Stellar 3Y Auction Sees Biggest Stop Through Since August On Surge In Foreign Demand
After several mediocre auctions to close out the month of February, the first coupon auction of March just concluded when the Treasury sold $56BN in 3Y paper (while this was higher than the $54BN in February, it has another $2BN to go to surpass the covid record high of $56BN in 3Y paper sold in one auction) in what was a stellar auction.
The high yield of 4.256% was above last month’s 4.169%, but stopped through the 4.269% When Issued by 1.3bps, the biggest stop through since August 2023, and the 4th in the last 5 auctions.
The bid to cover was 2.604, above last month’s 2.581 but just below the six-auction average of 2.608.
The internals were more solid, with Indirects awarded 70.0% of the auction allocation (up from 66.0% last month and well above the recent average of 60.3%, and with Directs taking down 15.6%, the lowest since May 2023, Dealers were left holding just 14.40%, which was the lowest since August 2023.
Overall, this was a very strong auction yet despite the impressive showing by foreign buyers, yields barely budged on the result and if anything we have seen a modest grind higher all day, with the 10Y trading at 4.09% last, about 1bps cheaper on the day vs the Friday close.
Defiant Netanyahu Vows To Cross Biden’s Rafah ‘Red Line’: “We Are Not Getting Off The Gas”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at Biden after the US president issued a “red line” warning against a military ground attack on the refugee-packed city of Rafah in Gaza’s south.
Starting Sunday Netanyahu responded by vowing to press forward with the planned offensive on Rafah, believed to be imminent, when asked about the Biden red line statement. “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.”
Biden had told MSNBC on Saturday that an attack on Rafah is a red line for the administration, but as we underscored earlier he didn’t attach any potential consequences to such an action. “But there’s red lines that if he crosses them — you cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after” Hamas, Biden said. “There’s other ways to deal with, to get to, to deal with the trauma caused by Hamas.”
Biden then asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in the way the war against Hamas is being executed.
Netanyahu in response to this told Politico, “I don’t know exactly what the president meant.” The Israeli leader hit back as follows: “But if he meant by that, that I’m pursuing private policies against the wishes of the majority of Israelis and that this is hurting the interests of Israel, then he’s wrong on both counts.”
And in a Monday interview with Fox News, Netanyahu went so far as to suggest that Biden’s words are harming the counter-terror mission by presenting a disunified front on what are supposed to be common Washington-Israel aims.
“To the extent that Hamas believes that there’s daylight between us, that doesn’t help,”said Netanyahu. However, he pointed out that unity and agreement in terms of objectives “helps the war effort, and it helps our efforts to achieve victory and obviously the release of the hostages.”
He also addressed the question of a post-war two state solution being pushed by the Biden administration. “You don’t have an issue with me. You have an issue with the entire people of Israel,” he claimed. “They’re really united as never before, united to destroy Hamas, and ensure that we don’t have another Palestinian terror state like the one that we had in Gaza that could threaten the State of Israel.”
Also in this latest Monday Fox interview Netanyahu reaffirmed he is not wavering from sending his forces into Rafah:
“The president and I have agreed that we have to destroy Hamas. We can’t leave a quarter of the Hamas terror army in place there in Rafah,” he says. “We have agreements on the basic goals, but we also have disagreements. Ultimately, it’s Israel that has to decide.”
Hitting back at Biden’s comment that going into Rafah is a “red line” for him, Netanyahu says leaving Hamas forces there intact is “a red line. We can’t let Hamas survive.”
“We are not getting off the gas” in the war on Hamas, Netanyahu insists.
Biden gave Israel five months of unprecedented support and Netanyahu, predictably, still spent a whole interview heaping contempt on him. The “bear hug” strategy was doomed from the start, as anyone who knows Netanyahu could have told you in October https://t.co/2DjuMizKV8
Crucially, in Biden’s initial Saturday red line comments, he stopped short of saying he would cut off weapons and ammunition supplies to Israel, which remain vital in its war against Hamas.
Some pundits have said the Israel Defense Forces could not possibly sustain the war for very long without American-supplied weapons. Still, Biden administration sources have lately spoken of rising anger and frustration at the White House with Israeli leadership. Ceasefire talks still don’t seem to be going well, but Netanyahu has said he will greenlight a Rafah offensive to root out Hamas leadership even if a deal is reached.
“Respect the blob, learn from the blob, love the blob.”
