Snow Roaches? US State-Sponsored News Exec On Paid Leave Over Anti-White Social Media Posts
The United States Agency for Global Media – a state sponsored news operation, has placed a top executive on leave after he referred to white people as “snow roaches” on social media.
James “J.R.” Reeves, who serves as the USAGM Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of IT Operations, was busted after a conservative X account End Wokeness dropped receipts showing Reeves’ racism. The USAGM, which includes Voice of America among six state-owned entities, quickly addressed the post – saying it “does not condone intolerance in any form,” and would investigate the claims – and placed Reeves was on paid administrative leave.
This is James (J.R.) Reeves
Reeves is Chief Information Officer and IT Director for USAGM, the federal agency responsible for global media coverage
He refers to Whites as “snow roaches” and celebrates the fact that the “roaches” will become a minority in the United States… pic.twitter.com/VburFKWqaB
According to the report, Reeves recently wrote: “Cry about it, snow roaches” in support of a meme which stated “Keep the Immigrants, Deport the Racists.”
The account also responded to several other messages by calling a user a “snow roach” and suggesting they are uneducated or racist.
“Last time I checked it’s the snow roaches that are mad about immigrants,” Reeves’ alleged account wrote on Feb. 12, while another message posted the same day read, “Like the other snow roaches, resort to racist tropes when you can’t construct a logical argument. Clearly uneducated. Stat triggered.”
Another post from the account said, “You believe all the talking points from the ‘Republicans.’ Plus you’re a racist t–t. Immigrants to not have more rights. But just to help I’ve taken in multiple immigrant families to help! Now stay triggered! #snowroach.”
The account also wrote, “By 2045 Snow roaches will be a minority. That scares you… #welfarequeens,” according to End Wokeness, with a snapshot of a Pew Research Center finding about the White population in the U.S. shrinking in the last decade. –Fox News
The account believed to belong to Reeves, @devast8nSigma, was locked following the End Wokeness post went viral.
According to End Wokeness, “Reeves posted pictures of himself on this account multiple times throughout the years,” and “used this account to demonize White people, label them snow roaches, and celebrate their demographic decline.”
Increasing evidence suggests that alterations in the gut microbiota are associated with the development, severity, and sequelae of COVID-19 infection.
In the adult digestive tract, there are approximately 100 trillion microbes, 10 times the number of human cells, and they weigh about 4.41 pounds. These organisms are immune system guardians and can help remove viruses.
Certain Gut Bacteria Can Inactivate COVID-19 Virus
In a new study published in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers evaluated the impact of gut microbiota composition on respiratory viral infections through animal experiments. The results showed that segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB) in the gut could protect mice from viral influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and the COVID-19 virus.
Studies have indicated that SFB, whether naturally present or acquired, can combat viral infections with the help of alveolar macrophages in the lungs.
Alveolar macrophages serve as the first line of defense against respiratory pathogens.
In mice that don’t have SFB, these immune cells were rapidly depleted as infection progressed. Conversely, in mice with SFB in the gut, these immune cells underwent alterations to resist the inflammatory signaling induced by the influenza virus. Moreover, alveolar macrophages directly disabled the influenza virus.
Gut-Lung Axis
While the functions of the gut and lungs are different, they share common structural features, as they both develop from the same embryonic tissue. Both the gut and lungs are covered with mucous membranes. These membranes secrete mucin and collectively form a mucosal immune system that defends against pathogens.
As research on COVID-19 progresses, some researchers have noted the bidirectional and complex relationship of the gut-lung axis. Microbiota-derived metabolic pathways can function distally and play a vital role in anti-inflammatory responses in the airways.
The SFB are unlikely to be the only kind of gut microbe capable of affecting the immune cells in the lungs, said Dr. Andrew Gewirtz, a co-senior study author, in a press release.
Dr. Richard Plemper, a co-senior author of the paper, said that among the thousands of microbial species inhabiting the mouse gut, a common commensal microbe significantly impacted respiratory virus infections. He further stated that if these findings apply to human infections, they could have substantial implications for the risk assessment of disease progression in patients.
Research has shown that alterations in the gut microbiota, including changes in specific microbiota species and microbial-derived metabolites, play an important role in regulating the severity and progression of COVID-19 infection and post-recovery complications.
Viral Respiratory Tract Infection Affects the Gut Microbiota
An analysis of fecal samples from 102 patients with severe COVID-19 infection following ICU admission found that decreased concentrations of gut microbiome metabolite—secondary bile acids and desaminotyrosine—were associated with an increased risk of respiratory failure and mortality.
Another study revealed that patients infected with COVID-19 showed a decrease or depletion of bacteria with immune-regulating capabilities in the body, such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, as well as some bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families.
Additionally, respiratory virus infections are often observed in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Microbiota analysis of these patients showed that those with reduced levels of commensal bacterial species producing butyrate had a fivefold increase in the progression of viral respiratory tract infections.
Enhancing Gut Health to Build Robust Immunity
The intestinal tract, the largest immune organ in the human body, plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining a robust immune system, and gut immunity is closely linked to our diet.
Probiotics are beneficial bacteria for the gut and are relatively safe health supplements. A retrospective cohort study showed that COVID-19 patients treated with probiotics had a shorter time to clinical improvement, including reduced fever, hospital stays, and viral shedding. Another study also indicated that probiotic treatment significantly shortened the duration of diarrhea in critically ill COVID-19 patients.
BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health published a study in 2021 analyzing the effects of dietary habits on COVID-19 infection, severity of symptoms, and duration of the illness.
The study covered 2,884 frontline health care workers from six different countries, investigating their dietary habits and the severity of COVID-19 infection. The results showed that participants who followed either a plant-based or pescatarian diet (where a person doesn’t eat meat but eats fish) had a 59 percent lower odds of developing moderate to severe COVID-19 than those who did not.
American think-tank Pew Research released a new analysis that shows although marijuana is illegal at the federal level, many Americans live in states where cannabis is legal for medical or recreational use.
The new report on the status of marijuana in the US reveals that 74% of Americans reside in states that have legalized marijuana for either recreational or medical purposes, with 54% living in states where pot is only permitted for recreational use.
Since Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, 24 other states, along with the District of Columbia, have also embraced legalization. Moreover, 14 states have approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes only. The remaining 12 states have restricted access to marijuana products with low levels of THC or none at all.
A map of America’s 15,000 cannabis dispensaries reveals pot shop clusters up and down the West and East Coasts but also cluster in interior states like Colorado, Oklahoma, and Michigan.
This latest analysis, coupled with a recent Gallup poll, is an indication that an increasing number of Americans now believe marijuana should be legal.
Meanwhile, health officials are recommending easing restrictions on marijuana, a move that sets the stage for potentially expanding the cannabis market.
A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services wrote Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram called for marijuana to be reclassified as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act, according to a letter dated Aug. 29, 2023, obtained by Bloomberg and reported last year.
Should the DEA reclassify marijuana, it would mark a critical shift away from its status as a Schedule I substance, which includes drugs with high abuse risk, like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy.
“Nobody does. The crowd never thinks. People are only comfortable in a pack, and they’re most comfortable in one that’s racing off a cliff.”
– Deacon Bainbridge to Daniel Durand, The Golden Pinnacle, Robert Gore, (2013)
The pack is racing off a cliff. There is a vast complex telling them that they are not, and that they won’t be hurt when they smash on the rocks below.
How does the human mind deal with the contradictory? One way is through discovering facts and rational analysis to resolve the contradiction. A vaccine is presented as safe and effective. However, its legal status shields its makers from legal liability for any vaccine-induced injuries. Why would legal immunity be necessary if the vaccine is safe and effective? The rational person questions the premise of safety and effectiveness, and either foregoes the vaccine until further data confirms the premise, or foregoes it permanently if it doesn’t.
The other way to deal with contradiction is to evade it. If the crowd—the government, the pharmaceutical companies, the media, the academics, the corporations, the celebrities, your employer, your friends, and your family—is telling you the vaccines are safe and effective, they must be so. Unfortunately, the rocks below hurt; they may even kill. And it’s no consolation that the comforting crowd shares your fate. Perhaps, if there’s an afterlife, you can commiserate with fellow unfortunates there.
The Institutional Insanity Complex (IIC) wants to separate you from your mind. Now it talks openly of doing just that, inserting microchips and wiring in your brain, so that you can be reprogrammed to run with the crowd and never question it. Destroy the mind and you destroy humanity, but the IIC is more insane than those it would reprogram. It, too, shall be destroyed.
Debt must be repaid in a medium of exchange creditors trust, even when the debtor is a government. When debt increases, interest payments increase and the debt service burden compounds. The interest rate necessary to secure credit often increases, adding to the burden. This is all happening in real time with Western governments and China. The global economy floats on an ocean of debt, but unlike a real ocean, debt can shrink into a puddle almost instantaneously. When it can either not be repaid or repaid in a debased medium that creditors no longer trust, debtors and creditors alike go bankrupt, and multiple and conflicting claims are made on income streams and real assets.
Anyone who insists that present debt trends will lead to disaster is derided as reactionary, enslaved to outmoded ways of thinking. At least it’s thinking; obliviousness is not, Consequences have begun their inevitable cascade as interest rates rise and debt implodes.
Interest-rate sensitive industries like commercial real estate and banking have been the first to register the tremors from what will be an unprecedented financial earthquake. Individuals, businesses, governments, and financial and derivative markets will tumble into an expanding fissure of global insolvency, illiquidity, and bankruptcy. Derivatives, the sum of which (measured in the quadrillions), is a double-digit multiple of global GDP, will live up to Warren Buffett’s appellation as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
Obliviousness is one thing; taking actions that make the threats you’re ignoring even worse is insanity. Yet the IIC is spending money it doesn’t have on two wars—both of which could expand—and lobbying for a third (Iran) and fourth (Taiwan). There are no plans for negotiations for what would, among other salutary outcomes, staunch the financial bleed from the first two.
At home, the IIC ups the ante on the welfare state, inviting the whole world to partake in its already unaffordable benefits. Parts of the U.S., particularly in Democratic and gang-controlled (a redundancy) cities, are third-world enclaves that will continue to expand as third-world invitees flood in. The U.S. is fast becoming a third-world nation. Much of Europe is confronted with the same insanity, as its rulers have also put out the welcome mat for unaffordable migrants.
