Month: October 2023

“The Bellwether Has Sounded”: Musk Says “Great Wakening From Woke Has Happened” After Southpark Nails Coffin

“The Bellwether Has Sounded”: Musk Says “Great Wakening From Woke Has Happened” After Southpark Nails Coffin

The backlash to woke culture – which is championed by annoying, politically correct, judgemental, authoritarian, censorious, hypocritical self-anointed masters of the universe – is reaching a crescendo.

Last week we noted how Disney punted it’s Snow White remake into 2025 as Southpark destroyed them for woke casting in general.

Also last week, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed an executive order eliminating ‘woke, anti-women words’ from state government use.

There’s even a “get woke go broke” ETF in the works, an ‘anti-woke AI chatbot‘, oh – and the fact that forcing woke trans culture down the throats of Bud Light consumers has killed the brand.

In short, corporations have realized that going woke is killing profits.

To that end, on Monday, Twitter owner Elon Musk declared “The great wakening from woke has happened,” which he says is “good for civilization.”

When asked if Southpark had been a factor, Musk replied: “It is the bellwether.”

The richest man in the world didn’t stop there! As Summit News notes:

Naturally, the woke crowd in the replies were not happy:

Reeeeee!

Musk has long spoken out against what he describes as “the woke mind virus,” but it appears he now believes the worm has turned.

Musk previously described wokeness as “one of he biggest threats to modern civilisation,” adding “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people… a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.”

Meanwhile, conservatives Right Said Fred are just too sexy to believe Musk…

 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 13:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/4NcKEIP Tyler Durden

Investing Rules To Navigate Volatile Markets

Investing Rules To Navigate Volatile Markets

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

While often difficult, investing rules can help us maintain our focus and investment discipline in volatile or uncertain markets. This year, such has certainly been the case with surging interest rates, expectations of a recession, and geopolitical conflicts in two countries. In times like this, it is easy for us to imagine the worst of possible outcomes. However, in last week’s newsletter, we discussed the “probabilities” and “possibilities” of macro outcomes. To wit:

“On Wednesday’s Real Investment Show, I spent a good bit of time discussing the normal distribution of events in the economy. The chart below is a normally distributed “bell curve” of potential events and outcomes. In simple terms, 68.26% of the time, normal outcomes occur. Economically speaking, such would be a normal recession or the avoidance of a recession. 95.44% of the time, we are most likely dealing with a range of outcomes between a fairly deep recession and normal economic growth rates. However, there is a 2.14% chance that we could see another economic crisis like the 2008 Financial Crisis.

But what about “economic armageddon?” An event where nothing matters but “gold, beanie weenies, and bunker.” is just a 0.14% possibility.”

While “fear sells,” we must assess the “probabilities” versus “possibilities” of various outcomes.

Poker is always an easy way to understand this concept.

If you were playing a hand of poker and were dealt a “pair of deuces,” would you go “all-in?”

Of course not.

The reason is you intuitively understand the other factors “at play.” Even a cursory understanding of the game of poker suggests other players at the table are probably holding better hands, which will rapidly reduce your wealth.

Investing in the financial markets is one of the purest forms of speculation. Every day, investors make bets on the future and must weigh the possibilities and probabilities of winning or losing. The size of the “bet” should ultimately be determined by the “potential loss” of being wrong.

Ultimately, investing is about managing those risks that will substantially reduce your ability to “stay in the game long enough” to “win.”

So, how do you navigate volatile markets and stay within the “probabilities” of outcomes when emotions run high? Here are ten basic investing rules that have historically kept investors out of trouble over the long term. These are not unique by any means but rather a list of investment rules that, in some shape or form, have been uttered by every great investor in history.

Investing Rule #1) You Are A “Saver” – Not An Investor

Unlike Warren Buffet, who takes control of a company and can affect its financial direction – you are speculating that a purchase of a share of stock today can be sold at a higher price in the future. Furthermore, you are doing this with your hard-earned savings. If you ask most people if they would bet their retirement savings on a hand of poker in Vegas, they would tell you “no.” When asked why, they will say they don’t have the skill to be successful at winning at poker. However, daily, these same individuals will buy shares of a company in which they have no knowledge of operations, revenue, profitability, or future viability simply because someone on television told them to do so.

Keeping the right frame of mind about the “risk” that is undertaken in a portfolio can help stem the tide of loss when things inevitably go wrong. Like any professional gambler – the secret to long-term success was best sung by Kenny Rogers; “You gotta know when to hold’em…know when to fold’em.”

Investing Rule #2) Don’t Forget The Income

An investment is an asset or item that will generate appreciation OR income in the future. Little diversification is left between asset classes in today’s highly correlated world. Markets rise and fall in unison as high-frequency trading and monetary flows push related asset classes in a singular direction. This is why including other asset classes, like fixed income, which provides a return of capital function with an income stream, can reduce portfolio volatility. Lower volatility portfolios will consistently outperform over the long term by reducing the emotional mistakes caused by large portfolio swings.

Investing Rule #3) You Can’t “Buy Low” If You Don’t “Sell High”

Most investors do fairly well at “buying” but stink at “selling.” The reason is purely emotional, driven primarily by “greed” and “fear.” Like pruning and weeding a garden, a solid discipline of regularly taking profits, selling laggards, and rebalancing the allocation leads to a healthier portfolio over time.

Most importantly, while you may “beat the market” with “paper profits” in the short term, it is only the realization of those gains that generate “spendable wealth.”

Investing Rule #4) Patience And Discipline Are What Wins

Most individuals will tell you they are “long-term investors.” However, as Dalbar studies have repeatedly shown, investors are driven more by emotions than not. The problem is that while individuals have the best of intentions of investing long-term, they ultimately allow “greed” to force them to chase last year’s hot performers. However, this has generally resulted in severe underperformance in the subsequent year as individuals sell at a loss and then repeat the process.

This is why truly great investors stick to their discipline in good times and bad. Over the long term – sticking to what you know and understand will perform better than continually jumping from the “frying pan into the fire.”