– Robert Kagan, Arch Blob Monster, Brookings, 2020
HG Wells concocted a marvelous trick ending to his classic tale The War of the Worlds (1897). Remember: the colossal Martian tripod “fighting machines” swarm all over the planet zapping cities with “heat rays”. . . it looks like all-is-lost . . . but finally the darn things just quit marching, stop zapping, and stand down . . . the alien protoplasms at the controls (surprise ending) turn up dead and rotting inside from the action of our tiny invisible allies: the earth’s one-celled, disease-causing bacteria, to which the Martian blob creatures have no immunity!
The Gaian overtones in that story resound today as we Earthlings devise ingenious new methods to wreck terrestrial life, including ourselves. The planet seems to have some teleological drive to save itself, a kind of immune system. Notice: in all the ongoing debates about the wonders and dangers of A-I, and Bitcoin, and suffocating surveillance, nobody ever talks about the sketchy condition of the electric grid that all these worrisome phenomena utterly rely on.
In our chatter over Peak Oil, there’s little awareness of oil production’s utter dependence on steady capital flows. In all the guff about centralized control emitted by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, there’s no mention of the centrifugal forces driving human affairs to re-localization, dis-aggregation of large states, and down-scaling of many activities. In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.
Imagine: Bitcoin shoots up to a million dollars. You’re a zillionaire! Uh Oh. . . somewhere outside Zanseville, Ohio, a squirrel takes a final chaw through some old insulation on a wire coming out of a transformer. His head blows up in a blue arc flash, and in a few seconds all the electricity goes out from Chicago to Boston. It turns out that seventeen substations in ten states have blown relays, transformers, and switchgear. Some of those components were forty years old and are now manufactured twelve thousand miles away in a country that doesn’t like us anymore. The replacement parts get held up in a Chinese port. The power doesn’t come back on for weeks. Nobody who lives in the eastern USA can get to his Bitcoin wallet, which is just a virtual entity made of computer code residing in a digital “cloud,” i.e., nowhere real.
Of course, in an event that bad, a lot of other things would fail — really just about everything that comprises modern life — but for sure you could kiss your Bitcoin goodbye, perhaps forever, because by the time the juice comes back on (if it even does), nobody will ever again want to invest their wealth in digital “money” they can’t access, and Bitcoin will go back to whence it came: zero.
Likewise, the financial system we depend on is a gigantic apparatus grown extremely janky from over-elaboration and hyper-complexity — to the degree that all kinds of things denoted as having “moneyness” are simply hallucinations of the markets that trade them. How many quadrillions of dollars do “derivative” financial instruments represent on the landscape of “money” these days? Most of these things amount to little more than bets that some number — an interest rate, a currency, a revenue flow — will change either up or down. That is, they are figments.
Under Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the evolution of figments can theoretically go on forever. Derivatives can be ever more abstracted from what they purport to represent, until they fly up the system’s cloacal vent. MMT has become popular economic dogma, but its theory remains to be substantiated. Since the formula relies on the unlimited “printing” of money by central bank proxies for governments, you might bet that something will go wrong with such a system — and it kind of looks like something is about to go wrong in the system we’ve built for regulating and distributing capital. And do we need to state what “capital” is? (Real wealth, not figments, wishes, bets, and hallucinations. . . hard things like good land, ore pockets, installed machinery, railroad tracks, and so on. . . .)
Bitcoin has gone “hockey stick” the past month, meaning on a chart the move up looks nearly vertical. Do you know why it’s going up? I’ll tell you: it’s going up . . . because it’s going up. People and groups of people (wealth funds, banks) see the up-trend and deduce that Bitcoin is going “to the moon.” Meanwhile, they view the tea leaves of the currency scene and see a lot of brown, crumbly debris where there used to be “capital.” The money itself is losing its “moneyness” all over the place. The most vulnerable module of the system now is the bond market.
The bond market is based on the idea that borrowed money will be reliably paid back, the key word there being reliably. One crucial condition, though, is that money has to stay “money.” People have to regard it as possessing value. And now all kinds of money is visibly losing value. Approaching the $35-trillion mark in our national debt, there is reason to doubt that the USA can plausibly pay off its debt, or even service it anymore — that is, keep paying interest on it. The more money we “print” under MMT, the more value the money loses. The interest rate on the borrowed money has to go up to compensate for that loss of value, and all of a sudden you’re borrowing a shit-ton of money to pay the interest on the money you owe, the gross volume of which is only increasing . . . moving rapidly toward critical. . . . Uh-oh.
Many sentient beings viewing the scene warn us that the bond market is liable to blow, and with it most of the other modules in the current MMT-driven system. That will be the magic moment when a big theory gets disproven rather vividly and injuriously. The price of everything will vaporize in a mushroom cloud of malinvestment and when the dust settles — which might take a long time — everything will be priced differently, including many things at zero.