Personal morality is regarded as a quaint anachronism, a liability that hinders one’s pursuit of power and payola. By now, many realize that there’s a sub rosa explanation for much of what transpires in the political realm. The shorthand phrase: bribes, blackmail, and bullets.
Look again at the U.S.’s two wars. Ukraine is a cesspool of corruption, and the Clintons and the Bidens have rancid ties to its oligarchic power structure. These ties are so sensitive that President Trump was impeached for asking Ukrainian president Zelensky about Hunter and Joe Biden, and Ukrainian energy company Burisma. There are also Ukraine’s under-reported and under-investigated bioweapons research facilities.
It’s certainly not a stretch to hypothesize that Ukraine has lined a lot of powerful Americans’ pockets; that many of them, particularly the Bidens, are vulnerable to blackmail, and that nobody involved in these sordid affairs would be too squeamish about bullets, if necessary. That accounts for the desperate efforts to obtain huge funding packages for Ukraine to prolong the war. The money that hasn’t disappeared has been squandered on ineffectual military strategies that haven’t prevented Russian victory; yet, Biden has pulled out all the stops to secure another big appropriation. Throwing good money after bad on a lost cause is almost the definition of insanity.
You have to be hopelessly naïve to believe that the political class’s unshakeable fealty to Israel doesn’t stem from the three Bs. Bribery? Nobody spreads more money around Washington than the Jewish lobby. Blackmail? We have the late Jeffrey Epstein’s honey-trap operation and his and Ghislaine Maxwell’s well-documented ties to Israeli intelligence. If the investigative reporting of Whitney Webb is to be believed, Epstein is just the tip of a massive iceberg of corruption and criminality that’s operated for decades. Bullets? There’s no shortage of Mossad-linked disappearances and murders.
Whatever keeps Washington’s Corruptocracy in line, it’s leading to disaster as the U.S. IIC supports Israel’s campaign to expel the Palestinians from what was once their homeland (then known as Palestine). The Israelis don’t have any justification for their slaughter, just a few recitations endlessly repeated and amplified in the Western mainstream media, and epithets of “anti-Semitism” thrown at those who question, criticize, or protest against the government’s barbaric campaign. Nobody in the Biden administration will do anything about it, even if means the death or displacement of two million Gaza Palestinians. The campaign may well extend to Israel’s five million Palestinians living outside Gaza, and that, too, will receive IIC acquiescence.
Even if moral considerations never enter into their bloodthirsty calculations, aiding and abetting this Nakba is not just a crime, but an epic mistake. The danger that it leads to a conflagration that engulfs the entire Middle East and perhaps the world is clear. Hamas has received the support of Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, various Syrian and Iraqi insurgent groups, and Iran. That support has been calibrated—the only sanity on display in the region so far—but they will match Israeli escalation with their own.
U.S. neocons have been promoting a war against Iran for over two decades. In a world with even a smidgeon of justice they would, best case, be straitjacketed and involuntarily committed, worst case, spend the rest of their lives in the kind of super secure solitary to which they want to confine Julian Assange.
Whatever respect the U.S. government once received as “leader of the free world” is gone, replaced by contempt and antipathy from the 7 billion outside the West’s golden billion. First Ukraine and now Gaza have coalesced the multipolarity movement led by Russia and China. Strengthening one’s adversaries and needlessly creating new ones are the opposite of rational.
What else can be expected from people who believe in a double-digit number of genders, all interchangeable? The federal government, academia, corporate America, and Hollywood are ruthlessly promoting doctrines whose essence is that people’s gender, sexual proclivities, race, and ethnicity are their most important attributes, not their ability, competence, ingenuity, productivity, judgment, or character.
Nasty old capitalism that rewarded the latter has been replaced by crony socialism that rewards the former. Hierarchies are filled with people who can’t even be said to have reached their level of incompetence. They were incompetent to begin with, but secured their positions because they ticked the right DEI boxes, mouthed the prevailing platitudes, and slithered their way up the ladder. Anyone who points this out is smeared and cancelled. Truth must be discarded if it hurts the wrong feelings and exposes the wrong agendas.
Pretend is the order of the day. So, Washington pretends: that it can have an empire when its military hasn’t won a war since 1945; that it can jump into two major wars and potentially two more and it will win them all; that the unrelenting immigrant flow and crumbling, dangerous cities aren’t hallmarks of the U.S.’s regression into the third world; that the death-trap medical system promotes health; that the debts it cannot pay and commitments it cannot meet can just keep piling up, and that the corrupt ruling class, riddled with incompetents with no real world experience or useful skills, heads stuffed with nonsense, is entitled to rule by virtue of its hypocritical preening and ineptitude. Meanwhile, the mainstream media peddles the official propaganda and pretends all is well.
How does one preserve one’s sanity amidst this pervasive lunacy?
You can act like a man (or woman, the only other gender), cherish what you are, and take responsibility for your own life. You can refuse to turn away from an insane world, seeing it for what it is, but holding to your own sanity with all your strength. You can refuse to pretend. To preserve your mind is to preserve your immortal soul; abandon either one and you abandon the other.
In The Gray Radiance, the main character, Nick Wozniak, contemplates soul, mind, God, and the insanity in which he finds himself. He’s in Saigon in 1968.
He felt a savage satisfaction in what he’d said. Franklins did their best to insulate themselves from such encounters. They lived in bubbles, and how often did you get a chance to pop one? God, how could you live like Franklin?
