Month: August 2024

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. military drone strike has killed a senior leader of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-aligned group in Syria, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in an Aug. 23 statement.

The strike targeted Abu-‘Abd al-Rahman al-Makki, a prominent figure within the group’s Shura Council responsible for overseeing terrorist activities from Syria, per the announcement.

Hurras al-Din is a Syria-based force aligned with al-Quaeda that shares the terror group’s objective of attacking American and Western interests, CENTCOM said.

Al-Makki was riding a motorcycle when the precision strike hit, ending his long-standing role in the region’s jihadist networks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The operation highlights the ongoing U.S. commitment to eliminating threats posed by terrorist organizations in the Middle East, particularly those aligned with al-Qaeda.

“CENTCOM remains committed to the enduring defeat of terrorists in the CENTCOM area of responsibility who threaten the United States, its allies and partners, and regional stability,” Commander Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla said in a statement.

In recent weeks, U.S. forces have also engaged in multiple operations against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. On Aug. 22 and 23, CENTCOM forces successfully destroyed several Houthi-controlled missile systems and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that posed a direct threat to U.S. and coalition forces, as well as commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

These actions underscore the heightened state of alert in the region, particularly in light of growing concerns over potential Iranian attacks.

The Pentagon recently bolstered its military presence in the Middle East, deploying additional forces in response to intelligence suggesting that Iran and its proxies might launch significant attacks on Israel and U.S. interests. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia are among the reinforcements sent to the region.

“We have to be prepared for what could be a significant set of attacks, which is why, again, we have increased our force posture and capabilities in the region, even in just the last few days,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said earlier this month.

The deployment of additional U.S. military assets aims to deter aggression and boost defense capabilities for Israel amid escalating regional tensions. The potential for a broader conflict has increased following the assassinations of high-profile figures in the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas terrorist groups, fueling fears of a widening confrontation involving Iran.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Aug. 22 to discuss the ongoing exchanges of fire on the Israel–Lebanon border and the escalating threat from Iran and its proxies.

Austin emphasized that the United States is closely monitoring attack planning by Iran and its allied groups, ensuring that U.S. forces are well-positioned to defend Israel and protect American personnel and facilities across the region.

Talk about bad luck!

Former NAIAD Director Anthony Fauci – who outsourced risky COVID gain-of-function research to a shoddy Chinese lab, and was then put in charge of handling a COVID pandemic that broke out down the street from said lab – has somehow contracted the ultra-rare West Nile virus right on the heels of a nasty COVID infection.

Fauci, 83, was hospitalized for six days and is now at home recuperating from the mosquito-borne disease, the Washington Post reports.

“Tony Fauci has been hospitalized with a case of West Nile virus. He is now home and is recovering. A full recovery is expected,” said a spokesperson.

According to the report, Fauci has no idea how he got West Nile – a mosquito-borne illness that can cause fever, body aches, diarrhea and rash – and for which there is no vaccine or treatment.

Amazingly, there have been just 216 human cases of West Nile reported across 33 states so far this year, according to the CDC. Last year, 1,800 people were sent to the hospital with West Nile, which killed 182 people.

Earlier this month, the 83-year-old revealed that he caught COVID for a third time despite having been “vaccinated and boosted six times.”

Dr. Fauci has COVID again for the third time and has been vaccinated and boosted six times

pic.twitter.com/Gsdz9bDCbP

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 12, 2024

So in late September / early August, Fauci catches COVID. Then he somehow catches the ultra-rare West Nile virus and is hospitalized. What are the odds?

In 2021, Fauci famously said “If you get vaccinated, you are protected,” and “When people get vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not gonna get infected.”

What are the chances a guy who’s clearly comfortable lying… is lying again?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

There is perhaps nothing more tiresome and embarrassing as the theatrical pearl clutching of leftist media propaganda. For three years the public had to deal with the incessant drone of media fear mongering over the covid pandemic, an event which turned out to be a nothing-burger that 99.8% of the population on average would easily survive. After the 2020 elections we have been inundated with narratives about how conservatives are a “threat to democracy” – A democracy which progressives don’t even believe in as the recent DNC coup against Joe Biden proves.

The latest evolution of the democracy narrative is that free speech (and probably Russia) is the root evil behind civil unrest in western countries. The notion of thought crime is making its way to the forefront of the establishment tool box and this suggests we are entering the next stage of authoritarianism – Open criminalization of speech.

The Guardian in the UK is fully onboard with this development. The media outlet is on the warpath against Elon Musk and X (formerly known as Twitter) after Musk defied European and UK officials and their demands for censorship. In an article titled ‘Inciting Rioters In Britain Was A Test Run For Elon Musk. Just See What He Plans For America’, the platform launches into a tirade of delusional progressive talking points, a word salad designed to distract from the reality that what they are actually calling for is the death of free speech.

