Month: July 2024

Authored by Donald Jeffries via substack,

I get complaints from people that I concentrate too much on Donald Trump. Basically, the message is, “But what about Biden?” I do write more about Trump, because he’s the face of the perceived opposition. The only Emmanuel Goldstein in town. I assume everyone reading me understands just who and what Joe Biden is.

But people might not remember quite everything about Joe Biden’s lengthy career as a beloved resident of the Washington, D.C. swamp that Trump promised to drain. Biden was first elected as a U.S. Senator from Delaware in 1973. Even I was very young then. In 1981, the great “liberal” senator strongly supported the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, passed in the wake of CIA whistleblower Philip Agee’s disclosures about the Agency is his best-selling book Inside the Company. Biden declared that “I do not think anybody has any doubt about Mr. Agee. We should lock him away in my opinion.” The good senator really liked locking people up, it seems. As a strong supporter of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, he took credit for a draconian provision that mandated a five year sentence for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine.

Little did Biden know that, decades later his own troubled son Hunter would be caught with enough crack cocaine to garner a long prison sentence under the original 1986 Act, which was softened a bit in 2010. With every ounce of “liberal” ardor that he could muster, Biden bragged at the time, “If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law — with leadership of Sen. Thurmond and myself and others — a law that says: you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation, you get nothing, other than five years in jail. Judge doesn’t have a choice.” Senator Biden also authored the horrendous 1994 crime bill which featured “three strike you’re out” and mandatory sentencing, significantly increasing the prison population.

A JFK assassination researcher attended a Joe Biden seminar in 2005. He was able to briefly question Biden about the assassination. As recounted on a discussion forum, this was the short conversation: “Senator Biden, do you believe JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy?” Answer:  “No.” “So do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, killed President Kennedy?” Answer:  “Yes.” This is hardly surprising, of course, but reflects Biden’s ironclad establishment mindset. In 2019, the American Prospect published a piece headlined, “Joe Biden’s Love Affair With the CIA.” Biden was very helpful to Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, who praised him in a classified early 1980s memo to his intelligence staff. Biden would state, in a speech at Stanford, that the intelligence community had been compromised by leaks.

So Joe Biden was never one of the Democratic Party politicians I admired back in my misguided youth. He wasn’t going to expose the abuses of the intelligence agencies, like a Frank Church. He wasn’t interested in any “sunshine” laws that would make it easier for the People to be informed about their government. His concern then about “leaks” would evolve into concern over whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. In a January, 2023 tweet, Snowden would comment on Biden’s classified documents scandal, accusing the Department of Justice of suppressing the story until after the election, and declared, “Worth noting that the President seems to have absconded with more classified documents than many whistleblowers.” Biden is on the record as saying that Snowden should “face the consequences of his actions.”

Following Julian Assange’s release from exile last week, some assumed that the Biden administration had been responsible for it, given Biden’s recent statements that he was “considering” dropping the charges against the Wikileaks founder. However, the White House would issue a statement maintaining that they had not played a role in Assange’s plea deal. A deal which, incidentally, made the disappearance of all those troubling DNC emails a prerequisite for his release. So if you’re tempted to think that perhaps, after over fifty years of serving the interests of the corrupt Deep State, Joe Biden finally did something good, you’d be wrong. Why spoil a perfect record? Even Barack Obama commuted Bradley/Chelsea Manning’s sentence.

So we get to the Joe Biden we’ve come to know and love.

Apparently beset with relatively early dementia, he has bumbled, mumbled, and stumbled his way through an embarrassing series of verbal and physical gaffes. He has also avoided being held accountable for some pretty blatant criminality. As far back as when Hunter and his late brother Beau were little boys, Daddy Joe had a disturbing habit of “crashing” into vacant mansions that were on the market. They literally sometimes entered through unlocked windows. As a long time realtor, I can tell you that it’s pretty simple to make a call and schedule an appointment to see a property, especially a vacant one. It is unknown why the then United States Senator engaged in such bizarre behavior, but it speaks to some kind of odd personality flaw.

Hunter wasn’t the only Biden offspring to become addicted to the drugs the young senator wanted to crack down on (pun intended). Biden’s daughter Ashley wrote openly about the “inappropriate” showers her father took with her when she was a young girl in her journal. This triggered an unfortunate promiscuity in her, as well as an addiction to illegal drugs. We only know about this journal, because Ashley left it behind at a drug rehab center, and the woman who found it sold it to Truth Veritas. Being as we are living in America 2.0, and not some vaunted “democracy,” the woman was prosecuted and served thirty days in jail. Joe Biden remains unscathed by what should be a very serious scandal. It’s not like he bounced his daughter on his knee, like Donald Trump and every other father has.

Left free to his own devices, Creepy Joe resumed his long history of inappropriately touching little girls, much of it documented on videotape. Our beloved president has a rarely known perverse kink for sniffing their hair. Again, this is all clearly shown on film. If only the Washington Generals were an actual opposition party, they might want to use those damning film clips in their campaign ads. I don’t know what kind of evidence existed against any pedophiles who were given long prison sentences, but how much more incriminating can you get than an adult grabbing the undeveloped chests of minor girls, while their facial expressions register their discomfort? Sure, there is supposedly the filmed rape of a ten year old girl by Hunter Biden on his laptop, but that’s been sent down the memory hole along with those DNC emails.

Men have been prosecuted and given lengthy prison sentences for less clear evidence of child abuse than what can be seen freely online, in numerous past instances, from our current president. Either this is the heinous crime most of us think it is, or it’s no big deal. So release all the pedophiles. Unless you have video of them actually raping children. Like the alleged rape of a child on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or the still never seen videos of our glorious troops raping Iraqi boys while their mothers scream. Seymour Hersh claims to have seen them. Some pedophiles are more equal than others. Just keep repeating, “grab ‘em by the pussy” and click your heels three times. Creepy Joe’s rather sensual kissing of his own granddaughter was also notable. Maybe he forgot it was his granddaughter. Or he was hoping to shower with her.

Biden was caught, again, on videotape, boasting about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired. Who was looking into his son’s (and his) financial improprieties in that wonderful democracy presided over by a former actor, who has a legendary proficiency for penis piano playing. That’s pretty damning evidence. But no, it was Donald Trump instead, who was impeached because of a “perfect” telephone conversation to the very same crisis actor/comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For asking the astute pianist to look into any possible corruption by the Bidens. I think there’s an obvious message there. But that’s what happens when you play for the Washington Generals. It’s a Harlem Globetrotters thing, you wouldn’t understand.