Investing Rule #5) Don’t Forget Rule No. 1

As any good poker player knows, you are out of the game once you run out of chips. This is why knowing both “when” and “how much” to bet is critical to winning the game. The problem for most investors is that they are consistently betting “all in, all of the time.”

Over time, the “fear” of missing out in a rising market leads to excessive risk buildup in portfolios. It also leads to a violation of the simple rule of “sell high.”

The reality is that opportunities to invest in the market come along as often as taxi cabs in New York City. However, trying to make up lost capital by not paying attention to the risk is a much more difficult thing to do, which brings us to Rule #6.

Investing Rule #6) Your Most Irreplaceable Commodity Is “Time.”

Since the turn of the century, investors have theoretically recovered from two massive bear market corrections. After 15 years, investors finally returned to where they were in 2000. Such is a hollow victory when considering that 15 years to prepare for retirement are gone. Permanently.

For investors, getting back to even is not an investment strategy. We are all “savers” with a limited amount of time to save money for our retirement. Those retirement plans were vaporized if we were 15 years from retirement in 2000. Could such an environment happen again? Absolutely. It is ultimately a function of valuations. Will it happen? No one knows.

Do not discount the value of “time” in your investment strategy.

Investing Rule #7) Don’t Mistake A “Cyclical Trend” As An “Infinite Direction.”

An old Wall Street axiom says the “trend is your friend.”  Unfortunately, investors repeatedly extrapolate the current trend into infinity. In 2007, the markets were expected to continue to grow as investors piled into the market top. In late 2008, individuals were convinced that the market was going to zero. Extremes are never the case. The same occurred at the bottom of the market in March 2020.

It is important to remember that the “trend is your friend.” That is, as long as you pay attention to it and respect its direction. Get on the wrong side of the trend; it can become your worst enemy.

Investing Rule #8) Success Breeds Over-Confidence

Individuals attend college to become doctors, lawyers, and even circus clowns. Yet, every day, individuals pile into one of the most complicated games on the planet with their hard-earned savings and little or no education.

When the markets are rising, most individuals’ success breeds confidence. The longer the market rises, the more individuals attribute their success to their own skills. The reality is that a rising market covers the multitude of investment mistakes individuals make by taking on excessive risk, poor asset selection, or weak management skills.  These errors are always revealed by the forthcoming correction.

Investing Rule #9) Being A Contrarian Is Tough, Lonely & Generally Right.

Howard Marks once wrote that:

“Resisting – and thereby achieving success as a contrarian – isn’t easy. Things combine to make it difficult; including natural herd tendencies and the pain imposed by being out of step, since momentum invariably makes pro-cyclical actions look correct for a while. (That’s why it’s essential to remember that ‘being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.’)

Given the uncertain nature of the future, and thus the difficulty of being confident your position is the right one – especially as price moves against you – it’s challenging to be a lonely contrarian.”

Historically, making the best investments occurs when going against the herd. Selling to the “greedy” and buying from the “fearful” are extremely difficult things to do without a very strong investment discipline, management protocol, and intestinal fortitude. For most investors, the reality is they are inundated by “media chatter.” That “noise” keeps them from making logical and intelligent investment decisions regarding their money, which, unfortunately, leads to bad outcomes.

Investing Rule #10) Comparison Is Your Worst Investment Enemy

The best thing you can do for your portfolio is to stop benchmarking against a random market index. That index has nothing to do with your goals, risk tolerance, or time horizon.

Comparison in the financial arena is the main reason clients have trouble patiently sitting on their hands, letting whatever process they are comfortable with work for them. Unfortunately, some comparison along the way causes investors to lose their focus.

It is pleasing to inform clients they made 12% on their account. However, if you inform them that ‘everyone else’ made 14%, you have upset them. As it is constructed now, the financial services industry intentionally upsets people, so they move money around in a frenzy. Money in motion creates fees and commissions.

Creating more benchmarks and style boxes is nothing more than creating more things to COMPARE to, allowing clients to stay in a perpetual state of outrage. The only benchmark that matters is the required annual return to obtain your future retirement goal. If that rate is 4%, then trying to obtain 6% more than doubles the risk you have to take to achieve that return. The end result of taking on more risk than necessary will cause you to deviate from your goals when something inevitably goes wrong.

It’s All In The Risk

Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury, changed the way I thought about risk when he wrote:

“As I think back over the years, I have been guided by four principles for decision making.  First, the only certainty is that there is no certainty.  Second, every decision, as a consequence, is a matter of weighing probabilities.  Third, despite uncertainty we must decide and we must act.  And lastly, we need to judge decisions not only on the results, but on how they were made.

Most people are in denial about uncertainty.  They assume they’re lucky, and that the unpredictable can be reliably forecast.  This keeps business brisk for palm readers, psychics, and stockbrokers, but it’s a terrible way to deal with uncertainty.  If there are no absolutes, then all decisions become matters of judging the probability of different outcomes, and the costs and benefits of each.  Then, on that basis, you can make a good decision.”

It should be obvious that an honest assessment of uncertainty leads to better decisions, but the benefits of Rubin’s approach go beyond that.  Although it may seem contradictory, embracing uncertainty reduces risk while denial increases it.  Another benefit of “acknowledged uncertainty” is it keeps you honest. A healthy respect for uncertainty and a focus on probabilities drives you never to be satisfied with your conclusions. It keeps you moving forward to seek more information, question conventional thinking, continually refine your judgments, and understand that certainty and likelihood can make all the difference.

The reality is that we can’t control outcomes; the most we can do is influence the probability of certain outcomes, which is why the day-to-day management of risks and investing based on probabilities rather than possibilities is important not only to capital preservation but to investment success over time.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 13:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/Qv1XAje Tyler Durden

“More Like A Train Wreck Than A Soft Landing” – Dallas Fed Services Sector Survey Slumps In October

“More Like A Train Wreck Than A Soft Landing” – Dallas Fed Services Sector Survey Slumps In October

Growth in Texas service sector activity stalled in October, according to business executives responding to the Texas Service Sector Outlook Survey.

The revenue index, a key measure of state service sector conditions, fell eight points to 0.7, with the near-zero reading suggesting little change in activity from September.