This is the kind of world we’re in now, and all this is why I don’t worry quite so much about the machinations of the various blobs that have self-assembled to defend their particular special interests while doing harm to many of us: the military-industrial blob, the censorship blob, the fake news blob, the intel blob, the corporate monopoly blob, the medical blob, the central banking blob.
The systems we depend on to make all things blobish function are looking pretty ill, like they’re not going be working a whole lot longer.
The result will be a beneficial time-out from blobbery. I’ll venture to predict that it will be a rather long time-out. A lot of the scary things going on around us, tyrannizing us, stripping our assets and our freedom, will not find their footing easily in the aftermath, perhaps never again. We’ll have decades, maybe centuries, to think about the hubris that brought all of that on, and in the meantime, we’ll have to live the earthly life as the earth allows and abide with it. And maybe dote on some new dreams of what a perfect world would look like.
Before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the pundit class was predicting that he would deliver a message of unity and calm, if only to attract undecided voters to his side.
He did the opposite. The speech revealed a loud, cranky, angry, bitter side of the man that people don’t usually see. It seemed like the real Joe Biden I remember from the old days, full of venom, sarcasm, disdain, threats, and extreme partisanship.
The base might have loved it except that he made reference to an “illegal” alien, which is apparently a trigger word for the left. He failed their purity test.
The speech was stunning in its bile and bitterness. It’s beyond belief that he began with a pitch for more funds for the Ukraine war, which has killed 10,000 civilians and some 200,000 troops on both sides. It’s a bloody mess that could have been resolved early on but for U.S. tax funding of the conflict.
Despite the push from the higher ends of conservative commentary, average Republicans have turned hard against this war. The United States is in a fiscal crisis and every manner of domestic crisis, and the U.S. president opens his speech with a pitch to protect the border in Ukraine? It was completely bizarre, and lent some weight to the darkest conspiracies about why the Biden administration cares so much about this issue.
From there, he pivoted to wildly overblown rhetoric about the most hysterically exaggerated event of our times: the legendary Jan. 6 protests on Capitol Hill. Arrests for daring to protest the government on that day are growing.
The media and the Biden administration continue to describe it as the worst crisis since the War of the Roses, or something. It’s all a wild stretch, but it set the tone of the whole speech, complete with unrelenting attacks on former President Donald Trump. He would use the speech not to unite or make a pitch that he is president of the entire country but rather intensify his fundamental attack on everything America is supposed to be.
Hard to isolate the most alarming part, but one aspect really stood out to me. He glared directly at the Supreme Court Justices sitting there and threatened them with political power. He said that they were awful for getting rid of nationwide abortion rights and returning the issue to the states where it belongs, very obviously. But President Biden whipped up his base to exact some kind of retribution against the court.
Looking this up, we have a few historical examples of presidents criticizing the court but none to their faces in a State of the Union address. This comes two weeks after President Biden directly bragged about defying the Supreme Court over the issue of student loan forgiveness. The court said he could not do this on his own, but President Biden did it anyway.
Here we have an issue of civic decorum that you cannot legislate or legally codify. Essentially, under the U.S. system, the president has to agree to defer to the highest court in its rulings even if he doesn’t like them. President Biden is now aggressively defying the court and adding direct threats on top of that. In other words, this president is plunging us straight into lawlessness and dictatorship.
In the background here, you must understand, is the most important free speech case in U.S. history. The Supreme Court on March 18 will hear arguments over an injunction against President Biden’s administrative agencies as issued by the Fifth Circuit. The injunction would forbid government agencies from imposing themselves on media and social media companies to curate content and censor contrary opinions, either directly or indirectly through so-called “switchboarding.”
A ruling for the plaintiffs in the case would force the dismantling of a growing and massive industry that has come to be called the censorship-industrial complex. It involves dozens or even more than 100 government agencies, including quasi-intelligence agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which was set up only in 2018 but managed information flow, labor force designations, and absentee voting during the COVID-19 response.
A good ruling here will protect free speech or at least intend to. But, of course, the Biden administration could directly defy it. That seems to be where this administration is headed. It’s extremely dangerous.
A ruling for the defense and against the injunction would be a catastrophe. It would invite every government agency to exercise direct control over all media and social media in the country, effectively abolishing the First Amendment.
Close watchers of the court have no clear idea of how this will turn out. But watching President Biden glare at court members at the address, one does wonder. Did they sense the threats he was making against them? Will they stand up for the independence of the judicial branch?