I have written many articles over the years for the American Free Press, detailing Hunter Biden’s financial shenanigans in Ukraine. They are intermingled with the “Big Guy,” the same timeless statesman who has sniffed more girlish hair than any other political leader in the history of the formerly free world. Hunter Biden’s emails reveal that the “Big Guy”- his loving father- always got a cut of the booty, no matter what. Just like court historian hero William Sherman, who always got a cut of all the personal property his Union troops stole from southern civilians. As my new book American Memory Hole will show, this theft is a grand American tradition going back at least to the Mexican-American War. The Bidens obviously know their history.

Joe Biden, when he has been comprehensible, has said some remarkable things during his terrifying presidency. How many times has he claimed that “White Supremacy” represents “the greatest danger to democracy?” Now, keep in mind this is the corrupt elite’s definition of democracy, not any form of government the ancient Greeks would recognize. That speech he made, with the bright red backdrop and sinister lighting, was perhaps the worst speech any U.S. president has ever made, when factoring in the background. All that was missing was the hammer and sickle, or a Lenin-style goatee on Creepy Joe’s chin. The Stupid Party objected a bit to that speech, in their weak, customary manner, but it should have offended every American. If only the sane remaining among us were allowed to be offended in America 2.0.

On occasion, Creepy Joe’s attention is distracted from the hair and undeveloped chests of little girls, onto adult women. Dr. Jill was an adult (I think) after all, when she started babysitting the Biden children. Maybe he loved her shampoo. But then there was Tara Reade. Reade accused then Senator Biden of doing something remarkably similar to what E. Jean Carroll would accuse Donald Trump of. Only Tara could recall the year it happened, unlike Carroll. And she has never been videotaped writhing around on the floor like a lunatic, unlike Carroll. I seriously doubt she has a dog named Tits or paints her trees blue, like Carroll does. Reade was ridiculed by the same state controlled press and feminists who believed Carroll. A ridiculous jury awarded Carroll millions of dollars. Reade fled to Russia for her own safety.

Hollywood and the kept media make fun of Trump’s sons. There are inferences about Eric being “special.” Riding the short bus. Those distasteful remarks are just fine, as long as they’re made against the “right” people. They are free to joke all they want about young Barron Trump, for instance, regarding whether he’s on the autistic spectrum. You know, the spectrum that didn’t exist until about thirty years ago. You’ll lose your medical license if you suggest there’s a connection there to all the massive increases in vaccines doled out to our children. But no comedian jokes about Ashley Biden’s numerous brushes with the law. Or the unmentioned Biden, Creepy Joe’s brother Frank, who has a crime record the sainted George Floyd would have envied. The “Big Guy” has a niece, Caroline, who also has had several run-ins with the law.

Have you heard anyone, including Fox News, Breitbart, or other conservative outlets, talk about the Biden crime family? Remember poor Billy Carter? He was ridiculed and considered a real embarrassment to the still living former peanut farmer. He never wracked up all the DUIs that Frank Biden has. But Billy Beer was pretty putrid, for those of you old enough to remember it. Even young Amy Carter and young Chelsea Clinton had their looks cruelly mocked by comedians. No comedian is about to mock Hunter Biden, famously photographed asleep with a crack pipe in his mouth, let alone Ashley Biden. Can you imagine what the hysterical shrews on The View would say if Ivanka Trump had written about inappropriate showers with her father?

Now, all Biden’s greatest crimes appear to have been committed before he developed dementia, Alzheimer’s, or whatever it is that he has. I doubt if Hunter or anyone else is even giving him his ten percent cut nowadays. Over the course of his presidency, Biden has been caught on film uttering inanities that often sound alien in nature. Maybe it’s the Reptile in him coming out. How many times have we seen him wandering off, like a misguided toddler. He did this recently at an international gathering, and despite the fact that the president of Italy was captured on film grabbing him by the arm, and leading him back to safety, Biden’s ridiculous DEI press secretary insisted that the video had been altered. His doddering was termed a “cheap fake,” or “deep fake,” depending on the source. Who can argue with that?

Joe Biden, in fact, has been so absurd in his role as president that many suggest he is a cheap or deep fake. Some say the real Biden died a while back, and has been replaced by a clone or robot. Boy, you’d think they could make a more realistic and competent clone or robot than that. It makes one cringe to watch him try to express himself. He reminds me very much of the Peter Sellers character in the film Being There. Although Biden is not known to have been mentally challenged during his life, and nothing he’s said as president could ever be mistaken for profundity, as was the case with the Sellers’ character. He is also prone to making his key points in a menacing whisper. No, his stutter isn’t a lifelong thing, as his old filmed speeches demonstrate. It is unknown at what age he began inappropriately touching little girls.

Biden has issued more racist comments than Donald Trump could ever dream up. He has stated that those Blacks who don’t vote for him are not really Black. He called inner city schools “jungles.” He compared poor students to White students. Senator Joe Biden helped put untold numbers of nonviolent Black crack cocaine addicts in prison. He simply makes up stories about his past, depending on his audience. He obviously didn’t go to a historically Black college, as he told a Black audience. He wasn’t practically raised in a synagogue, as he bragged to a Jewish audience. At least the “Corn Pop was a bad dude” story was funny. Fictional, but funny. Funnier than the millions of illegals he has opened the border to, flown around the country, and deposited in five star hotels. While our own homeless citizens crap in the streets.

Joe Biden’s “performance” in the presidential debate the other night exposed the serious problems he has with his faculties at this point. He was filmed after the debate, struggling, with the help of someone on each side, to navigate one step down off the stage. Dr. Jill, who is essentially his handler, was recorded congratulating him for “answering all the questions,” in the manner a mother would praise a preschooler for using the potty by himself. It is unclear if Joe Biden is potty trained now. Rumors persist that he has publicly pooped his pants, with the latest incident being at a Normandy commemoration ceremony. Those with TDS insist that Trump has done this as well, and wears adult diapers. Maybe neither of them is potty trained. No one can say that the American people aren’t offered the best and the brightest choices.