God. A concept that might be more than a concept. He was a twice-a-year—at most—Catholic and had never considered himself devout or faithful. God was an abstraction before whom you genuflected, prayed, sang, took communion, and put an offering on the plate. He got as much out of church as he would watching Indian tribal dances or voodoo rituals, and he put them all in the same category.
Yet, he couldn’t account for that strange feeling as he carried Quang in My Tho, the certainty that the boy would make it. Nor could he account for the conviction that he would find the truth about his father, that he had to do so. Both were the kind of things that God presumably would want to encourage. You’d think with God that actions spoke louder than genuflecting and the other folderol. You worshipped God by doing the right things, not just showing up at church. He couldn’t conceive of an insecure God, one who needed the folderol.
And you think he’d help you do the right things, if you asked him. Truth and wisdom—distilled truth—came to those who sought them. That was reasonable, and God would be reasonable. Humans had logic and reason and were created in God’s image. That would make God logical and reasonable, although not in ways that people would always understand. He had heard someone say—someone smart, but he couldn’t remember who—that man created God in his own image. A quick and easy dismissal for those who wanted it. Man had undoubtedly created a conception of God, as Nick was doing that morning. It didn’t logically follow that God didn’t exist, or that he hadn’t created man.
If God was logic, he was also justice. That the two went together seemed beyond argument; the books would balance. Even if there was no God, there was at least some justice because actions have consequences. Drink yourself stupid, and you throw up in the middle of the night. Your head aches the next morning. You could have been beaten, robbed, or worse after you passed out on the street. You were saved by a guardian angel, who would kill you if you didn’t play the devil’s game with Hendricks.
A collision with consequences was coming for the cohort running the United States government. They were drunk with power and corruption. Like all drunks, they kept drinking. You don’t murder the natives, destroy their country, prop up your gang of thieves, spew endless hypocrisy, then walk out of the bar to your cozy bed scot-free. You weaved down uncertain streets and dark alleys and were a sitting duck for all the enemies you had made. Sooner or later, they would get you.
There would come a time when Franklin and his ilk couldn’t just move on to a new set of lies. When retribution came, it would be Old Testament merciless. Nothing created hate like arrogance asserting its control but exempting itself from its own rules. Throw in pious crap about moral superiority, and you’ve got hate that’s passed down generation to generation, that neither forgets nor forgives. God knows crap when he sees it, and he doesn’t forget or forgive. He wouldn’t bless his children subjugating his children. This love of power was the root of evil. He’d bless the Golden Rule: his children treating his children as they themselves wanted to be treated.
Yes, indeed, Old Testament merciless.
There were different conceptions of God, but they all had one thing in common: God the creator. Humanity destroyed but it had also created every step of its own progress—life depended on it. To see something where there was nothing, to discover that which had been hidden, to plan and to build, to make your conception a reality; that was the spark of the divine, communion with God.
He finished his coffee, got up from the couch, went into the kitchen, and rinsed his cup. There was a bottle of Jack, almost full, by the sink. He poured it down the drain. He threw a bag of marijuana in the garbage.
His headache was gone. It was time to write—to create—his story of My Tho, Minh, and Quang. He’d write for a few hours and then go to the hospital to see Quang. He wasn’t sure how, but his path with Quang led to creation—to God—as well.
The battle against insanity is moral and spiritual. A snippet here and a snippet there of what you know to be true are lifelines; the mountains of lies are death. Two plus two will always equal four. The unremitting search for truth leads to its distilled essence: wisdom.
A collision with consequences is no longer coming for the cohort running the United States government; it’s arrived. Their frantic efforts to censor and suppress, their vicious cancellations, and their high-tech totalitarianism are to keep that reality—not so much from the populace they claim to rule—but from themselves. They cannot escape the misery and death they are imposing on everyone else.
The ultimate insanity is pretending that ignoring reality will change it. The ultimate wisdom is dealing with it. If you plod along the straight line path of facts and logic, holding to your sanity and what you know to be true, you won’t win the race, but that’s a race over the cliff. You will preserve your mind . . . and your soul. And you may be around to help start things fresh after the insanity extinguishes itself.
Terror Threat? NYC Mobilizing 1,000 National Guard Troops In Subways
New York Governor Kathy Hochul is mobilizing 1,000 National Guard troops and State Police officers across New York City’s subway system in a show of force meant as a warning to criminals who have been terrorizing passengers.
Gov. Hochul announced earlier today that 750 guardsmen and 250 law enforcement officers would be deployed across “the city’s busiest transit stations” amid out-of-control violent crime.
“These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” the governor said, adding the Guardsmen are part of a new five-point plan to crack down on the city’s crime wave.
She continued: “No one heading to their job or to visit family or go to a doctor appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon. They shouldn’t worry about whether someone’s going to brandish a knife or gun. That’s what we’re going to do with these checkpoints.”
JUST IN: Violent crime is getting so bad in New York City subways that Gov. Kathy Hochul is deploying 1,000 total National Guardsmen, state police & MTA police to patrol them.
What’s puzzling – is if the only threats were violent criminals and migrants, why deploy the National Guard? The NYPD is fully capable of increasing its presence and flooding subway stations with officers. This raises the possibility that the threat is more significant than just migrants, potentially hinting at terrorism-related concerns.
