…”

This sent rate-hike expectations spiking higher with around a 50% chance of two more rate-hikes holding into year-end…

Source: Bloomberg

And dragged Treasury yields higher across the curve (with the short-end underperforming – 2Y +17bps, 30Y +10bps) pushing them all notably higher on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

…smashing the yield curve (2s30s) back near pre-SVB lows – screaming recession and/or Fed policy error…

Source: Bloomberg

With 2Y Yields back up near cycle highs right before the SVB collapse…

Source: Bloomberg

The rise in yields this time smacked the long-duration tech stocks, and the ubiquitous rotation into value (banks helped by stress test results at the margin) occurred once again with Nasdaq the day’s biggest loser and Small Caps biggest gainer. The Dow and S&P managed gains…

AAPL was unable to get up to $3 trillion market cap once again (finding resistance at $190.00 today)…

The divergence between yields and the Growth/Value rotation remains extreme…

Source: Bloomberg

Overdone? Is it time for Value/Small Caps to outperform Growth/Nasdaq?

The dollar hit near 4-week highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin rallied today, extending its bounce of $30,000, helped by news that Fidelity is pitching a Spot Bitcoin ETF…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices managed modest gains, with WTI testing back above $70 – but unable to hold it…

Gold ended lower on the day but well off its spike lows (which tested down to near $1900 and bounced)…

Finally, we note that Nomura’s Charlie McElligott asked yesterday (reflecting oin the equity market meltup) – So what would it take to blow this thing out?  

His answer may well be worth paying attention to this morning…

Just spitballing…

Perhaps what is required (easier said than done!) is a proper “Correlation 1” event where the current dispersion wave reverses, especially if Grosses keep growing – potentially requiring some sort of AI crunch from the Long side (earnings expectations mania overshoots reality? – seems too early for that just yet)…

…or maybe from the Short-side, where US economic data does indeed see that aforementioned “animal spirits” trade and actually reaccelerates to such an extent that markets either begin adding-in fresh terminal rate…

…OR where heavily-short economically sensitives begin trading “early cycle” and get grabbed-into / painfully.squeezed.

No one was expecting that kind of ‘animal spirits’ growth? And The Fed can’t stand for that.

But could The Fed handle that kind of reversal?

The private office of billionaire Microsoft founder (and Jeffrey Epstein pal) Bill Gates put women through an extensive screening process which included sexually explicit questions in order to determine whether they might be vulnerable to blackmail, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Some female job candidates were asked whether they ever had extramarital affairs, what kind of pornography they preferred or if they had nude photographs of themselves on their phones, according to the candidates and people familiar with the hiring process. While it couldn’t be determined whether any men were asked such questions, none who spoke to The Wall Street Journal said they had.  

In some cases, female candidates were asked whether they had ever “danced for dollars,” while another says she was asked whether she had ever contracted an STD.

A spokeswoman for Gates said his private office, which outsourced the screening process to a security firm that boasts of having “several former CIA and FBI officials” on its staff, says it’s news to them.

“This line of questioning would be unacceptable and a violation of Gates Ventures’ agreement with the contractor,” she said.

The security firm, Concentric Advisors (the headquarters of which shares the same lakefront office park as Gates Ventures), conducted the screenings over the past several years. According to the report, the interviewers were “trying to find any information that had the potential to be used to compromise or blackmail individuals who would be working closely with one of the world’s richest men.”

According to employment attorneys and security consultants, the process described by the women could run afoul of state and federal employment discrimination laws – though for certain high-security government roles, such questions might have been more appropriate. Questions about illegal drug use could possibly violate the same laws, since they may reveal addition – considered a disability. Instead, they would be in the clear asking if a candidate is currently using illegal drugs, and/or obtain consent for a drug test.

According to Carol Miaskoff, legal counsel of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, questions about a candidate’s health or psychiatric history is “just flat out prohibited by the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.”

“There’s not a black letter law prohibition on asking questions related to sex,” she continued, adding that “getting the information and taking some adverse action with that information” such as rejecting them from the applicant pool could lay the basis for a legal challenge.

The Gates spokeswoman said Gates Ventures, which was previously known as bgC3, follows careful due diligence when hiring staff and that it works with contractors to perform industry-standard pre-employment screenings for men and women. She said it requires all vendors to operate in compliance with state and federal laws and regulations. -WSJ

Concentric CEO Mike LeFever (and his fleet of attorneys?) defended the company, telling the Journal that they provide industry-related background checks for hundreds of companies, and that their pre-employment screening process is identical for men and women, and complies with laws in each state and nation where they operate.

A spokesman for the company has also denied that they asked questions about sexual or medical histories, but that ‘such information can be volunteered by job candidates when asked about public records,’ (what?) and that the security screening involves “assessing a candidate’s truthfulness and vulnerability to blackmail, which often starts with voluntary statements by the candidate with follow-up questions by company interviewers.”

The job candidates say they’re lying, and that they were asked about sensitive information that they didn’t volunteer. They also said they were informed that the job offer was conditional on passing the assessments.

Concentric’s consent form also appears to be at odds with the company’s official position.

A consent form, reviewed by the Journal, said a behavioral assessment by a Concentric professional would be used to “assess suitability for employment” by Gates’s private office and would include drug and alcohol history as well as past medical and psychiatric history as it relates to the job. 

The form, requiring a signature from the job candidate, gave permission to disclose the results from the assessment to Gates’s private office, including “highly sensitive information,” and “does not allow for the re-disclosure of sexually transmitted diseases,” the document shows.  -WSJ

Concentric advertises itself as a risk-management firm that employs several former CIA and FBI officials on its staff, and has worked with private family offices for nearly two decades. They claim to be able to root out individuals with “potentially nefarious motives.”

And hey, they can probably root out who Bill can try and seduce without a condom too.