Exactly what record would Joe Biden run on? The billions given to Ukraine? Anyone who buys gas or shops at a grocery store knows that inflation is now worse than it has ever been in our lives. And yet Creepy Joe just cites phony statistics to claim otherwise. His administration is peopled with politically correct, sideshow circus freaks. While there is no known sword swallower, there was the bald, red dressed high ranking official who kept stealing women’s luggage at airports. And then there is our health czar Rachel Levine, who I suppose somehow “identifies” as a healthy person. The other day, the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gender fluids visited the White House. Vice presidential cackler Kamala Harris actually answered the door. You know George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be proud.

I don’t know what they’re planning to do with Biden.

The day after the debate, he sounded suspiciously more lucid. He’s done that before. Dementia doesn’t usually work that way. Maybe presidential dementia is different.

Perhaps we’ll get Gruesome Newsom. Or Hillary could stage a Brett Favre-like comeback. The sensational rumors about Michelle Obama actually being Big Mike, would cover all the DEI bases. It would represent a national “Woke” orgasm. They could have the “big reveal” in the Rose Garden. Or they could just opt to install Biden again. It’s not like he could be much less capable of the job than he’s been since his initial selection. He’ll have all the fawning press coverage he needs. His absurd persona will be off-limits to the late night comedians. No one better epitomizes the America 2.0 version of “democracy.”

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

House Republicans filed a lawsuit on July 1 against Attorney General Merrick Garland, seeking to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release the audiotapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden in his classified documents probe.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also asks the court to require the DOJ to hand over the audio of Mr. Hur’s interview with President Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who wrote two memoirs for him.

The legal action came after the House Republicans last month voted to hold Mr. Garland in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for tapes of Mr. Hur’s interview with the president. The White House has asserted executive privilege.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute the attorney general, citing the department’s “longstanding position” not to pursue criminal action against those who refuse to comply with subpoenas over which executive privilege has been claimed.

House Republicans sought material relating to Mr. Hur’s investigation into the president’s handling of classified material after the special counsel declined to recommend charges against President Biden.

Mr. Hur’s report, in reaching its conclusion not to go forward with charges, cited an assessment that President Biden would present to a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The Justice Department has handed over transcripts and notes on the interview and argues that it is not necessary to provide the tapes. Doing so would deter future presidents from cooperating with similar investigations, the DOJ said.

House Republicans have insisted that they need the tapes to verify the transcript’s accuracy and to confirm that Mr. Hur’s observation was justified.

The Justice Department and Democrats pushed back, contending that Republicans wanted the tapes solely for partisan reasons.

“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Ed Siskel, President Biden’s counsel, wrote to House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a May letter.

In its 56-page suit, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee contends that the Biden administration’s executive privilege claim is “frivolous.” The committee also argues that the president had waived privilege when it released a transcript of the interview to Congress.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Justice Department for Mr. Garland’s response to the lawsuit.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) this past week said that she would force a vote on an obscure measure, known as an inherent contempt resolution, which would direct the House sergeant at arms to arrest Mr. Garland for failing to comply with the subpoena.

The resolution is privileged, so the House will be forced to vote on it within two legislative days once she brings it to the floor. Ms. Luna had said she would bring it to the floor on June 28 but did not.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Ms. Luna’s office to ask when she will put it on the floor and why she did not do so on June 28.

According to Mr. Hur’s report, classified materials from 2009 about the war in Afghanistan were found at a Virginia home that President Biden rented and where he met with Mr. Zwonitzer to work on the two books.

The classified documents were eventually sent to Delaware.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Mr. Zwonitzer’s attorney, Louis Freeman, for comment.

Today was the start of the second half of the year, and Deutsche Bank’s thematic research team published its usual monthly performance review with this one covering June, Q2, and H1. We will go present the full version below, but first let’s take a look at some brief highlights (all USD) and additional comments:

• It may surprise some that silver led the way (+22.5%) in the first half, with other metals like gold (+12.8%) and copper (+12.9%) also high up the list. WTI oil (+13.8%) ensured that hard commodities packed out the top end of the sample in H1.

• The NASDAQ (+18.6% total return) and S&P 500 (+15.3%) had very good H1s powered by a +37.0% advance for the Mag-7 and a stunning +149.5% return for Nvidia. But the small-cap Russell 2000 only returned +1.7% in H1, and was down -3.3% in Q2.

• French assets slumped in Q2 following the snap election announcement. For instance, the Franco-German 10yr spread widened by +29bps over Q2, the biggest quarterly jump since Q4 2011 during the sovereign debt crisis. OATs were the worst performer in H1 in this sample (-6.8% in USD terms). French spreads have tightened a handful of basis points this morning though, as the chance of an overall majority for Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National have been reduced (according to markets) by a slight under-performance vs. polls, and news that other candidates may drop out in areas where they can help keep the RN out. The slight under-performance for the RN might be skewed by record turnout in urban areas which are traditionally liberal bastions. Additionally, the probability of an RN government has slightly increased after yesterday which is contrary to the current market narrative.

• As an interesting snippet on global inflation, agricultural commodities are continuing to fall back. Corn (-10.1%) was down for a 6th consecutive quarter in Q2, alongside declines for soybeans (-3.4%) and wheat (-1.2%). So potentially some relief on food prices ahead after a big increase over recent years.

• The weakness in the Japanese Yen showed no sign of letting up, and it’s now been the worst-performing G10 currency in both Q1 and Q2.

With the summary out of the way, here is a more extended look into the best and worst performing assets of the month, quarter and half.

Quarter in Review – The high-level macro overview

Markets got Q2 off to a pretty weak start. In April, there was growing concern about inflation, particularly after the US CPI report showed that core CPI was still running at +0.4% in March. That marked a third consecutive month when core CPI had been at +0.4%, raising fears that inflation was proving persistent. Moreover, geopolitical tensions were also heightened in the Middle East, and Iran launched a drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13, marking the first time there’d been a direct attack on Israel from Iran. Reports about a potential attack had already led to a selloff beforehand and on April 12, Brent crude oil prices peaked at their highs for the year above $92/bbl intraday. But as tensions eased and a further escalation didn’t occur, oil prices fell back again.

In May, markets put in a stronger performance, and the S&P 500 and the STOXX 600 both climbed to new records. That was supported by comments from Fed Chair Powell, who said that “I think it’s unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike.” So that eased concerns that monetary policy could be tightened further. US inflation also showed signs of easing, with core CPI slowing to +0.3% in the April data that was released in May. Alongside that, the geopolitical situation became calmer, and Brent crude oil prices fell back in May, after gains in the first four months of the year.