Perceptions of broader business conditions continued to worsen in October, as pessimism notably increased.

The general business activity index dropped from -8.6 to -18.2, its lowest level since December of last year, while the company outlook index fell to -12.8, its lowest level in 16 months. The outlook uncertainty index jumped from 14.8 to 23.0.

Source: Bloomberg

Labor market indicators pointed to no growth in employment and a largely stable workweek. The employment index fell from 2.7 to 0.1, its lowest level in seven months. The part-time employment index fell five points to -3.4, while the hours worked index declined from 3.0 to -1.3.

All-in-all, a shitshow.

The comments from respondents were mixed with some seeing growth or hoping for it, but the following quotes should clarify just how most feel…

  • Overall activity is still stagnant due to overall economic conditions, uncertainty and interest rates.

  • Financial challenges remain. Access to capital will continue to limit growth in some sectors. Cash management has taken on a whole new meaning.

  • The economy seems to be steeply going down in the US and major global regions we serve, Europe, China and Asia.

  • For our engineering services, 2024 is projected to be a recession year.

  • The commercial real estate market really seems frozen in some ways. Financing is hard and deals don’t pencil at these rates.

  • We have seen our restaurant business suffer as some of our long-term customers have shut down facilities.

  • We are seeing an abnormal decrease in overall business activity that started in September and has continued into October.

  • People are nervous and not spending money, like in early spring. They are making choices, and we can see them holding back.

  • The downstream effects of overspending and the ripple effect to interest rates and inflation are having a negative impact on business. Decisions from prospects for new purchases are delayed, and current customers’ budgets are under intense scrutiny to continue purchases.

  • The geopolitical climate has increased uncertainty for the economy. Liquidity continues to be challenging. Interest expense is the single major expense facing lenders and borrowers.

  • Rapid increases in interest rates have frozen debt markets, meaning we cannot refinance properties. We are feeling the pain.

  • Something must give. Interest rates, a tightening of capital access, increasing geopolitical turmoil and more all add up to problematic conditions.

  • People are stuck where they are, not buying cars, houses, appliances, etc.

  • Headwinds are mounting. Interest expense due to floating rate credit, continuing increases in both labor and input costs, unsustainable construction costs and a softening economy are finally going to bring growth to a halt and likely result in a step back in GDP.

  • We are starting to see meaningful decreases in consumer spending.

  • We are hearing more businesses are having problems.

Finally, there was this comment that seemed to sum things up very well…

The general level of activity in the real estate market continues to slow while the 10-year rate continues to climb.

Higher interest rates have stifled this market, and we are afraid the worst is yet to come. Refinancing existing debt will be challenging due to the 500-600-basis-point increase in rates and the fact that regional banks are not lending. Most owners will not have the additional equity required to refinance their debt.

On the purchase and sale side of the market, we still have a re-pricing issue that needs to be resolved between sellers and buyers before assets can trade.

We are all trying to find something positive in this marketplace, but it is just not there.

This is looking more and more like a train wreck instead of a soft landing.

But, but, but Bidenomics?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 12:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/Kr6JCon Tyler Durden

Six Scary Charts – Happy Halloween From Bond Vigilantes!

Six Scary Charts – Happy Halloween From Bond Vigilantes!

Authored by Andrew Eve via BondVigilantes.com,

It’s Halloween again and time for the Bond Vigilantes’ yearly round up of the spookiest charts in global finance.

With persistent levels of inflation and increasing signs of weakness in the global economy, 2023 has been a scary year for everyone. Turning our focus to markets, the effect of higher financing costs following central banks’ aggressive tightening of monetary policy has meant we have found no shortage of scary charts either.

Happy Halloween!

1. Duration can be scary

Source: Bloomberg, M&G, Swiss Re/Jack Farley (October 2023)

With the release of pent-up demand following lockdowns, and with excess money in the economy as a result of stimulative monetary and fiscal policy during that period, the past few years have seen inflation make a comeback. As markets have repriced their inflation expectations and as central banks have aggressively increased interest rates, investors in longer-dated bonds have had a sharp reminder that duration can be scary.

Bonds with higher duration leave investors exposed for longer to the risk of inflation eroding the real value of their investment, which is why they tend to suffer in such environments. This chart really puts the moves in bonds since the pandemic into perspective: the total drawdown in long-duration US Treasury bonds now exceeds the peak-to-trough stock market crash seen in the Great Financial Crisis.

2. Will Uncle Sam be able to pay his bill before nightfall?

Source: Bloomberg, M&G (June 2023)

Uncle Sam has a big bill to pay. The combination of significant borrowing during the pandemic, together with the rise in interest rates means that debt interest payments have been rising fast for the US government. Annual interest payments look like they will soon hit $1 trillion, and likely rise even further as maturing debt will need to be refinanced at higher rates. In fact, total interest payments for the US have now reached the same level as their total debt in 1980!

There is a risk that rising Treasury bond supply and higher leverage will spook investors: perhaps the recent US downgrade by Fitch will not be the last. While default is highly unlikely, the increasing risk of US Treasuries is likely to be manifested primarily at the long end of the curve as market participants demand a higher term premium.

3. Midnight approaches following curve inversion

Source: Bloomberg, Citi Velocity, M&G (October 2023)

The inversion of the US Treasury curve is a well-known signal that a recession is on the way. For many decades, a recession has always followed in the months following inversion. An inverted yield curve refers to the situation when short-term yields are higher than long-term yields, indicating that investors are repositioning into longer-dated bonds and suggesting market pessimism on near-term economic prospects.

But a closer look at the chart above reveals that it is in fact when the curve starts to steepen again following an inversion that recession usually strikes. With the 2s10s curve (10 year yield minus 2 year yield) having just started to steepen, is midnight nearly upon us?

4. Will higher financing costs bite high yield issuers?

Source: Bloomberg, BofA Merrill Lynch, M&G (August 2023)

We are now 18 months into the hiking cycles of most central banks. Despite this, credit valuations have remained resilient, even within high yield bonds. The (option-adjusted) spread of the Global High Yield index has now fallen to the low 400s (bps), leaving it at close to its tightest levels since the Great Financial Crisis.