It was only days ago when the Federal Bureau of Investigation released new information about a rogue Iranian intelligence officer planning assassination attempts on former and current US government officials.
Calling in the National Guard for civil disturbance doesn’t make sense. This also suggests that whatever threat has spooked NY and NYC officials could be much greater than what the NYPD can handle.
The threat could be related to Iran and a possible upsurge in attack vectors during the US presidential election.
Despite continued weak economic performance, China’s imports of major commodities in the first two months of 2024 held strong and exceeded last year’s levels.
Imports of crude oil, LNG, coal, and iron ore were all higher at the start of the year compared to the same period of 2023, although China’s economic data still shows a weak recovery, problems in several key sectors, and low consumer confidence.
There’s a reason behind the robust commodity imports, and it’s not Chinese economic growth. Rather, it is the market dynamics for each major commodity, Reuters columnist Clyde Russell notes.
Strong Commodity Imports
Crude oil imports into China, the world’s top crude importer, increased to 11.73 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, higher than the 11.31 million bpd imports in January, per LSEG data cited by Russell.
China’s customs office doesn’t report separate data for January and February to avoid distortion due to the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically begins at the end of January or early February.
According to LSEG estimates, China imported 11.51 million bpd of crude for January and February on average, up by more than 1 million bpd compared to the official Chinese data for January-February crude oil imports last year.
Despite possible distortion due to the Lunar New Year holiday period, which this year was in February, a large part of the rise in crude imports was due to higher demand compared to January 2023, when China was reopening from the COVID lockdowns, and because of lower commodity prices at the time the orders were placed in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Oil prices declined in the last quarter of last year after hitting a 2023 high of over $95 per barrel in September.
Considering the time lag of around two months between crude purchases and nominations and the arrival of the crude in China, it could be concluded that Chinese refiners have continued to buy more oil when prices were falling.
In January 2024, China’s crude oil imports held up at a robust rate of 11.31 million bpd, per estimates from LSEG Oil Research. Low oil prices in November and December 2023 have been driving higher Chinese crude imports early this year.
China also allocated in January a massive batch of crude oil import quotas to refiners, raising the allowances from early last year by around 60% and allocating full-year quotas to some. The early allocation of a large volume of import allowances will help refiners better plan their crude purchases in 2024, according to analysts.
Despite weak manufacturing and the ongoing property crisis, crude oil imports are estimated to have held strong at much higher levels compared to the first two months of 2023.
That’s also because China took advantage of the slide in oil prices, which began in October, to ramp up its stockpiling of cheaper crude in December and January.
In the liquefied natural gas market, China imported in February a record volume of LNG for the month, as buyers took advantage of plummeting spot prices in Asia amid ample inventories and tepid demand.
Chinese LNG imports last month – the highest-ever for February – topped 5.5 million tons, rising by 15% compared to February last year, ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed last week.
In February 2024, Chinese LNG importers were on the lookout for cheaper supply of liquefied natural gas on the spot market as prices in North Asia halved from October levels and slid to a nearly three-year low by the middle of the month.
Last week, the average LNG price for April delivery into north-east Asia was unchanged from the previous week, at $8.30 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), which was the lowest level since April 2021.
China’s coal imports were also robust in early 2024 amid high power demand and low hydropower output.
Despite the property sector crisis, Chinese imports of iron ore were also strong at the start of 2024.
Steel mills have increased inventories of iron ore in recent weeks, which could be in anticipation of authorities rolling out measures to boost the sector and the overall economy, Reuters’ Russell notes.
Underwhelming Economy
Chinese imports of major commodities defy the weak economic performance, which has plagued the world’s second-largest economy since the reopening from the Covid restrictions early last year.
Manufacturing activity remains in contraction territory, shrinking for a fifth consecutive month in February.
Consumer prices are falling, and deflationary pressure risks becoming an entrenched behavior of lower spending among consumers, some analysts warned last month.
Despite China touting record travel during the Lunar New Year holiday in February, consumer spending was lower than pre-pandemic levels, according to CNN estimates, amid weak consumer confidence in a deflationary environment.
On Tuesday, China set a target of around 5% economic growth for 2024, which is in line with expectations. Premier Li Qiang told the National People’s Congress that China would be looking to “transform” the economic growth model and implement measures to reduce industrial overcapacity and defuse property sector and debt risks.
Restoring confidence will likely take some time, and the process will likely be uneven, Lynn Song, Chief Economist, Greater China, at ING said, commenting on China’s economic growth targets. The policies that will be announced in the coming weeks and months will play a large role in whether or not consumer and business sentiment will bottom out this year, the economist added.
“Notable Milestone”: American FICO Credit Scores Decline First Time In Decade
Although the Biden administration claims that the American consumer is humming on all cylinders, the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book in March painted a much different story in the report released on Wednesday. It showed consumers are cutting back on spending and becoming more cost-conscious due to the increasing pressures of elevated inflation.
A new report by Fair Isaac Corp., the Montana-based creator of the FICO credit score, shows consumers missing more credit card payments and taking on more debt. This has led to the average consumer credit score reversing for the first time in a decade.
Blomberg first reported that the average FICO credit score for Americans fell by one point in October to 717 from 718 in July. Despite being a minor change, this marks the first decline in a decade.