By June, rate cuts were increasingly in focus, and the ECB delivered their first rate cut since the pandemic, lowering their deposit rate by 25bps to 3.75%. The Bank of Canada also delivered their first rate cut of this cycle, meaning that 4 of the central banks with a G10 currency have now cut rates this year. Meanwhile in the US, the Fed didn’t cut rates in Q2, but the CPI release for May that was released in June showed the slowest monthly core CPI since August 2021. That helped to cement expectations that rate cuts were still on the horizon from the Federal Reserve, and at the June FOMC meeting, the median dot still pointed to one rate cut by the end of the year.

But despite the growing move towards rate cuts, sovereign bonds still struggled over Q2 as a whole, in part because investors were pricing in a more gradual cycle of rate cuts. For instance, at the end of Q1, 67bps of cuts were priced in by the Fed’s December meeting. But that was down to 44bps by the end of Q2. So sovereign bonds struggled to get much momentum, and the 10yr Treasury yield was up +20bps over the quarter to 4.40%.

Political developments were also back in focus from June, as the European Parliamentary elections took place at the start of the month. Significantly for markets, that then saw French President Macron announce that there would be a snap legislative election, with the first round taking place on June 30. That led to a notable selloff among French assets, and the Franco-German 10yr spread widened by +29bps in the week after the election announcement. That was the biggest weekly widening in the spread since the sovereign debt crisis in 2011. Moreover, the CAC 40 saw its worst weekly performance since March 2022. Over Q2 as a whole, the CAC 40 (-6.6%) saw its worst quarterly performance in two years, and the Franco-German 10yr spread widened by +29bps to 80bps. That is the biggest quarterly widening in the Franco-German 10yr spread since Q4 2011, when the Euro sovereign crisis was still ongoing.

Another theme of the quarter was the ongoing divergence between megacap stocks and the rest. For example, the Magnificent 7 was up by another +16.9% in Q2, which helped the S&P 500 to post a third consecutive quarterly gain of +4.3%. But there was weakness elsewhere, as the equal-weighted S&P 500 fell by -2.6%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 was down -3.3%. Meanwhile in Europe, the STOXX 600 was only up +1.6%, and in Japan, the Nikkei was also down -1.9%, after a very strong +21.6% gain in Q1.

Which assets saw the biggest gains in Q2?

• The Magnificent 7 : It was a very strong quarter for the Magnificent 7, which rose +16.9% in total return terms. Nvidia (+36.7%) advanced for a 7th consecutive quarter.

• Metals : It was generally a positive quarter for metals, with silver (+16.7%), platinum (+9.3%) and copper (+9.6%) all having their best performance in 6 quarters. Gold was also up +4.3% in its third consecutive quarterly gain.

Which assets saw the biggest losses in Q2?

• French assets : The announcement of a snap election by Emmanuel Macron led to a selloff for French assets. For example, the CAC 40 fell -6.6% in total return terms, while French OATs fell -2.6%.

• European sovereign bonds : Even though the ECB cut rates in June, investors moved to price in a more gradual pace of rate cuts over the months ahead, and sovereign bonds lost ground, including German bunds (-0.7%) and Italian BTPs (-1.5%).

• Japanese Yen : The Japanese Yen was the worst-performing G10 currency in Q2, which was the second consecutive quarter that’s happened. It weakened by -5.9% to 161 per US Dollar.

• Agricultural Commodities : The prices of several agricultural commodities continued to decline in Q2. That included corn (-10.1%), which fell for a 6th consecutive quarter, along with soybeans (-3.4%) and wheat (-1.2%).

Finally hereare the best and worst performing assets in local currency and USD terms, in June…

… in Q2…

… and in the first half.

Source: DB, full note available to professional subscribers.

Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals Exchange,

Nigeria is bringing its gold reserves home to keep it safe.

According to a report by The Star, Nigerian officials decided to repatriate the country’s gold in April “to mitigate risks associated with the weakening U.S. economy.”

“Economic indicators such as rising inflation, escalating debt levels, and geopolitical tensions have raised apprehensions among Nigerian policymakers about the stability of the U.S. financial system.”

Nigeria holds about 21 tons of gold in its reserves.

Economist Fatima Abubakar called the gold repatriation plan “a strategic decision,” and that the country was taking “proactive measures to safeguard its wealth and strengthen its financial resilience.”

Nigerian officials also said bringing gold home would reflect the country’s self-reliance.

“By bringing its gold reserves back within its borders, Nigeria not only asserts greater control over its financial assets but also demonstrates prudence in managing economic risks amidst global uncertainties.”

Nigeria isn’t alone in wanting to control its gold reserves and bring them home. India recently repatriated 100 tons of gold from vaults in the U.K.

Many countries have expressed concern about the U.S. and Western powers using gold and dollar reserves as a foreign policy weapon.

According to a World Gold Council survey in 2023, a “substantial share” of central banks expressed concern about potential sanctions after the U.S. and other Western countries froze almost half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and forex reserves in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. According to the WGC, 68 percent of the banks surveyed said they plan to keep their gold reserves within their country’s borders. That was up from 50 percent in 2020.

One anonymously quoted central bank official told Reuters, “We did have it [gold] held in London… but now we’ve transferred it back to our country to hold as a safe haven asset and to keep it safe.”

Invesco head of official institutions Rod Ringrow told Reuters this reflects a widely held view.

“‘If it’s my gold then I want it in my country,’ has been the mantra we have seen in the last year or so.”

There has been speculation that countries have been moving gold and other assets out of the U.S. in the wake of economic sanctions on Russia, but it has been difficult to confirm because the Federal Reserve refuses to release information about the amount of gold in its vaults.

In March, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dodged Rep. Alex Mooney’s (R-W.Va) questions about the central bank’s foreign gold holdings. Fed officials also refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records about such holdings.

As investigative reporter Ken Silva wrote, Headline USA filed a FOIA request with the Fed for records reflecting how much gold the Federal Reserve Bank of New York currently holds in its vault, as well as records reflecting the ownership stake that each of FRBNY’s central bank/government clients have in that gold following Powell’s evasive response. The FOIA request also sought records about the Fed’s gold holdings prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Fed denied the request.