Maybe his intimidation tactics will end up backfiring. After all, does the Supreme Court really think it is wise to license this administration with the power to control all information flows in the United States?
The deeper issue here is a pressing battle that is roiling American life today. It concerns the future and power of the administrative state versus the elected one. The Constitution contains no reference to a fourth branch of government, but that is what has been allowed to form and entrench itself, in complete violation of the Founders’ intentions. Only the Supreme Court can stop it, if they are brave enough to take it on.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, and surely you have, President Biden is nothing but a marionette of deep-state interests. He is there to pretend to be the people’s representative, but everything that he does is about entrenching the fourth branch of government, the permanent bureaucracy that goes on its merry way without any real civilian oversight.
We know this for a fact by virtue of one of his first acts as president, to repeal an executive order by President Trump that would have reclassified some (or many) federal employees as directly under the control of the elected president rather than have independent power. The elites in Washington absolutely panicked about President Trump’s executive order. They plotted to make sure that he didn’t get a second term, and quickly scratched that brilliant act by President Trump from the historical record.
This epic battle is the subtext behind nearly everything taking place in Washington today.
Aside from the vicious moment of directly attacking the Supreme Court, President Biden set himself up as some kind of economic central planner, promising to abolish hidden fees and bags of chips that weren’t full enough, as if he has the power to do this, which he does not. He was up there just muttering gibberish. If he is serious, he believes that the U.S. president has the power to dictate the prices of every candy bar and hotel room in the United States—an absolutely terrifying exercise of power that compares only to Stalin and Mao. And yet there he was promising to do just that.
Aside from demonizing the opposition, wildly exaggerating about Jan. 6, whipping up war frenzy, swearing to end climate change, which will make the “green energy” industry rich, threatening more taxes on business enterprise, promising to cure cancer (again!), and parading as the master of candy bar prices, what else did he do? Well, he took credit for the supposedly growing economy even as a vast number of Americans are deeply suffering from his awful policies.
It’s hard to imagine that this speech could be considered a success. The optics alone made him look like the Grinch who stole freedom, except the Grinch was far more articulate and clever. He’s a mean one, Mr. Biden.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Shadowy Network Of How NGO Supplies Mega-Corporations With Migrants To Exploit Cheap Labor
One week ago, we wrote a note describing how illegals are obtaining jobs through a federal government loophole enabled by the Biden administration as they await deportation proceedings. This caught the attention of Elon Musk, who said, “Wow, learn something new every day.”
Now, we’re revealing how corporate interests have become deeply interconnected with immigration through a non-governmental organization called Tent Partnership for Refugees. This NGO comprises more than 400 major multinational companies committed to hiring “refugees.”
Several NGO partnerships with mega corporations include RedRoof Inn, Royal Farms, Shopify, CSX, Delta Airlines, DoorDash, Etsy, and even Bloomberg.
The NGO’s relationships run deeper than mega-corporations, in fact, all the way up to the Biden administration.
In December of 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a memorandum of understanding with Tent Partnership to “expand economic opportunity for refugees” in the private sector.
LIVE: Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes remarks on Tent Partnership for Refugees https://t.co/pX023Ft9nT
Since the Biden administration opened the floodgates, 10 million illegal immigrants invaded the nation. The NGO serves as an extension for mega-corporations to exploit cheap labor.
Since the summer of 2018, there has been zero job creation for native-born workers…
… and that since Joe Biden was sworn into office, most of the post-pandemic job gains the administration continuously brags about have gone foreign-born (read immigrants, mostly illegal ones) workers.
This leads us to a Bloomberg report showing how meatpacker Tyson Foods Inc. is set to hire tens of thousands of migrants via Tent Partnership. Tyson already employs 42,000 migrants among its 120,000 US workforce.
“We would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them,” said Garrett Dolan, who leads Tyson’s efforts to eliminate employment barriers such as immigration status.
“We’re recognizing there’s not a lot of people that are going to be working labor-manufacturing jobs that are American,” Dolan said, adding a large portion of new hires “are going to come from refugees and immigrants, so we’re now in the business of strategically thinking that through.”
In addition to efforts to influence elections and the Census through the influx of illegals, Democrats and their shadowy network of NGOs are pumping migrants to mega corporations, enabling the billionaires to exploit cheap labor.
Restaurants are moving towards dynamic menu prices. Expect big surcharges for peak times. Don’t expect off peak prices to drop much. Labor costs are rising too.
CPI food indexes prices, data from the BLS, chart by Mish
Surge Pricing Is Coming to You
Restaurants are experimenting with surge pricing to deal with peak hours and staffing demand. They like it. You probably won’t.