No doubt high yield credit spreads have been helped thus far by demand from yield-hungry investors, and also tighter supply of high yield bonds: high yield issuers have refrained from refinancing where they can in light of higher funding costs.

But, with many companies having put refinancing off for some time now, maturity walls are closing in: nearly 10% of high yield issuers face refinancing risk in the next two years. This is likely to become the largest refinancing effort for HY issuers since the GFC.

5. Sharks lurking beneath the inflationary waters

Source: M&G, Bloomberg (September 2023)

Inflation usually comes in waves. This is perhaps because it tends to cause issues that governments and central banks try to resolve with expansionary policies.

For example, back in the 70s we had two big waves of inflation before then-Fed Chair Volker finally managed to put the inflation genie back in the bottle. With inflation dynamics looking similar to the ones we experienced in the 70s, there is a risk that inflation could make a comeback.

6. Real rates are back into positively scary territory

Source: M&G, Bloomberg (31 August 2023)

The risk of recession is increasing. One of the key indicators we follow is the real rate, which we have defined in the chart above as the central bank rate minus core inflation. In the US, a real rate above 3% has traditionally been a precursor to recessions.

Real rates have been rising significantly over recent months and, following central banks’ tightening of monetary policy, now sit comfortably within positive territory. On a year-on-year basis, real rates are now approaching 2%. Looking at more recent inflation dynamics, however, real rates just crossed the 3% mark.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 12:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/d28szuW Tyler Durden

“Biggest Blunder In The History Of The Treasury” – Druck Dunks On Yellen (& Her Husband Appears To Agree)

“Biggest Blunder In The History Of The Treasury” – Druck Dunks On Yellen (& Her Husband Appears To Agree)

Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller pulled no punches during a fireside chat with legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones at a recent Robin Hood Foundation event, slamming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

In his view, Yellen made the worst mistake in the history of the Treasury, by not issuing more long-dated government bonds before the Fed began hiking rates early last year. And that, Druck believes has helped pave the way for a debt disaster.

“When rates were practically zero, every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mary in the United States refinanced their mortgage,” Druckenmiller said.

“Unfortunately we had one entity that did not, and that was the US Treasury.”

“Janet Yellen — I guess because political myopia, whatever — was issuing two years at 15 basis points when she could have issued 10 years at 70 basis points or 30 years at 180 basis points,” Druckenmiller continued.

But he wasn’t done, making it clear the scale of the problem she has created:

“I literally think if you go back to Alexander Hamilton, it was the biggest blunder in the history of the Treasury. I have no idea why she’s not been called out on this, she has no right to still be in that job after that,” Druckenmiller said.

Who could have seen that coming?

“Every caddy I knew, every locker-room person, everybody in America was refinancing their mortgages, every corporation was extending their debt,” he added.

One look at the market’s perception of USA’s sovereign credit risk tells you all you need to know about Yellen and her inane sponsorship of Bidenomics… wrecking America’s financial situation – evidenced by UST yields are rising along with USA sovereign risk’s sudden surge…

And it’s not going to get any better…

“The politicians that are telling you and think they’re not going to cut entitlements, it’s just an outright lie, the numbers absolutely don’t work, it’s a fantasy,” he said.

“Honestly, I think the math has gone crazy.”

Watch the full discussion here:

And, as Rabobank’s Michael Every noted, it appears Yellen is at it again based on yesterday’s announcement on Treasury’s borrowing target (and the make-up of that debt issuance being more bill-based once again)

Yes, more bill issuance might take upwards pressure off longer-dated bond yields.

However, Yellen would be doing it to splurge on spending over the next 12 months to try to ensure she stays in the job for another 62.

In which case, US GDP growth will keep looking like it did in Q3, as will inflation, and the Fed may have to act again, raising both T-bill rates and Treasury bond yields.

Worse still for the softly-spoken Ivory-Tower dweller, her own husband – Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof – pointed out in June 2020 how the economic profession’s descent into irrelevance is highlighted by its failure to predict the Great Financial Crisis…

As Professor Akerlof observes:

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, economists asked the question why no one had predicted it, at least exactly as it happened. Rajan (2011) said that such a prediction had not been made since it would have required detailed knowledge of theory and institutions in the disparate specialties of finance, real estate and macroeconomics…

There were incentives to present the key pieces of the puzzle, but none to put them together.

Following Caballero (2010), regarding theory, a model with all the pieces could not have been published; it would have been considered too far from precise, simple ideas (such as those that motivate simple new Keynesian or DSGE models); and, in this way, too Soft to merit publication.

Interestingly, the Economics profession also shunned individuals who did put the key pieces together and predicted the crisis in papers published by the BIS.

The lack of a mathematical model made it easy to dismiss these papers too.

Professor Akerlof goes on to explain how the preoccupation with math effectively blocks the Economics profession from understanding financial crises.

Suppose the paradigm not only describes the subject matter of the field; suppose it also describes the field’s appropriate methodology. In this case, observations that contradict the existing paradigm will be dismissed if they violate the prescribed methodology. The Hardness police will rule them out, as inadmissible evidence.

Shorter, if you cannot express it with a mathematical equation, Economists aren’t interested…

(h/t: @MI_Investments)

Not exactly resounding support for his wife’s profession… or ability to forecast anything at all.

Remember this beauty from 2017…

Damn it, Janet!

In light of Druckenmiller’s (and PTJ’s) views on Yellen’s uselessness inability to do her job well, they both appear to think owning more gold and bitcoin makes sense…

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 12:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/6KMl4x7 Tyler Durden

Tennessee to Pay $125,000 to Settle Lawsuit by Man Arrested for Posting Meme Mocking Dead Cop


joshua garton | Illustration: Lex Villena | Reason

The state of Tennessee will pay $125,000 to settle a First Amendment lawsuit filed by a man who was arrested and jailed for nearly two weeks for posting a meme mocking a dead police officer.

Joshua Garton, 29, was arrested in January of 2021 and charged with harassment following a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) probe into a pseudonymous Facebook post that appeared to show two men urinating on the tombstone of an officer who was shot and killed in 2018. A judge dismissed the charges a month later, and Garton filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution, false arrest, and First Amendment retaliation.