The gold repatriation trend started long before the West slapped sanctions on Russia. In 2019, Poland brought home 100 tons of gold. Hungary and Romania also repatriated some of their gold reserves around that same time. In the summer of 2017, Germany completed a project returning roughly half of its gold reserves back inside its borders. In 2015, Australia launched efforts to bring half of its reserves home. The Netherlands and Belgium have also initiated repatriation programs.

This gold repatriation trend underscores the importance of holding physical gold free from counterparty risk.

If you store your gold and silver with a third party, you could lose your metal through theft, fraud, or an act of God. Of course, you could lose silver and gold stored in your home the same way (except for fraud), so you have to weigh the risk of using third-party storage and keeping large amounts of silver and gold at home.

If you opt for third-party vaulting, it is important to choose a trusted company.

Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao charts the top 10 countries by the most remittances sent, in current U.S. dollars, based on 2022 data from Knomad.

Specifically, these transfer totals shown represent personal remittances, or money sent between residents in one country to another, including personal transfers and compensation for work done abroad. It does not include, and is separate from, foreign investment.

Top 10 Countries by Personal Remittances Sent (2000-2022)

The U.S. has consistently been home to the world’s largest immigrant population (45 million people in 2022), a key reason for topping the ranks of sending money abroad over the last two decades.

As a result, countries with largest diasporas in the U.S. – including Indian, the Philippines, and Mexico – tend to be the biggest recipients of these flows.

Note: Figures rounded.

Similarly, immigrants make up nearly 80% of the population in the UAE (ranked #2 with $80 billion sent), the highest proportion of any country in the world.

Setting the countries sending the most money abroad side-by-side with those receiving money from abroad, reveals broad geographic patterns. Advanced economies (in North America and Europe) are the biggest senders to developing economies in Asia and Africa.

Finally, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg are considered offshore financial centers and can be used as intermediary stops in the movement of money through the world.

Why are personal remittances important anyway? To start, a staggering one billion people (roughly one out of eight people in the world) depend on money sent back home. In 2022, 200 million migrant workers sent $800 billion to their families in home countries. Three-quarters of the money received is spent on basic necessities like food, medical, and housing expenses.

Thus, personal remittances represent, perhaps, one of the biggest informal engines of social transformation.

Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

• EIA: U.S. Energy production rose 4% to nearly 103 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2023.

• Dry natural gas production increased 4% in 2023 and 58% since 2013 while crude oil production has grown 9% since 2022 and 69% since 2013.

• On the flip side, U.S. energy consumption fell 1% largely driven by a 17% decline in coal consumption.

For decades, the United States has been a net consumer of energy, using up more energy than it produces. However, a sharp increase in oil and gas production following the shale boom as well as the ongoing renewable energy revolution has helped change the energy trajectory over the past 15 years. And now the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that U.S. energy production exceeded consumption by record amounts in 2023. 

According to the EIA, U.S. Energy production rose 4% to nearly 103 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2023, a record for the country. On the other hand, energy consumption fell 1% to 94 quads during the same period, implying production exceeded consumption by 9 quads, the widest margin since 1949.  

Dry natural gas production increased 4% in 2023 and 58% since 2013 while crude oil production has grown 9% since 2022 and 69% since 2013. Meanwhile, renewable energy production rose 1% compared to the previous year and a 28% increase since 2013, hitting eight quads of energy. Solar energy production recorded an impressive 15% Y/Y growth in 2023 while wind production fell 2%.

On the flip side, U.S. energy consumption fell 1% largely driven by a 17% decline in coal consumption. Coal demand has been on a tailspin for years to its lowest level in more than a century thanks in large part to its shrinking role in electricity generation due to a high carbon footprint.

“Natural gas production has continued to increase despite lower prices because natural gas is produced as a byproduct of crude oil production. That’s especially true in the Permian Basin, which accounts for almost half of U.S. crude oil production,” said Chris Higginbotham, an EIA spokesperson.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Oil Price Rally Resumes

The oil price rally that had reversed course in recent weeks on demand concerns is now back on track. Brent crude price has increased to $86.60 per barrel at today’s close from $77.52 on June 4 while WTI has increased from $73.25 per barrel to $83.41 with oil demand exceeding expectations.

According to commodity analysts at Standard Chartered, global oil demand in April averaged 101.77 million barrels per day (mb/d), 470 thousand barrels per day (kb/d) higher than earlier forecasts. StanChart has reiterated its forecast that oil demand will hit an all-time high in June, with May demand projection revised 0.2 mb/d higher to 103.3 mb/d while the June projection has been revised 0.3 mb/d higher to 104.1 mb/d. 

Meanwhile, the big natural gas rally that kicked off in late April has now taken a breather. 

European natural gas futures have been trading in a narrow range around €35 per megawatt-hour as traders weigh ample storage levels against supply concerns. The long run of sub-par EU gas inventory builds continues, with inventories having lost ground relative to the five-year average on 57 of the past 62 days. According to the latest Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data, inventories stood at 85.25 billion cubic meters (bcm) on 16 June, a y/y decrease of 0.06 bcm and 12.93 bcm above the five-year average. The w/w build was 1.75 bcm, which is 1 bcm less than the five-year average. The move away from extreme surplus has combined with concerns over the viability of the remaining Russian flows into the EU to help support front-month Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) prices. Europe’s gas prices have settled in the EUR 33-36 per megawatt hour (MWh) range on 19 of the past 20 trading days. 

 U.S. natural gas futures fell below $2.61/MMBtu in Friday’s intraday session after the EIA’s storage build report. According to the report,  U.S. utilities injected 52 billion cubic feet of natural gas into storage last week, slightly below the expected 53 bcf build. U.S. gas inventories are now 20.6% above the seasonal norm. Natural gas prices are headed for a third consecutive week of declines due to increased output, as higher prices in recent weeks encouraged producers like EQT Corp. (NYSE:EQT) and Chesapeake Energy (NASDAQ:CHK) to resume drilling. Gas output in the Lower 48 states averaged 98.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in June, up from a 25-month low of 98.1 bcfd in May. On the demand side, hotter-than-normal weather is projected through at least July 12, maintaining high gas consumption for cooling purposes.

Fourth of July holiday travel is expected to reach a new record high in 2024, as more than 70 million Americans are forecast to hit the road or the skies to travel more than 50 miles for this year’s celebrations.