Restaurants like San Diego-based Cali BBQ are experimenting with a form of the dynamic pricing long used by airlines, hotels and ride-hailing services. Technology providers are pitching services that enable restaurants to change prices weekly or monthly, increasing or slashing the cost of a taco or sandwich between a few quarters to several dollars, depending on demand and sales patterns.
Dynamic pricing—charging higher rates at peak times and dropping them at slower ones—has become commonplace in industries such as e-commerce, and mobile apps have made it easier for companies to study consumers’ buying and browsing and quickly adapt. Rising costs in recent years have led more retailers to implement it.
Restaurants are experimenting with the technology as the industry looks for ways to boost sales and increase profits. Many restaurants increased menu prices as labor, food and other costs have soared since 2021.
Wendy’s drew public scrutiny after the burger chain said in a mid-February earnings call that it was looking to test dynamic pricing. The chain said it would invest around $20 million in its U.S. restaurants to install digital menu boards by 2025 that could suggest items to customers and present different offerings depending on the time of day.
Other restaurants, particularly sit-down ones, are charging more for prime seats during peak hours. Gene and Georgetti, a historic Chicago steakhouse where Frank Sinatra once regularly dined, in late 2022 implemented dynamic pricing on two booths frequented by celebrity customers. Diners typically pay a $20 fee when they book the booths at busy hours, helping counterbalance the restaurant’s rising expenses, managing partner Michelle Durpetti said.
While some consumers tend to resent surge pricing, as Wendy’s discovered last month, they like happy-hour discounts and other deals at slow times, industry consultants said.
Discount Pricing
People like discounts. But that’s not how it will work.
Instead, prices will go up across the board. Then to get the discount you will have to go off peak. And so on and so forth.
CPI Food Index Levels at Home vs Away percent change from Year Ago
CPI food prices percent change from a year ago, data from the BLS, chart by Mish
Three Major CPI Food Categories Month-Over-Month
CPI food prices percent change from a year ago, data from the BLS, chart by Mish
Month-over-month food prices have bottomed. Expect food prices to put upward pressure on the CPI.
In January, 59% of small-business owners reported higher labor costs were their biggest source of inflation, according to a survey of more than 425 entrepreneurs conducted for The Wall Street Journal by Vistage Worldwide, a business-coaching and peer-advisory firm.
Concerns Over inflation and Employment
ISM Services weakened slightly mainly due to a contraction in employment and faster deliveries. Prices remain a concern. The report hints at stagflation.
ISM chart and excerpts below by permission from the Institute for Supply Management® ISM®
Price inflation is notable. Prices are up 81 consecutive months. 58.6 percent of respondents say prices rose in February, That’s down from a whopping 64 percent last month.
The report is a mixed bag that hints at stagflation. It does not suggest imminent rate cuts by the Fed.
70 Percent of the CPI Is Sticky
Some prices change frequently, notably gasoline. Most of the CPI changes infrequently. This post takes a look at the Atlanta Fed Sticky price project.
Sticky and Flexible CPI data from the Atlanta Fed, CPI from the BLS, chart by Mish
The year-over-year weakening of the CPI and the Sticky CPI is partly due the fact that the change in trend is itself sticky. However, the price of gasoline appears to have bottomed and perhaps food prices have too.
If so, some of the benefit of lower year-over-year trend in rent may get chewed up by a rise in flexible CPI components.
Finally, for the next few months, the year-over-year comparisons are a bit harder to beat. So even if the monthly rent measures ease from the 0.40 percent 29 month-over-month trend, there may not be much of an improvement in the year-over-year measures.
We Are Not Over the Rainbow
Let’s check in with former Fed Vice-Chair Alan Blinder and his soft landing thesis.
Boeing Shares Lower As DoJ Opens Criminal Investigation Into Alaska Airlines 737 Blowout
Boeing Co. shares dipped in premarket trading following a Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal explaining that the US Justice Department has initiated a criminal probe into the incident involving an Alaska Air flight, during which a door plug ripped off a brand new 737 Max mid-flight.
Citing documents and people familiar with the matter, WSJ said federal investigators have “contacted some passengers and crew” about the Jan. 5 incident.
🚨🇺🇸BOEING: PAPERS? WHAT PAPERS?
Boeing officials admitted they can’t find records for the door plug that blew off Alaska Airlines’ 737 Max 9 jet in January.
Despite extensive searches, no documentation on the plug’s maintenance reportedly exists.