“It’s a notable milestone that we’ve seen the average score decrease,” said Ethan Dornhelm, vice president of scores and predictive analytics at FICO, adding, “This isn’t a blinking red light, but it certainly is a yellow light.”
According to Bloomberg, the 30-day-or-more delinquency rate increased to 18% of the population – up about 4% since April – and comes in an environment of rising delinquencies for credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages. Credit card utilization also rose higher in October, up to 35% from 34% in April, while the average credit card balance in October jumped 5.9% to $7,306.
A separate report showed how non-revolving credit growth stumbled under high interest rates in early February.
The average rate across all commercial banks on all credit card amounts hit a new record high of 21.47% in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Another concerning piece of consumer data comes from Credit Managers’ survey that shows the rate of rejections for credit applications and the number of accounts moved to ‘collections’ is surging back to near GFC levels.
… and about that ‘strong consumer’ narrative the Biden administration keeps pushing in corporate media.
Recently approved vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for older adults may be linked to a rare nervous system disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own nerves.
In a Feb. 29 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, health officials presented data that appears to show a slightly elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) among people who received RSV vaccines by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
A data mining alert on Jan. 19 for disproportional reporting was detected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Pfizer’s Abrysvo RSV vaccine and GBS but has not been reported to date for GSK’s RSV vaccine Arexvy, according to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s influenza division and former director of the CDC’s immunization safety office.
The FDA uses data mining to identify statistical associations between products and events in their respective safety databases. If there is disproportionate reporting of an event for a particular product, this could suggest a statistical association between the adverse event and the product.
According to data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) presented by Dr. Shimabukuro, data show 35 reports of GBS with 18 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, Abrysvo, 16 cases attributed to GSK’s Arexvy, and one case that was not reported under either brand name.
The CDC verified 23 cases of GBS reported to VAERS as of Feb. 16—all occurring within 22 days of RSV vaccination. Of the 23 cases, 15 were attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine and eight to GSK’s vaccine. Fourteen males experienced the condition compared with nine females. There was one death reported in a 70-year-old man who developed GBS after receiving Arexvy.
“Certainly 23 cases of GBS within 22 [days] of RSV vaccination is not a ‘small signal’ given the woeful underreporting in VAERS,” Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, who holds a doctorate in biochemical engineering, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“What is always missing with VAERS is a good denominator. Given that these vaccines have been distributed for less than a year (since May 31, 2023), I would expect the uptake to still be fairly low,” he added.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), underreporting is one of the main limitations of a passive surveillance system like VAERS. “The term, underreporting refers to the fact that VAERS receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events,” HHS states on its website. A November 2020 article published in Vaccine showed sensitivity for capturing GBS after three different vaccines ranged from 12 to 64 percent, suggesting more cases of GBS are occurring than are being captured.
Vaccine Safety Database Suggests ‘Potential’ for Increased Rate of GBS
The CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) suggests the “potential for an increased rate of GBS” following vaccination with GSK’s Arexvy RSV vaccine, but the agency said additional analyses are needed. There were insufficient doses of Pfizer’s Abrysvo used in the VSD to determine the risk of GBS following vaccination.
It is estimated that 10 people will experience GBS for every 1 million doses of Arexvy administered, compared with 25 cases of Abrysvo, the CDC’s vaccine advisors said during the meeting.
Due to the small number of GBS cases and the size of the prelicensure studies, Dr. Shimabukuro said it’s not known at this time whether the reported GBS cases or other neuroinflammatory events are random chance or whether RSV vaccination might increase the risk of these events. However, GBS is already included as an adverse event on both companies’ vaccine labels.
In prelicensure studies of Prizer’s RSV vaccine in adults 60 and older, two reported cases of GBS among 20,255 vaccine recipients were observed within 42 days of vaccination compared with one case during GSK’s study of 18,304 vaccine recipients.
“We’re still in the early uptake phase of these new RSV vaccines,” Dr. Shimabukuro told STAT in an interview after the meeting. “Some of these data and findings are based on small numbers of cases and relatively small numbers of doses administered,” he added. Due to “uncertainties and limitations” of early data, Dr. Shimabukuro said the agency can’t establish whether there’s an increased risk for GBS in individuals 60 and older following RSV vaccination, but better risk estimates would be forthcoming in the future.
During the meeting, Pfizer vice president Reema Mehta said the company believes its vaccine is safe but is committed to continuous monitoring and evaluation of Abrysvo’s safety to assess the possibility of vaccine-related GBS.
In an email to STAT, a spokesperson for GSK said the CDC analysis did not indicate an elevated rate of GBS among people who had received their company’s RSV vaccine, but it is designing a study to evaluate the risk of GBS after vaccination with Arexvy.
Mr. Hooker said what’s more shocking to him is the 34 deaths reported from RSV vaccine in a short period of time. The deaths were included in Dr. Shimabukuro’s presentation during the ACIP meeting.
“The swine flu vaccine was taken off of the market for fewer deaths,” Mr. Hooker told The Epoch Times. “It seems that with the advent of the horrific result of the COVID-19 vaccine, the bar has been severely lowered in terms of overall safety.”
The CDC said during the meeting that its risk-benefit analysis continues to support the use of both RSV vaccines in people over 60 due to the burden of RSV in that population.