That’s according to projections from AAA who are predicting that 60.6 million Americans will take to the nation’s roads, while 5.7 million will take a plane and 4.6 million will travel by train or other means for Independence Day.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, that represents an increase of 5 percent from last year and 8 percent from 2019, as low air fares and gas prices are fueling Americans’ appetite for travel.

“With summer vacations in full swing and the flexibility of remote work, more Americans are taking extended trips around Independence Day,” Paula Twidale, Senior Vice President of AAA Travel said in a statement.

“We anticipate this July 4th week will be the busiest ever with an additional 5.7 million people traveling compared to 2019.”

All modes of transport are set to see a noticeable increase this year and road trips will continue to dominate Fourth of July travel.

85 percent of travelers are expected to drive to their holiday destination as gas prices have eased from the historic highs of the past two years.

Even though air travel is far less common for Independence Day celebrations, airports are expected to be busier than ever these days.

In the weeks leading up to July 4, the TSA reported several new records for performed safety checks at U.S. airports.

Via SchiffGold.com,

The idea of ‘wage slavery’ unfairly compares today’s suffering job market to historical chattel slavery, using outdated 19th-century arguments to criticize modern work. This oversimplification overlooks the significant improvements in workers’ freedom and their right to work.  Some will choose to work at a lower wage than accept a worse alternative.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

Unless you work for a bank or the government, you may not have noticed that June 19th was a federal holiday – Juneteenth – commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

This is a perfectly good thing to celebrate, of course, but alas, as Connor O’Keeffe has recently noted, since the day was declared a federal holiday in 2021, it has largely been used by leftwing groups to push ever larger amounts of government intervention in favor of the Left’s favorite interest groups.

For example, among the “property is theft” crowd, the end of chattel slavery is framed as merely a small part of the larger “ongoing struggle“ to abolish so-called “wage slavery.”

The Origins of “Wage Slavery”

The idea that wage earners are “slaves” of one sort or another is certainly not new. Consider, for example, this paragraph from communist Mikhail Bakunin, writing in the late 1860s:

Slavery can change its form and its name—its basis remains the same. This basis is expressed by the words: being a slave is being forced to work for other people—as being a master is to live on the labour of other people. In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. … to-day they are called “wage-earners”. The position of these latter is much more honourable and less hard than that of slaves, but they are none the less forced by hunger as well as by the political and social institutions, to maintain by very hard work the absolute or relative idleness of others. Consequently, they are slaves.

When Bakunin wrote these words, however, the concept of the “wage slave” was already decades old. It is likely that the first anti-capitalists to use the term were conservatives, and not socialists like Bakunin.

This was true in both Britain and in the United States.

When it came to wage labor, many British conservatives aggressively opposed the rise of the industrial workforce, condemning factory work as a form of slavery and tying the industrialists to the supporters of chattel slavery in the West Indies and the American South where slavery remained legal. In efforts to make these comparisons stick, conservative critics of industrialization invented new terms like “wage slavery,” “factory slaves,” and “white slavery.” Much of the conservatives’ terminology and their arguments would later be adopted by socialists. These terms were valuable in that time period because at the time opposition to chattel slavery within the British public had enjoyed considerable success, culminating with the 1834 Slavery Abolition Act.

In the antebellum United States, slave-owning conservatives used similar tactics in an effort to portray chattel slavery as a system that was more moral than free labor. Although advocates for slavery often fancied themselves the defenders of civilization against “socialists, communists, red republicans, [and] Jacobins“ they often agreed with Marxists and other socialists when it came to critiquing the capitalist wage system. While slavery advocates naturally rejected the supposed egalitarian aspects of various groups of socialists and communists, all could agree that capitalist employers exploited their workers and reduced them to a pitiable state of scratching out a subsistence while the employer pocketed all the surplus.

On both sides of the Atlantic, conservatives argued—without any factual basis—that wages are repeatedly pushed down to subsistence levels by conspiracies among employers. The conservatives also often repeated the old canard that workers are never really free to leave their jobs because the choice workers face is between doing anything and everything employers demand on the one hand, and starvation on the other hand.

Why Wage Slaves Don’t Exist

The conservative ideologies of old, of course, are now politically irrelevant, and the modern threat to markets comes from the Left. In terms of theory, however, remarkably little has changed since the days of Bakunin, even if the standard of living of workers has obviously grown far beyond what nineteenth-century critics could possibly comprehend.

At the core of the claim, whether made by slavedrivers or communists, is the idea that workers are “forced by hunger” to work ceaselessly without an opportunity to bid up wages.

Or, as Mises summarizes the argument in Human Action:

It has been asserted that a job-seeker must sell his labor at any price, however low, as he depends exclusively on his capacity to work and has no other source of income. He cannot wait [because he faces starvation if there is any delay in employment] and is forced to content himself with any reward the employers are kind enough to offer him. This inherent weakness makes it easy for the concerted action of the masters to lower wage rates. They can, if need be, wait longer, as their demand for labor is not so urgent as the worker’s demand for subsistence.

Mises goes on to explain a variety of problems with this claim, including this:

It has been shown that it is not true that the job-seekers cannot wait and are therefore under the necessity of accepting any wage rates, however low, offered to them by the employers. It is not true that every unemployed worker is faced with starvation; the workers too have reserves and can wait; the proof is that they really do wait. On the other hand waiting can be financially ruinous to the entrepreneurs and capitalists too. If they cannot employ their capital, they suffer losses. Thus all the disquisitions about an alleged “employers’ advantage” and “workers’ disadvantage” in bargaining are without substance.

That latter point is certainly key. It is not the case that employers are able to casually “outwait” workers. Rather, there is great pressure on employers to employ their capital—which requires workers—quickly.

When Mises notes that “it has not been shown” that workers will always take whatever wages are offered—this is not wishful thinking on Mises’s part. Were it true that employers could constantly force down wages, then we would not find that workers’ real wages have increased immensely since the eighteenth century. Economic historians have shown this again and again. The “immiseration of the workers” thesis is simply wrong.