In a settlement agreement filed earlier this month, two TBI agents and 23rd District Attorney General Ray Crouch did not admit any guilt, but they agreed to pay Garton to avoid further litigation costs.

“First Amendment retaliation is illegal, and law enforcement officials who arrest people for offending them will pay heavy consequences,” Daniel Horwitz, Garton’s lead attorney, said in a press release issued Monday. “Misbehaving government officials apologize with money, and Mr. Garton considers more than $10,000 per day that he was illegally incarcerated to be an acceptable apology.”

The TBI, Tennessee’s lead investigative law enforcement agency, launched an investigation into the offending Facebook post at the request of 23rd District Attorney Ray Crouch. Agents visited the officer’s gravesite and quickly surmised that the picture Garton posted was fake. It was in fact a doctored photo of the cover of “Pissing on Your Grave,” a single by The Rites, which originally depicted two men urinating on the tombstone of punk legend GG Allin.

Despite knowing that no one had physically desecrated the grave, the TBI continued its investigation, soliciting tips on Twitter about Garton’s identity. When it finally nabbed Garton, TBI put out a press release, complete with mugshot, announcing his arrest for “manufacturing and disseminating a harassing photograph on social media.”

As Reason wrote when Garton was first arrested, it was unclear how a dead person could be criminally harassed under Tennessee law, which requires that the subject be “frightened, intimidated or emotionally distressed.”

Nevertheless, Garton was held on a $76,000 bond and spent nearly two weeks in jail. In February of 2021, a judge dismissed the case against Garton, finding no evidence of harassment. According to his lawsuit, Garton suffers from mental illness and became homeless as a result of being jailed.

The First Amendment firmly protects offensive and distasteful speech from government retaliation. For example, last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Ohio sheriff’s deputies didn’t have probable cause to arrest a man for hurling vulgarities at them and wearing a t-shirt that said “fuck the police.” In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down a Houston ordinance prohibiting verbal abuse of police officers, declaring that “the freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”

Yet Garton’s lawsuit uncovered Tennessee enforcement’s cavalier attitude toward the First Amendment. “He has a right to post. That doesn’t mean there are no consequences,” Dickson Police Captain Donald Arnold wrote in one of several text messages included as exhibits in Garton’s suit.

According to other records released in Garton’s lawsuit, it also led to a flood of angry callers at all of the agencies involved. The director of the TBI, David Rausch, compared the callers to supporters of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.

“The trolls will do what trolls do,” Rausch wrote in one text. “It appears they and the lawyers forget that there are surviving family members who have rights as well. My assessment is these are the same folks who called the insurrection at the Capitol free speech.”

Garton’s lawsuit also claims that law enforcement tracked calls criticizing them for Garton’s arrest and in at least one instance decided to “try to pin down who [the caller was] so we can ask the local police and maybe have them go out there and ask him to stop.”

Disappointment and reality seemed to set in once a judge dismissed the criminal charge against Garton.

“We are finished,” one TBI agent wrote in another text. “The judge dismissed the case, said nobody was victimized.”

“That is not good,” Rausch texted.

The TBI and Crouch did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The post Tennessee to Pay $125,000 to Settle Lawsuit by Man Arrested for Posting Meme Mocking Dead Cop appeared first on Reason.com.

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The ‘Technopolitics’ of Cody Wilson


Cody Wilson firing a homemade gun | Bob Daemmrich/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

What does Cody Wilson—the founder of Defense Distributed, the company responsible for the world’s first 3D-printed gun—really want? And how close is he to achieving it? That’s the subject of filmmaker Jessica Solce’s new feature documentary Death Athletic: A Dissident Architecture. Solce followed Wilson for seven years as he grew the world’s most famous DIY gun company, prevented multiple lawsuits from shutting it down, faced his own personal legal troubles around a sex case, and established himself as the leading voice and practitioner of crypto-anarchism.

Watch the video above, and a condensed transcript is below.

Reason: What first got you interested in Cody Wilson?

Jessica Solce: I wanted to explore the mischief. I wanted to explore the motivations, the ideals, the ethics, and morals, which is something that nobody had really tapped into, and see where the film would go but not not really knowing how long that would take. I mean, unconsciously, I knew that this was going to be a long journey, but I don’t think anyone consciously sets them up for such a long journey because that’s a difficult pill to swallow.

But I wanted to create something that was, you could say, a historical moment… So that turned into an obsession of watching the story unravel.

Reason: You mentioned some of the mischief. That’s really one of the defining characteristics of Cody’s persona: a mischievous prankster. So what is the role of trolling for Cody Wilson in achieving his political objectives?

Solce: Perhaps at the beginning of his career, we could say he was more, I think, a literal troll filled with mischief and uncertainty of where things would go. But that…turned into trolling bigger marks, right? And learning the power of the symbolic, turning that into something that was real…in the court system that had a very strong ability to kind of change not only law, but change the principles of how things were going to be described and organized as First Amendment and Second Amendment issues.

So, yeah, trolling is I think is still…a strong part of what Cody does. But he doesn’t do it effortlessly or without forethought or without knowing where he’s going with it. There’s meat behind what he’s doing.

Reason: I want to talk a little bit about what those objectives are, what lights you shine on that with this documentary. There’s one part where he talks about himself in Silicon Valley terms as a “disruptor.” He rose to fame as the 3D-printed gun guy. But this clearly is not just about making guns because guns are fun and cool or hunting or even just self-defense. What is your larger understanding of Cody’s objectives?

Solce: It’s technopolitics in action. It’s what most people don’t understand or report on. It’s really forcing processes of democratic solutions on two stages where most people have huge debates and issues. So specifically the gun, it’s releasing it on the Internet. Once it’s there, as we all know, it can’t be taken off. It’s kind of like the democratic distribution of information.

And from there, the statement becomes one of not just anarchy, but of who gets to control. So it’s a demonstration of the inability of governments in this digital age to actually have utility and their idea of controlling and surveilling everything. We see this in all digital technologies from computers to bitcoin to anything in the crypto space.