“In an event like this, it’s normal for the DoJ to be conducting an investigation. We are fully cooperating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation,” Alaska Airlines said.
The DoJ’s probe aims to determine if any factors leading up to the door plug incident might impact Boeing’s 2021 deferred prosecution agreement with the federal agency, established in the aftermath of the two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. It’s important to note that investigations do not always lead to formal charges of wrongdoing.
Under the agreement with the DoJ, Boeing committed to abiding by all laws and terms of the agreement. In the case of any breach in a deferred prosecution agreement, federal prosecutors are released from the obligations of the arrangement and have the discretion to pursue criminal charges.
News of the DoJ probe sent Boeing shares down 1% in premarket trading in New York.
On Sunday, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Fox News and explained that the Federal Aviation Administration would ‘rigorously’ probe Boeing. He said that maintaining airline safety requires “an enormous amount of rigor in dealing with Boeing and any regulatory issue.”
Police in St Louis, Missouri have arrested a teenage girl after footage emerged of a confrontation showing a savage beating of a student from Hazelwood East High School.
The disturbing video shows the girl repeatedly smashing the other student’s head into the concrete while repeatedly calling her a “bitch,” and then leaving her having a seizure on the ground.
A group of students then began an all out brawl before police were called to the scene close to the school this past Friday.
Warning, GRAPHIC FOOTAGE. Police in Missouri have arrested a teenage girl after video emerged of a confrontation showing a savage beating of a fellow student that left the victim seizing on the ground and with a traumatic brain injury. Report here https://t.co/8HQg3BAV5zpic.twitter.com/bYOjelyQfs
The girl reportedly suffered a traumatic brain injury and is listed in critical condition in hospital, while the assailant was arrested on assault charges Saturday, taken to the St. Louis County Family Court and held in custody through to Sunday.
Social media content suggests that the victim had been the target of bullying at the school.
James Clark, vice president of public safety and community response at the Urban League, described the incident as “a glimpse into the mentality and the culture of our young people.”
“The social pressure is to be socially dysfunctional,” he told KSDK, adding “Who can be the loudest? Who can be the most disruptive?”
“Bullying and fighting in the community is an issue for which we all need to take ownership and work towards a resolution for the sake of our children,” school officials said in a statement.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
“Trump Just Sold Out”: Bizarre TikTok Flip-Flop Followed Meeting With Hedge Fund Manager Who Has $30 Billion Investment
Donald Trump is now to the left of President Biden when it comes to TikTok – with Biden telling reporters recently that if Congress passes a bipartisan proposal that could ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app on national security grounds (whether it actually poses a threat or not), “I’ll sign it.“
The comment came after the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed the bipartisan bill that would force the sale of TikTok by ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States. According to Punchbowl News, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wants it on the floor Wednesday of this week.
Former President Trump, however – despite repeatedly pushing for a TikTok ban or salewhen he was President, has done a complete 180 on the company – and now claims that TikTok, the alleged national security risk, should be allowed to continue on because getting rid of it would benefit Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted to Truth Social.
He reiterated the comments in a Monday appearance on CNBC.
Earlier in Trump’s answer he seemingly blamed ‘lobbyists’ for Congress’s inability to ban TikTok when he was president.
Trump is asked a simple question about TikTok, and he’s unable to answer. He stumbles and mumbles gibberish, and cannot form a coherent thought or sentence. (Video: CNBC) pic.twitter.com/giABEzjpa9
…yet, that appears to be exactly what happened to Trump – who recently met with billionaire fund manager and GOP donor Jeff Yass, who has a stake in TikTok worth more than $30 billion, according to Punchbowl News.
Yass is a big financial backer of the conservative group Club for Growth, which was anti-Trump before recently turning pro-Trump. Yass has given $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund — the House GOP-aligned super PAC — this cycle, as well as another $250,000 to a joint leadership fund for Speaker Mike Johnson.
2) Politico reported this weekend that Kellyanne Conway, the former top Trump aide, “is being paid by the conservative Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok.” Conway — who isn’t registered as a TikTok lobbyist — called some members about Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi’s (D-Ill.) TikTok bill before Thursday’s markup, sources close to the issue said. -Punchbowl News
On Sunday, The National Pulse reported that former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway has begun lobbying for TikTok – and is “claiming regulatory ‘guardrails’ would be better, peddling the pro-CCP line to Congress members.”
This isn’t about whether TikTok is actually a national security threat, or about limiting free speech on a platform (that regularly curates degeneracy to American children). Trump’s flip-flop was very clearly due to outside influence.
On March 1, Trump got a bunch of money from formerly critical GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass, an investor in ByteDance.