GBS Reported After Other Vaccines
The FDA, in May 2023, licensed Pfizer and GSK’s RSV vaccines for adults 60 and older. The CDC signed off on a recommendation made by its advisory panel shortly thereafter recommending the vaccine for people 60 and older only if a healthcare provider thinks vaccination would be beneficial versus making it an annual vaccine. Some vaccine advisors proposed making a universal recommendation for RSV and requested more data at the upcoming meeting scheduled in June.
According to the CDC, RSV is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. Although most people recover in a week or two, it can be serious and is more commonly diagnosed in infants.
GBS is a rare neurological disorder that occurs when a person’s immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system—a network of nerves that carry signals from the brain and spinal cord to other areas of the body. The condition begins suddenly with weakness and tingling in the hands and feet and eventually spreads throughout the body, resulting in paralysis that can leave a person unable to breathe independently.
Although most people recover from GBS, some cases are severe and can be fatal. Recovery can take several years, and it may take six months or longer after symptoms start for an individual with GBS to walk again.
Miller Fisher syndrome (MFS) and Bickerstaff brainstem encephalitis (BBE) are two variants of GBS. MFS is a nerve disease that usually involves the lower cranial and facial nerves, and BBE involves altered consciousness, problems with muscle coordination, and impaired eye movements.
Other vaccines have also been linked to GBS, including COVID-19, recombinant zoster, and influenza vaccines. CDC studies based on data from the VSD and VAERS found an increased risk of GBS among adults 18 and older following COVID-19 vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot manufactured by Janssen. The FDA, in July 2021, announced revisions to the product fact sheets for J&J to include a warning related to the increased risk of GBS observed following vaccination.
Although the agency said it has not observed a similar signal with mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, cases of GBS and its variants have been reported following vaccination with both vaccines to VAERS and by the scientific community.
What Could Go Wrong? ‘Basel III Endgame’ Stress Sparks Rebirth Of “Synthetic Credit Risk Sharing”
Ironically, on a day when Fed Chair Powell spent a large portion of his time discussing the new regulatory threats from Basel Endgame rules – that force banks to hold more capital, less risk – BlackRock has published a report that is forecasting rapid growth for transactions that allow banks to shed risk in their loan portfolios.
The freshly re-branded Synthetic Risk Transfer (SRT) deals, are simply credit-linked notes (which have been relatively uncommon since the great financial crisis) offering high (mid-double-digit) yields for borrowers willing to accept the implied credit default swap (that effectively transfers the credit risk tied to a pool of loans – such as CREs).
Specifically, in SRT transactions, a bank earmarks a pool of assets on its balance sheet and buys credit default protection on the first 5% to 15% of the losses of that pool, so if losses materialize, the holders of the SRTs absorb the hit, according to BlackRock.
The renaissance of these vehicles is driven by a combination of higher rates (which are among the main factors that have crushed CRE loan values) and forthcoming Basel III regulations that will force banks to hold more capital to cover potential losses.
“With volatile interest rates and origination volumes, combined with increasing regulatory requirements, synthetic transactions are making more sense and are expected to pick up meaningfully in the near future,” said Chris Hentemann, chief investment officer and founder of hedge fund 400 Capital Management.
Bloomberg reports that last year banks around the world sold $25 billion of SRTs partially offloading the risk of $300 billion of loans, according to an estimate by Pemberton Asset Management.
While European banks have been the biggest users of such transactions in previous years, the big rise in SRT volumes will come from large Wall Street banks under pressure to boost their regulatory capital requirements, according to William Im, a director in BlackRock’s global opportunistic credit team.
“Given greater acceptance of this as a tool and ongoing Basel III endgame regulatory pressures, there is a real world in which this market has a potential to grow at 30-to-40% each year for the next two years,” Im said.
The growth trajectory Im envisions “sounds like a stark number, but if you compare investor demand as well as bank demand that well may be the case,” he said.
In its paper, BlackRock cited the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and other regional banks as a factor driving growth in the market for regulatory capital securities.
Rising rates and increased risk weightings mean “it’s not easy to be a bank CEO right now,” Joel Holsinger, co-head of alternative credit at Ares, said.
“It is a truly transformational moment.”
However, it is notably that Chair Powell’s comments today on the Basel III endgame likely signal there’s little chance a rule is finalized this year. Bloomberg Intelligence senior government analyst Nathan Dean notes that with the elections coming closer and closer, it’s more likely the Fed hits the brakes on the proposal or re-proposes the rule. We currently ascertain a 60% chance of a re-proposal.
But, given the wave of marketing for SRTs, we suspect, the inevitability of higher capital requirements will do nothing to slow the growth of this trade.
We have seen this movie before though: of course, the quants have their models, perfectly calibrated to ‘synthetically transfer’ that risk at a premium that pays big bonuses, but after scraping away the copulas and the codependencies, this is nothing more than a game of hot-potato (who can hold the potato long enough to earn a decent yield before it permanently scars your ‘hand’).
Of course, there is always the embedded option of The Fed Put. Should the fecal matter truly strike the rotating object, let history be a lesson, Federal-Reserve-Backed SPVs will come to the rescue to re-collateralize the new TBTF market participants.