Reason: The term that you’ve used a couple times: technopolitics. What you mean by that is that there are these technical realities, and at some point, the state has a technical advantage, and at other points you can suppress or undermine that technical advantage? Is there anything else that you want to add to the understanding of technopolitics?

Solce: Sure. I think technopolitics is also the idea that technology is outpacing politics. There is technology that can be critical and force politics. It forces politics that are kind of aged and ancient and not caught up in this time frame of the digital world to catch up. And in doing so, it slows the pace of control and surveillance.

Reason: There’s another part of the documentary that reminds me of what you’re talking about right now, where Cody talks about the gun as a way to express your political will, as an alternative way to vote.

Solce: What I’ve probably come to realize far more is that the threat of guns is actually more, quote-unquote, “dangerous” to governments than the actual having of them, because they’re everywhere in the U.S. The fact that we have these debates and conversations of just taking little parts off of guns and everything when there are like hundreds of millions and lots of people know how to make these little pieces that they’re trying to outlaw… So I think definitely what changed over these last ten years regarding the politics of guns was how ineffective [gun control laws] actually are and how they don’t really reflect a large majority of the people they’re trying to govern, if you will.

Reason: I know that behind the Defense Distributed headquarters, they’ve got a little plaque that has “gun control” emblazoned on it. So that’s their idea: Gun control is dead… Guns are so tied to American political culture. But of course, they have political use outside of our borders. And you had a whole segment that was devoted to that idea.

Solce: This film is important in kind of locking in the historical moment because there’s still so many people that I speak to that still think Cody sold physical guns.

A lot of things Cody was doing at the beginning were, you know, performance art in a way. They were symbolic. They were they were to really get people riled up and understand that we are entering a new era of digital performance, if you will.

There was a lot of other creators, engineers, makers that started putting their creations online in a far more visible fashion.

And even though it’s still a pretty niche environment, it definitely has exploded with different groups and different kind of known figures and YouTube channels. And we’ll see how long those channels stay up.

Reason: In the middle of your making this documentary, Cody was busted for sex with an underage girl on an adults-only app. What was that experience like from a documentary director’s perspective?

Solce: It was it was very rough and trying. It’s a strange moment when you work with and are allowed into someone’s life for such an extensive period of time and you’re building trust and something horrible happens and you have to figure out where you yourself stand, what information that you can gather, and also needing to do your job and get things on film and trying to figure out, specifically for me because I’m always creating in the terms of I’m not putting myself into this film. It’s not about my opinions. It’s about really trying to capture as unadulterated a moment as possible. So, not feeling like a vulture. It was a very intense moment.

Reason: What was your point of view on that?

Solce: If Cody had been searching out, specifically, a minor, Cody will be in jail right now. Period.… It was obvious that there were lies.

And you can have, as a person, issues with prostitution. You can have issues with the idea of sugar babies. You can have issues with, you know, extreme differences of ages, etc. But if the intent was not to, you know, search out a minor and it was proved, then, you know, at one point people have to take responsibility for what is happening.

And I personally and definitely believe that if the situation was different, and if the young lady did not have such an extensive history, [prosecutors] would have pushed harder.

This was not, I think, the clean-cut case that maybe the government officials were hoping for.

Reason: I notice there are several points where Cody talks about the mental and physical toll that constant battles with the government have taken.

As somebody who spent a lot of time with him, what do you think motivates him on a personal level to take on that kind of burden?

Solce: I mean, I think that’s just part of who he is. I think he loves a challenge.

In 2015, the Ghost Gunner had come out. He’s tasting the first moments of his payment services dropping him, of losing money. He’s getting legal issues, credit cards, banks. It’s coming at him from all angles.

But there’s definitely a part of him that, although the challenge is hyper-destructive to your cortisol levels at minimum, he loves it. At the same time, I think people that live this kind of life of really challenging any kind of government or control or building new things, they have to, I think, actually like it.

Reason: He talks about this doomed historical figure, James Fannin [a soldier who was massacred during the Texas Revolution]. It’s a pretty hair-raising bit to me because it makes me seriously wonder, does Cody want to be a martyr? What do you think?

Solce: I do absolutely think he wants to be remembered. But he doesn’t want to be a martyr. He wants to be the winner. So two very, very different things. But I think that moment in that film, he’s definitely in a place where he realizes that all his work might end up being just him being scalped, if you will.

Reason: I have interviewed Cody several times, and it’s always fascinating, but he can come across as fairly, I think, enigmatic. He sometimes speaks in riddles or highly theoretical terms. You spend so much time with them. You met his parents. What are your impressions of him as a real person? 

Solce: He is that person. Cody is constantly reading and absorbing. He’s he’s thinking in terms of philosophy and history. It is his jam. This is his motivation. He loves all these parallels that can be created in today’s society versus past fights, past wars, past ideas. So Cody, I think, actually correctly represents himself when he speaks in these high philosophical terms.

Reason: And why do you think that that type of personality has been able to drive this project forward so successfully?

Solce: He’s extremely charismatic and doesn’t shy away from a challenge. Anyone creating something in this space not only has to be smart, that definitely helps, but they have to understand the game and then they have to understand how to play it. They have to both be entertaining and quote-unquote, “correct” in the form of your motivations and possibly the law, which he does.

So the majority of things are instigation to the law, and that’s why he keeps being in the main frame. It’s constantly being on top of what is happening in the moment, like GAT GPT [a customized AI chatbot recently released by Defense Distributed], and also skidding across everything that’s in between legal and non-legal. So he understands the terms of how to get a message into the mainstream.

And this is all very centered to who he is as a person. So I think that’s why it’s so successful. And to have anyone follow you, especially from the beginning, and not even just follow, but work with you or get behind these like kind of intense and possibly very dangerous principles that could get you in trouble, you have to have a level of, I guess, charismatic integrity.

And you can dislike Cody, but from the very beginning, he has not changed the principles that have motivated him. And that is what I hope the film also captures, but in far more in depth than what anyone else has seen.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

Photo Credit: CHUCK KENNEDY/MCT/Newscom; Defense Distributed.
Music Credit: “That Sound,” by Oliver Michael via Artlist.