We can further demonstrate Mises’s claim with the fact that so many American workers choose to simply not work at all. Recent research estimates that as many as seven million men of prime age (i.e, 25-54 years old) have left the workforce altogether. How can they afford to live? While it’s true that some are on government benefits, the vast majority do not collect benefits in amounts that could even come close to rivaling the income that could be had from ordinary employment. Nor are such amounts sufficient to maintain even a lower-middle-class lifestyle. The fact is these potential workers chose to not work at all and instead primarily live off the incomes of parents, spouses and girlfriends. Yet, if all workers were on the edge of starvation and subsistence living, it would not be possible for them to also support do-nothing male housemates. The workers themselves would barely be making enough to feed themselves, and these male non-workers would be living in a constant state of near-starvation. This clearly is not the case.

If it were impossible for workers to miss even a few days of employment, lest they face starvation, there would be virtually zero openings in minimum-wage jobs. Even casual observation, however, shows that the local burger joint often has open positions.

Another reason the wage-slave argument fails is the fact that—assuming there is even a moderate amount of market competition among firms—employers are motivated to expand production so as to increase market share. Employers are thus incentivized to increase worker productivity. To increase productivity, workers then seek the best workers and “poach” them from other businesses. This process bids up wages.

Historical experience points to many examples. In The Rise and Fall of American Growth, historian Robert Gordon writes:

By 1914 [compared to 1906] the average nominal manufacturing wage had increased by 30 percent from seventeen cents per hour to twenty-two cents per hour, which translated to $2.04 per day. Consider the sensation created when Henry Ford announced early in 1914 that henceforth the base wage in his Highland Park factory would be $5 per day. His ulterior motive was to reduce labor turnover combined with a bit of altruism. Labor turnover was an endemic problem at the time, due in part to the reliance of manufacturing plants on immigration workers who were not yet married and planned to move on to another town whenever news came of better wages of working conditions. For instance, the superintendent of a mine in western Pennsylvania alleged that he had hired 5,000 workers in a single year to sustain his desired work force of 1,000. The fact that unskilled work in manufacturing plants required little or no training made it easy for immigrant workers who were dissatisfied with one type of work to quit and move to another town and try something different.

Clearly, workers are not “forced” to remain with any particular employer or face starvation. Wage workers have options. Free labor—unlike slaves—is free to employ their freedom-to-leave in ways designed to reduce their reliance on any single source of income. Workers are free to start their own businesses—and many do. Although many point to the decline of “mom and pop” retail outlets as evidence of a lack of entrepreneurial activities, the fact is that self-employment in the service economy is very robust. There is no lack of small-time service-oriented businesses in industries ranging from accounting to auto repair to construction, and beyond.

Moreover, workers are free to pool their resources to cope with rising costs of living. Workers are free to create communes or simply live in multi-generation households—thus reducing per-capita rent costs—as many of our ancestors did before the twentieth century. Actual slaves are not free to do any of these things.

Another key point is an obvious moral distinction. The true reality of actual slavery is suggested by the fact that it has always been morally permissible for a chattel slave to kill his own master at any time. Given that chattel slavery is a form of kidnapping and false imprisonment, it is simply an act of self-defense when a slave responds with deadly force against his kidnappers. (Whether or not it is prudent to kill one’s master in a place where slavery is protected by law is another matter.)

It should strike us as absurd, on the other hand, to claim that the owner of the local Taco Bell has “kidnapped” the workers who staff the drive-thru. Moreover, it is clear that countless workers who have worked in these minimum wage jobs at one time or another have moved on to other jobs with much, much higher wages. Are these former fast-food workers runaway slaves? Clearly not.

Now, one might point out that we everywhere find a variety of laws and regulations that hamper the ability of workers to start their own businesses, reduce their cost of living, and otherwise assert independence from existing employers. In such cases, however, one cannot say that it is the market that has produced such handicaps for workers. Rather, it is the state that imposed these limitations on workers. If the realities of wage work under this interventionist system produce some sort of “slavery” at all, then we can only accurately describe the victims as something akin to “regime slaves” quite separate from any concept of wage slavery.

And yet, the idea of the “wage slave” persists as the perennial refrain of the anti-capitalist.

A woman from Seattle has now officially been charged with trying to influence the outcome of a Federal trial by dropping off $120,000 in cash at the home of a juror. 

31 year old Ladan Mohamed Ali left the cash along with instructions to convince others to acquit the defendants, according to a report from KOMO.

KOMO reported that “the bribe also included a set of instructions to the juror to ‘inject racism into the case’ and to use the Feeding Our Future defendants’ status as immigrants to gain sympathy from other jurors.”

Now, she, along with her co-conspirators Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, Said Shafii Farah, 42, and 24-year-old Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, will be defendants themselves.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew M. Luger commented: “These defendants engaged in a chilling attack on our justice system. They sought to buy a juror and use her to infiltrate the jury with their own false arguments – arguments that had nothing to do with the evidence or the law.”

Prosecutors added: “As part of the scheme, the conspirators decided to target Juror 52 because she was the youngest juror and they believed her to be the only juror of color. The conspirators conducted online research to obtain Juror 52’s personal information, including her home address and information about her background and family members.” 

“They conducted surveillance of Juror 52 to confirm her home address and obtain information about Juror 52’s daily habits,” they said.

The indictment read: “Ladan Ali handed the gift bag to a relative of juror 52 and explained there would be more money if juror 52 voted to acquit the defendants.”

“Fortunately for all of us, juror 52 could not be bought and she terminated their scheme. It is an obvious and blatant attempt to enflame the jury so they disregard their duty to render justice based on the evidence. Through this blueprint for acquittal, the defendants made it clear they wanted to infiltrate the jury not only with a bribe, but with a well-thought out plan to corrupt our system and undermine the rule of law.”

On June 2, the night before closing arguments in the trial, Ali and Farah drove to a juror’s house with bribe money in gift bags, according to the indictment.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota told KOMO News that Ladan Ali is not in custody and is expected to self-surrender for an initial federal court appearance later this week.

ABC News reported that this trial was the first in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, where dozens are accused of misusing federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic to buy luxury items.

The DOJ has charged 47 defendants in the $250-million fraud scheme involving misappropriated and laundered funds from the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” 

– Often attributed to Abraham Lincoln

After last Thursday’s debate, Biden himself laid to rest the Democratic lie that he was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America other than apparently the easy task of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief in charge of our nuclear codes.