The high court’s decree that the power to remove a federal candidate from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban” rests with Congress, not the states, underscores the fact that in a representative democracy, the citizenry—not the courts, not the corporations, and not the contrived electoral colleges—should be the ones to elect their representatives.
Unfortunately, what is being staged is not an election. It is a mockery of an election.
This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised.
For the next eight months, Americans will be dope-fed billions of dollars’ worth of political propaganda aimed at persuading them that:
1) their votes count,
2) the future of this nation—nay, our very lives—depends on who we elect as president, and
3) electing the right candidate will fix everything that is wrong with this country.
Incredible, isn’t it, that in a country of more than 330 million people, we are given only two choices for president?
The system is rigged, of course.
Forcing the citizenry to choose between two candidates who are equally unfit for office does not in any way translate to having some say in how the government is run.
Indeed, no matter what names are on the presidential ballot, once you step away from the cult of personality politics, you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.
The candidate who wins the White House has already made a Faustian bargain to keep the police state in power.
We’ve been down this road before.
Barack Obama campaigned on a message of hope, change and transparency, and promised an end to war and surveillance. Yet under Obama, government whistleblowers were routinely prosecuted, U.S. arms sales skyrocketed, police militarization accelerated, and surveillance became widespread.
Joe Biden has been no different. If his job was to keep the Deep State in power, he’s been a resounding success.
Follow the money. It always points the way.
With each new president, we’ve been subjected to more government surveillance, more police abuse, more SWAT team raids, more roadside strip searches, more censorship, more prison time, more egregious laws, more endless wars, more invasive technology, more militarization, more injustice, more corruption, more cronyism, more graft, more lies, and more of everything that has turned the American dream into the American nightmare.
What we’re not getting more of: elected officials who actually represent us.
No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people if all we’re prepared to do is vote.
After all, there is more to citizenship than the act of casting a ballot for someone who, once elected, will march in lockstep with the dictates of the powers-that-be.
Yet as long as Americans are content to let politicians, war hawks and Corporate America run the country, the police state will prevail.
“Total continuity” is how Chris Hedges refers to the manner in which the government’s agenda remains unchanged no matter who occupies the Executive Branch. “Continuity of government” (COG) is the phrase policy wonks use to refer to the unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.”
You can also refer to it as a shadow government, or the Deep State, which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who actually call the shots behind the scenes.
Whatever term you use, the upshot remains the same: on the national level, we’re up against an immoveable, intractable, entrenched force that is greater than any one politician or party, whose tentacles reach deep into every sector imaginable, from Wall Street, the military and the courts to the technology giants, entertainment, healthcare and the media.
This is no Goliath to be felled by a simple stone.
This is a Leviathan disguised as a political savior.
So, what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?
Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity. Just stop.
Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits—groups like The Rutherford Institute—working to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.
Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.
It’s comforting to believe that your vote matters, but presidents are selected, not elected. Despite what is taught in school and the propaganda that is peddled by the media, a presidential election is not a populist election for a representative. Rather, it’s a gathering of shareholders to select the next CEO, a fact reinforced by the nation’s archaic electoral college system. In other words, your vote doesn’t elect a president. Despite the fact that there are 218 million eligible voters in this country (only half of whom actually vote), it is the electoral college, made up of 538 individuals handpicked by the candidates’ respective parties, that actually selects the next president.
The only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic.
In actuality, we are suffering from what political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term an “economic élite domination” in which the economic elite (lobbyists, corporations, monied special interest groups) dominate and dictate national policy.
As such, presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.
So how do we prevail against the tyrant who says all the right things and does none of them? How do we overcome the despot whose promises fade with the spotlights? How do we conquer the dictator whose benevolence is all for show?
We get organized. We get educated. We get active.
Whether you vote or don’t vote doesn’t really matter. What matters is what else you’re doing to push back against government incompetence, abuse, corruption, graft, fraud and cronyism.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that the only road to reform is through the ballot box.
If you feel led to vote, fine, but if all you do is vote, “we the people” are going to lose.
If you abstain from voting and still do nothing, “we the people” are going to lose.
If you give your proxy to some third-party individual or group to fix what’s wrong with the country and that’s all you do, then “we the people” are going to lose.
If, however, you’re prepared to turn off the television, tune out the talking heads, untether yourself from whatever piece of technology you’re affixed to, wean yourself off the teat of the nanny state, and start flexing those unused civic muscles, then there might be hope for us all.
For starters, know your rights and then put that knowledge into action. What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”
Second, think nationally but act locally. Understand how your local government is structured. Who serves on your city council and school boards? What recourse does the community have to voice concerns about local problems or disagree with decisions by government officials? Are your locally elected officials accessible and open to what you have to say? Are your police chiefs being appointed from within your community? Who runs your local media? Does your newspaper report on local events? Who are your judges?
Third, don’t stop doing the hard work of holding your government accountable. Don’t let personal politics and party allegiances blind you to government misconduct and power grabs. This will mean holding all three branches of government accountable to the Constitution (i.e., vote them out of office if they abuse their powers). And it will mean making the president play by the rules of the Constitution.
Finally, don’t remain silent in the face of government injustice, corruption, or ineptitude. Speak truth to power.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved. It also takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain.
We must act—and act responsibly.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, any hope of restoring our freedoms and regaining control over our runaway government must start from the bottom up. And that will mean re-learning step by painful step what it actually means to be a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