Less than a week later, he is now suddenly in favor of continued Chinese ownership of TikTok. pic.twitter.com/uuvVqxKUjZ
Meanwhile, potential Trump VP Vivek Ramaswamy also began the ‘it’s complicated’ messaging on TikTok. Hmm…
Bashing TikTok is easy. Understanding the actual issue is harder. President Trump just came out opposing the pending legislation. Here’s why that’s right: we need to end *all* forced data transfers to the CCP, regardless of ownership. pic.twitter.com/sp8PrrERZ2
According to Punchbowl, Trump’s TikTok flip-flop, “has caused a big headache inside the House GOP leadership,” as Speaker Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise and GOP Conference chair Elise Stefanik (a possible Trump VP pick) are solidly behind the TikTok bill – with Stefanik being a cosponsor.
There have been some efforts by the GOP leadership to have Trump allies — especially in the national security realm — lobby Trump on the bill, which is slated to be voted on Wednesday.
Officially, House Republican leadership isn’t yet whipping the TikTok bill. The legislation is coming to the floor under suspension of the rules, which will require a two-thirds majority for passage. -Punchbowl News
Trump’s shift has not gone unnoticed.
In completely unrelated news, Trump last week touted his renewed friendship with TikTok billionaire Jeff Yass who has been lobbying behind the scenes to stop the forced sale https://t.co/G2ZsDsBnZm
Key Events This Week: CPI, PPI And Retail Sales As Fed Enters Blackout Period
With 10yr US yields around -10bps lower, and the S&P 500 around +2% higher than where they were just before last month’s higher-than-expected CPI, DB’s Jim Reid concludes that “it’s fair to say that markets have shrugged off this upside print alongside the high PPI and core PCE prints that followed.” The question now is whether this week we get to do it all over again, but before we preview the US CPI (tomorrow) and PPI (Thursday), the other main US highlights are the NY Fed 1-yr inflation expectations survey (today), retail sales (Thursday) and UoM consumer sentiment (Friday). There are also 3-, 10- and 30-yr UST auctions today through Wednesday.
Expanding on the main event – tomorrow’s CPI print – with gas prices up around 4.1% from January, DB’s economists expect headline CPI (+0.41% forecast, consensus +0.4%, vs. +0.31% previously) to grow faster than core (+0.30%, consensus +0.3%, vs. +0.39% previously). This would bring YoY core CPI two-tenths lower to 3.7%, with headline flat at 3.1%. Of some concern would be the three-month annualized rate ‘only’ ticking down a tenth to 3.9% while the six-month annualised rate would rise a tenth to 3.7%. See our economists preview and post-print webinar registration details here.
For Thursday’s PPI, the main interest will be the sub components that feed into core PCE forecasts. One of the more important will be the PPI for portfolio management and investment advice, which tends to follow equity prices with a one-month lag. We’ve seen a further equity rally since last month so it could be firm again. This remarkably added about 8bps to the January core PCE print despite only being about 1.6% of the basket. Also keep an eye on the PPI for selected health care industries, as this category currently has the highest weight in core PCE.
In Europe, the monthly UK GDP for January on Wednesday and labor market indicators tomorrow come a week before the next BoE meeting. In Asia, we have China’s 1-yr MLF rate where DB economists think we will see a 15bps cut. In Japan, the 1st survey results from the important shunto wage negotiations will be released on Friday, which will be key ahead of the BoJ meeting a week tomorrow where speculation mounts that negative rates will end. These are the main highlights but see the full week ahead at the end for all the week’s key global events.
here is a day-by-day calendar of events
Monday March 11
Data: US February NY Fed 1-yr inflation expectations, Japan February PPI, machine tool orders
Central banks: BoE Quarterly Bulletin article on investment
Earnings: Oracle
Auctions: US 3-yr Notes ($56bn)
Tuesday March 12
Data: US February CPI, NFIB small business optimism, monthly budget statement, UK January weekly earnings, employment change
Central banks: ECB’s Holzmann speaks, BoE’s Mann speaks
Earnings: Porsche
Auctions: US 10-yr Notes (reopening, $39bn)
Wednesday March 13
Data: UK January monthly GDP, trade balance, industrial production, index of services, construction output, Italy Q4 unemployment rate quarterly, Eurozone January industrial production
Central banks: ECB’s Stournaras speaks
Earnings: Inditex, Adidas, Dollar Tree, Volkswagen
Auctions: US 30-yr Bonds (reopening, $22bn)
Thursday March 14
Data: US February retail sales, PPI, January business inventories, initial jobless claims, UK February RICS house price balance, Germany January current account balance, Canada January manufacturing sales
Central banks: ECB’s Stournaras speaks
Earnings: Adobe, RWE, Rheinmetall, Dollar General
Friday March 15
Data: US March University of Michigan consumer sentiment, Empire manufacturing index, February industrial production, import price index, export price index, capacity utilization, China February new home prices, Japan January tertiary industry index, Italy January trade balance, retail sales, general government debt, Canada January international securities transactions, February housing starts
Central banks: BoE’s inflation attitudes survey, China 1-yr MLF rate, ECB’s Vujcic speaks
* * *
Fianlly, looking at just the US, Goldman writes that the key economic data releases this week are the CPI report on Tuesday and the retail sales and PPI reports on Thursday. There are no speaking engagements by Fed officials scheduled this week, reflecting the blackout period in advance of the FOMC meeting on March 19-20.