The post The 'Technopolitics' of Cody Wilson appeared first on Reason.com.

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Daniel Radcliffe Gets To Be an Auctioneer, Thanks to Licensing Reform


Daniel Radcliffe smiling | NDZ/starmaxinc.com/Newscom

The Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along has attracted rave reviews and rewritten the musical’s former status as a commercial flop. But without some recent changes to New York City licensing laws, the performance I saw could have triggered huge fines for the show’s star, Daniel Radcliffe.

In the last few months of the year, casts often raise money after the final curtain call for Broadway Cares, an AIDS charity. After the show I attended in late October, this took the surprising form of an auction. Radcliffe, the former Harry Potter star and the new Merrily lead, returned to the stage and prompted audience members to place dozens of live bids for a signed prop from the musical’s off-Broadway run. The winner paid $1,600.

Until last year, that simple bit of fundraising would have been illegal without a special permission slip from the city’s government. Without an auctioneer’s license, he would have faced fines of hundreds of dollars.

New York City no longer licenses auctioneers, thanks to Local Law 80, which took effect in June 2022. The law repealed many restrictions on small businesses, including not just the mandatory licensing for auctioneers (in place since the 1980s) but licenses for amusement arcades and laundries.

Auctioneering still requires a license in 27 states and the District of Columbia (alongside countless municipalities). According to License to Work, a nationwide report by my employer, the public interest law firm the Institute for Justice, it can cost up to $800 in fees and more than a year of unpaid apprenticeship experience and coursework to secure one of those licenses. Since 2017, nine states have doubled down by increasing the cost, time, or other burdens for aspiring auctioneers.

That’s just one of many professions where licensing requirements can be both nonsensical and extreme. The Institute for Justice study reviewed 102 blue-collar and/or lower-income occupations and found that these permission slips to work require, on average, nearly a year of education and experience, at least one exam, and $295 in fees. That’s a lot of time and money spent earning a license instead of earning a living, especially for lower-income workers—and that doesn’t include hidden costs, such as tuition for the required schooling.

Many jobs that pose little risk require a lot of training. Indeed, 71 occupations in the study require more training than entry-level emergency medical technicians. On average, EMTs need about 36 days’ worth of training, as opposed to 342 days for cosmetologists. And 88 percent of the occupations included in the report are unlicensed by at least one state—and 14 have been delicensed by at least one state—suggesting these jobs can be done safely without a license.

Proponents of licensing say it’s necessary to protect consumers. But even the fiercest defenders of NYC’s former auctioneering regime acknowledge that no similar regulations exist in comparable cities such as London or Hong Kong. And the end of New York’s auctioneering licensing scheme did not usher in chaos. A spokesperson for Christie’s, one of the industry’s leaders, told The Art Newspaper last year that the auction house maintains its own ethical standards and would simply “continue to operate as we have been.” If there are already adequate private sector norms and ethical standards, there’s no need for a government licensing scheme.

Plenty of other laws already govern sales transactions, guarding against fraud. Licensing has little to do with protecting consumers; instead, it mostly shields existing businesses from competition by blocking new entrants to the market.

Merrily is about the obstacles people face on the long road to success. That road is even longer and bumpier when the government adds extra challenges. Thankfully, New Yorkers—and visiting Brits, like Radcliffe—are now free to conduct auctions like Merrily‘s fundraiser without fear of government retribution.

The post Daniel Radcliffe Gets To Be an Auctioneer, Thanks to Licensing Reform appeared first on Reason.com.

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Bitcoin White-Paper Turns 15 As Satoshi Nakamoto’s Legacy Lives On

Bitcoin White-Paper Turns 15 As Satoshi Nakamoto’s Legacy Lives On

Authored by Brayden Lindrea via CoinTelegraph.com,

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” Satoshi wrote in an Oct. 31 email in 2008…

Today marks 15 years since the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, shared the Bitcoin white paper to a mailing list of cryptographers on Oct. 31, 2008 — a date also annually celebrated as Halloween.

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” Satoshi famously said in the opening sentence before linking the document titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

Satoshi’s email notifying other cypherpunks about their release of the Bitcoin white paper. Source: Satoshi Nakamoto Institute

The white paper proposed a decentralized system that could facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, which could solve the “double spending” problem often associated with digital currency.

It proposed to achieve this via a network of nodes to validate and record transactions through a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, launching just two months later on Jan. 3, 2009.

How Bitcoin was brought to life

Satoshi’s computer science breakthrough came on the back of other impressive developments in the cryptography and e-money spaces.

The first reference cited in the Bitcoin white paper is Wei Dai’s invention of B-money, an electronic peer-to-peer cash system that never launched but nonetheless played a key role in Satoshi’s plans for Bitcoin.

Like Bitcoin, B-money proposed that participants in the system maintain a database of account balances, which keep track of the ownership of money. Transactions would be initiated and completed by a broadcast message to all participants, which would update the account balances of those involved in a specific transaction.

In many ways, it could be seen as a precursor to the nodes of Bitcoin’s protocol, which keep a record of the constantly growing blockchain.

This process requires proof-of-work, a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.

Satoshi implemented this into Bitcoin, citing Adam Back’s invention of Hashcash in 1997, which incorporated proof-of-work to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks.

Timestamps are another core property of Bitcoin, which was successfully implemented by Satoshi.

Bitcoin’s timestamp server works by taking a hash — akin to a unique serial number — of a block of transactions and timestamping it when the block is added to Bitcoin’s blockchain.

The hashes cryptographically link one block to the next, ensuring the integrity of Bitcoin data. Timestamps also prevent double spending on Bitcoin, making the network tamper-proof and immutable.

Satoshi cited work from Henri Massias, Scott Stornetta, Stuart Haber and Dave Bayer in implementing timestamping into Bitcoin’s protocol.

Meanwhile, Merkle trees were implemented into Bitcoin to verify transaction data through digital signatures. Satoshi cited Ralph Merkle’s work on developing public-key cryptosystems.

Bitcoin advocate and cyperphunk Jameson Lopp previously told Cointelegraph that credit should be given to the preliminary projects that paved the way for Bitcoin.