In 2019, Democratic primary candidates often hit rival Joe Biden for his apparent senior moments and incoherence.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden often became in bizarre fashion animated and nasty (“you ain’t black”/“fat”/“lying dog-faced pony soldier”/“junkie”).

His “corn pop” stories were grotesque and had a senile accentuation of his earlier “super-predator” and “clean” black riffs.

As president, his mental decline progressed geometrically, in the sense that every three months, Biden became far, far worse than during the prior 90 days. His handlers long ago had determined that masking his feebleness at the expense of the security and safety of the nation was a small price to pay to retain power.

What followed was the most comprehensive deceit in presidential history, analogous to insisting that frail and dying FDR in 1944 was just fine as the November election approached or that Woodrow Wilson was expertly running the country as he lay bedridden and near comatose.

Any who questioned the vigorous Biden narrative was trashed as “ageist.”

Special counsel Robert Hur was dubbed a “hack” for accurately describing Biden as so amnesiac he would win nullification acquittal from a sympathetic jury.

An array of court sycophants periodically gave interviews, insisting that the robust Biden was smarter and wiser than ever. His press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, helped coin a new slur, “cheap fake,” for any who collated video and audio clips demonstrating that Biden was obviously non compos mentis. Would she say the same today after the about-face CNN panelists reviewed Biden’s serial debate lapses to support their now-opportune advocacy that he not run for reelection? Would she wish to be a passenger in a car driven by Biden?

In sum, the “dynamic Biden” farce was finally laid to rest by a debate, but not before it had served the original leftist Faustian bargain. Under the guise of COVID, an enfeebled and stationary Biden outsourced his entire 2020 campaign to toady journalists and surrogate politicians.

His task was to pose from his basement as the uniter, ‘good ol’ Joe from Scranton,’ serving as the pseudo-moderate veneer for the most far left agenda in recent history. In the bargain, Joe and Jill enjoyed the privileges of power and status, while they farmed out the presidency to an array of former Obama subordinates and the hard left of what is left of the old Democratic Party.

The useful lie continued throughout his presidency, escalating in direct proportion to Joe’s mounting stumbles, brain freezes, rambling, and incomprehensible speech. When our president said something either outrageous or unfathomable, the public was to assume that it was intemperate to attribute his failures to senility.

So, the nation became acculturated to deciphering about 60 percent of what he said and writing off the rest to his never-to-be-spoken-of disability. It was the cognitive bookend to the ruse that FDR was able to stand and walk—although far worse because being wheel-chair bound is not a limitation for a president, whereas cognitive incapacity of Biden’s magnitude most certainly is.

The Biden lie was the crown jewel of a number of other left-wing/media fabrications. The more they spread, the more they seemed absurd, and the more they were refuted—so all the more others took their place and the more their promulgators never apologized but simply moved on to their next one. The common denominator was that all the lies, during their existence, were useful to the progressive project.

The Russian collusion hoax helped lose Trump the 2016 popular vote. Its resumption during his presidency ate up 22 months of his administration during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller farce.

The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election. But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing “51 intelligence authorities” who insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.

We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family’s intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer’s texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot. The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity—and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.

What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden’s campaign foreign policy guru, Anthony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse. He enlisted former CIA grandee Mike Morell, who then rounded up on spec the confessed lying duo of John Brennan and James Clapper, who in turn drafted still more deceivers, among them the once esteemed Leon Panetta.

And the lie worked perfectly as envisioned, far better than even Russian “collusion.” The nation was deceived into believing that the “asset” Trump was reduced once again to colluding with Putin to enlist his former KGB soldiers to smear the upright Biden family and thus warp yet another election.

Note that all these lies were never retracted. No one ever apologizes. No one is ever punished, even when the lie is given under oath. No one ever has any regrets. And no one ever has any hesitation to lie again, given the utility of the prior untruth.

We were told by the deceitful Alejandro Mayorkas that the border was “secure” as he deliberately destroyed it and welcomed in over 10 million illegal aliens. That lie survived even the absurdity of years of nightly news clips (“cheap fakes?”) of thousands swarming an open border. And it died only when the 2024 election approached and the Biden administration read polls showing that a vast majority wanted the border closed and illegal entrants deported. Then suddenly, the lie that the border was secure transmogrified into the back-up lie that “Republicans would not help us close the now-insecure border.” Translated into Orwellian terms, the border that was crossed by 10 million was always secure but could have been made even more secure had Republicans joined Democrats to secure what was already “secure.”

We live in an era of lies. Sometimes they are purely political, like the Charlottesville “both sides” yarn. And sometimes they change history, like the fabrications that bats and pangolins, not the communist Chinese Wuhan virology lab, birthed the COVID-19 virus, or the Anthony Fauci contortion that his offices did not fund and help out, stealthily and in circumvention of U.S. law, deadly gain-of-function virology research in communist China.

Yet another lie was institutionalized: the January 6 riot was a full-fledged, carefully planned armed insurrection to overthrow the government. In contrast, the four months in 2020 of killing, assault, arson, and looting that saw over 35 dead, 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, $2 billion in damage, and a federal courthouse, a police precinct and a historic church torched were “cries of the heart” from the oppressed and victimized.

Those untruths ensured that hundreds of mostly naïve protestors who showed up in the capitol soon became convicted felons serving long sentences, while the 14,000 arrested for the 2020 mayhem were mostly released as overzealous but otherwise sympathetic activists.

These lies changed the course of the nation. They are birthed by the incestuous marriage of a Washington-New York political culture and a corrupt media.

The purveyors are Juvenal’s “who will police the police.” They are the administrative overseers in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the various cabinets and agencies. They feel they are exempt from any consequences for the damage they do, given that in their day jobs they operate as judges, jury and executioners.

Finally, while all governments lie, the left is far more adroit at it because, in their any-means-necessary/the-ends-justify-the-means credo, they spread supposedly good “lies” that stop the Hitlerian Trump, neuter the creepy deplorables/irredeemables/chumps/clingers or save the good people from the MAGA anti-vaxers and assorted yahoos.

Will the lies continue?

Indeed, they will thrive until the people slash the administrative state of its unaccountable and unelected “experts”; until they indict those in the future like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and their brethren who lie under oath or to federal investigators; until they ostracize and utterly discredit those like Mayorkas, Fauci, and the Bidens whose deceptions took hostage an entire nation; and until they tune out a bankrupt media, the power cord of the entire Pravda enterprise.