Monday, March 11
There are no major economic data releases scheduled.
Tuesday, March 12
06:00 AM NFIB Small business optimism, February (consensus 90.6, last 89.9)
08:30 AM CPI (mom), February (GS +0.44%, consensus +0.4%, last +0.3%); Core CPI (mom), February (GS +0.32%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.4%); CPI (yoy), February (GS +3.15%, consensus +3.1%, last +3.1%); Core CPI (yoy), February (GS +3.71%, consensus +3.7%, last +3.9%): We estimate a 0.32% increase in February core CPI (mom sa), which would lower the year-on-year rate by two tenths to 3.7%. Start-of-year price increases temporarily boosted prices in labor-reliant services categories in January, and with this January effect now behind us, we forecast a return to the previous inflation trend, specifically for medical care, personal care, car repair, and day care services. We also assume a step down in the OER category following outsized volatility in January (we estimate +0.47% for OER and +0.42% for rent, compared to +0.56% and +0.36% in January). We assume small declines in new (-0.3%) and used (-0.4%) car prices, reflecting higher incentives and lower auction prices. On the positive side, we assume a 1.5% rise in airfares and another strong gain in car insurance (+1.6%), based on online price data. We estimate a 0.44% rise in headline CPI, reflecting higher energy (+2.4%) and food (+0.15%) prices.
Wednesday, March 13
There are no major economic data releases scheduled
Thursday, March 14
08:30 AM Retail sales, February (GS +0.7%, consensus +0.8%, last -0.8%); Retail sales ex-auto, February (GS +0.3%, consensus +0.5%, last -0.6%); Retail sales ex-auto & gas, February (GS +0.2%, consensus +0.3%, last -0.5%); Core retail sales, February (GS +0.2%, consensus +0.4%, last -0.4%): We estimate core retail sales rose 0.2% in February (ex-autos, gasoline, and building materials; mom sa). Our forecast reflects mixed credit card spending data following strength during the holiday season. We estimate a 0.7% rise in headline retail sales, reflecting a rebound in auto sales and higher gasoline prices.
08:30 AM PPI final demand, February (GS +0.3%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.3%); PPI ex-food and energy, February (GS +0.2%, consensus +0.2%, last +0.5%); PPI ex-food, energy, and trade, February (GS +0.3%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.6%);
08:30 AM Initial jobless claims, week ended March 9 (GS 210k, consensus 217k, last 217k); Continuing jobless claims, week ended March 2 (GS 1,915k, last 1,906k)
10:00 AM Business inventories, January (consensus +0.2%, last +0.4%)
Friday, March 15
08:30 AM Empire State manufacturing survey, March (consensus -8.0, last -2.4)
08:30 AM Import price index, February (consensus +0.3%, last +0.8%)
09:15 AM Industrial production, February (GS +0.5%, consensus flat, last -0.1%); Manufacturing production, February (GS +0.4%, consensus +0.3%, last -0.5%); Capacity utilization, February (GS 78.7%, consensus 78.5%, last 78.5%): We estimate industrial production increased 0.3%, as strong oil and gas and mining production outweigh weak natural gas and electricity production. We estimate capacity utilization increased to 78.7%.
10:00 AM University of Michigan consumer sentiment, March preliminary (GS 77.6, consensus 77.3, last 76.9): University of Michigan 5-10-year inflation expectations, March Preliminary (GS 3.0%, consensus 2.9%, last 2.9%): We expect the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index increased to 77.6 in the preliminary March reading. We estimate the report’s measure of long-term inflation expectations rose 0.1pp to 3.0%, reflecting higher gasoline prices and the higher-than-expected price data reported in February.