However, the genius in Satoshi was the puzzling of all these pieces into a fully functional system, said Lopp:

“There’s no single piece of the puzzle that I think is more important than the others. Nakamoto’s genius was not any of the individual components of Bitcoin, but rather the intricate way in which they fit together to breathe life into the system.”

What Bitcoin did

Bitcoin was, at the time, one of the first inventions to use cryptography to successfully separate money from the state. Satoshi’s invention enabled users to effectively bypass banks and financial institutions to transact with others — all around the world.

The first real-world transaction paid for in Bitcoin came from Laszlo Hanyecz in May 2010, who bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.

Mainstream media highlighted Bitcoin’s increased use by criminals to launder funds, among other things, in the early days, but that narrative has continued to change.

It has become increasingly adopted around the globe. It was made legal tender in El Salvador in September 2021.

Financial institutions have also recently applied to offer spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States, while others have launched their own Bitcoin ETFs in Europe.

Several developments have been implemented to help Bitcoin scale and bring more use cases to the network.

The Lightning network was launched in 2018 to increase Bitcoin’s transaction speed by taking computation off-chain.

Nonfungible token-like Ordinals were launched on Bitcoin in January, which was made possible by the Taproot soft fork in November 2021.

Bitcoin’s price has also been on a wild ride.

Starting out as cheap as a penny in 2009, BTC has endured several bull and bust cycles, with its price volatility swinging as large as 88% in some instances.

Bitcoin’s price since Aug 2010. Source: Bloomberg

BTC is currently priced at $34,350, down 50% from its all-time high price of $69,000 on Nov. 10, 2021.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 11:40

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Bills On Israel, Ukraine ‘Dead On Arrival’ In Both House And Senate As Shutdown, Funding Battles Gear Up

Bills On Israel, Ukraine ‘Dead On Arrival’ In Both House And Senate As Shutdown, Funding Battles Gear Up

As the nation celebrates Halloween, the House and Senate are engaged in some spooky late-stage Republic chaos over aid to Israel and Ukraine amid a backdrop of yet another government shutdown looming in two weeks.

House Speaker Mike Johnson

In short,

  • The government will run out of money (again) in roughly two weeks, requiring Congress to act (again).
  • According to Democrats and GOP Neocons such as Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, America needs to send billions of taxpayer funds to both Israel and Ukraine, and won’t consider any legislation that doesn’t combine the two.
  • House Republicans under newly minted Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), as well as a group of Senate Republicans, want Israel aid separated from Ukraine aid, while the Biden White House wants to jam a $105 billion foreign aid package ($14B to Israel, $60B to Ukraine) through Congress.
  • The House’s plan (if they can even pass it) to separate Israel aid from Ukraine aid is DOA in the Senate, while both the Senate’s combined package and the Biden admin’s package is DOA in the House.
  • The House and the Senate also need to pass 12 appropriations measures for 2024, or face a 1% across-the-board cut on defense and nondefense spending, per the debt ceiling bill passed earlier this year.

While Johnson is hoping to push this through in a Thursday vote in the House (with no guarantee it’ll pass), Senate Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) – who love war and defending foreign borders, are a no-go, with Schumer calling it “insulting.”

As previously noted, while McConnell and other Senate neocons are in lockstep with Schumer and the Democrats over a massive funding package, a group of GOP Senators led by Roger Marshall (R-KS) have introduced legislation to provide a similar $14.3 billion in aid to Israel without Ukraine funding.

“If Democrats want [Ukraine aid] so badly, then shouldn’t Republicans get one of our priorities in a trade?” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) in a statement to Punchbowl News. “We shouldn’t just roll over and give Democrats everything they want, especially when it divides our conference so starkly.“

More via Punchbowl:

Vance said McConnell should force Democrats to accept policy changes at the southern border, before giving them enough GOP votes to pass a massive aid package for Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. Many other Republicans agree with Vance. The White House’s request asks for more border security funding, but Republicans see this as a ruse. And Democrats say policy changes are a non-starter.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has long called to offset new federal spending, praised the House’s approach to Israel aid and said anything else is “dead on arrival” in the Senate. Paul also called out McConnell by name, saying his fellow Kentucky Republican should simply accede to the House’s proposal.

“If Sen. McConnell thinks he’s going to pass a $100 billion conglomeration — what Biden wants — there’s no way it passes the House. Sen. McConnell’s not unaware of the way the House works,” Paul told us. “It’s a very precarious position the speaker is in. I think that’s all he can get through.”

There are some practical challenges tied to what Vance and Paul are pushing for. For one, a standalone Israel bill with offsets is a no-go for the Democratic-led Senate.

Meanwhile…

House Republicans are scrambling to pass 12 appropriations measures under Johnson, as they seek to stave off the impending shutdown and carve out deeper cuts on government spending. According to The Hill, GOP negotiators under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had negotiated cuts the top-line level for the party’s government funding to $1.471 trillion earlier this year as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), however an intraparty compromise was later reached for $1.526 trillion as tensions simmered.

Passage of the bills would set up negotiations with the Senate, which faces its own challenges in regards to the 12 appropriations measures.

The House swiftly approved its first funding bill in weeks just days ago after the chamber reopened under Johnson, who won the gavel less than a week ago. The sprawling partisan energy plan is just one of eight bills that Republicans hope to pass out of the House by Nov. 17, when government funding is set to expire.

…

The party previously hoped to pass their 12 annual government funding bills during the summer, but those efforts fell short as then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) struggled to unify the party behind those bills amid calls for deeper cuts from conservatives. –The Hill

Shutdown imminent?

Congress has until Nov. 17 to pass yet more legislation to keep the lights on or risk a shutdown. The most likely course of action is that members on both sides of the aisle will pass a(nother) short-term funding bill at 2022 levels, which will buy time for more spending talks.

1% penalty

As The Hill further notes, part of the debt ceiling bill passed earlier this year includes a provision that if Congress crosses into 2024 without having passed its 12 funding bills, there will be a 1% cut across-the-board on defense and nondefense spending, which will take effect in April.

So, a total shitshow.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/31/2023 – 11:20

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