The Guardian argues:

“…Back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations.”

“In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon…”

“The presidential election is three months away. What if the billionaire contests the result? What if he decides democracy is overrated…?”

“…What Musk – the new self-appointed Lord of Misrule – has done is to rip off the mask. He’s shown that you don’t even have to pretend to care. In Musk’s world, trust is mistrust and safety is censorship. His goal is chaos. And it’s coming.”

The most important question that The Guardian and their leftist ilk never address is this: If a democracy relies on mass censorship and thought crime policies in order to function, if it relies on “protecting” the public from unfortunate truths, then is it really worth saving?

I and millions of other would argue no – It’s not worth saving. That “democracy” is broken and corrupt and should be wiped from the face of the Earth before it destroys the very culture it claims to protect.

The political left continues to prove it is emotionally stunted and frantic, relying on lies and self-induced terror to drive its base of supporters forward on the path the gatekeepers (globalists) prefer. If you’ve ever tried to reason with a screaming toddler hellbent on getting what it wants, then you know what it’s like trying to reason with leftists.

The hyper-emotion of the left is an easy lever for the elites to manipulate, and it’s not relegated to the US. We’ve seen the same trend in Europe and the UK. There’s an accelerating panic in Britain as the working class public (most of them patriots) protested in large numbers across the nation against open borders. Almost 70% of the UK populace is against current policies on mass immigration, specifically from the third-world. The Brexit vote was based primarily on the UK public’s opposition to the forced mass immigration agenda of the EU.

Yet, the self-described “defenders” of democracy have no interest in the public voice. They only care about majority concerns if those concerns run parallel to their agenda.

This refusal to take public concerns on third-world migrants seriously, combined with the ongoing two-tier policing system which seeks to hide migrant crime statistics, has led directly to the protests and riots we have seen this past month. Let’s be clear: It’s government officials in the UK that are to blame for the violence. They are the culprits.

The same goes for the riots of January 6th, an event which started out peaceful and was then triggered to react violently after Capitol police began shooting the crowd with rubber bullets and throwing tear gas grenades into their midst. You can only poke the bear for so long before the bear wakes up and claws your face off.

Of course, when the bear does attack, play the victim and be sure not to tell anyone how you provoked it. It’s the kind of gaslighting conservatives and patriots have been dealing with for the duration and the latest events in the UK suggest it’s not going to end anytime soon.

The Guardian is, in a way, testing the waters of totalitarianism by moving away from the old-school rationale of the “greater good.” They touch on it briefly, but their core argument here is that the system is sacrosanct no matter how corrupt it might be. Those in power and their policies cannot be criticized or protested because, well, they are the elites and we just have to trust that they know what’s best for us.

If we interfere with them in any way, collapse will befall us and chaos will reign supreme. And we don’t want that, now, do we?

Maybe we do. Maybe it’s time for the system as it stands today to go down. Maybe we should stop allowing the beneficiaries of the two-tiers system to hide behind the thin veneer of democracy. After all, their version of democracy is simply incremental tyranny. They’ve proven this is the end game in the UK (in case anyone had previous doubts).

At bottom, it’s not the job of Big Tech conglomerates or government officials to police public speech. Their positions are entirely predicated on their ability to serve the public interest and this includes ALL of the public, not just progressives. From what I have seen so far, Elon Musk’s defiance is a natural reaction to incompatible government. Musk is a symptom of a greater movement, not the cause.

The gatekeepers want to make it all about one man, or a handful of men. They want you to focus on Musk, or Trump, because they don’t want to admit the truth: That the real threat they want to neutralize is YOU, along with millions of other conservatives and independents. You are the great danger to their agenda.

If a specific political leadership is not able to offer a good argument as to why they should exist, then maybe they shouldn’t. If a system needs to be replaced, then it will be and there’s nothing that progressive hand-wringers and globalists from Davos can do about it. They are not necessary. They are not the future. They are only holding us back.

Authored by Alex Pollock via The American Institute for Economic Research,

In We Need to Talk About Inflation, his thoughtful, accessible tour of the history, theories, politics and future of inflation, Stephen King warns us that:

“Inflation is never dead.”  

He is right about that, and that blunt reminder alone justifies the book. 

The book begins, “In 2021, inflation emerged from a multi-decade hibernation.” Well, inflation had not really been in hibernation, but rather was continuing at a rate which had become considered acceptable. It was worry about inflation that had been hibernating. People found themselves caught up in the runaway inflation of 2021-2023, a wake-up call. As the book explores at length, that explosive inflation had been unexpected by the central banks, including the Federal Reserve, making their forecasts and assurances look particularly bad and proving once again that their knowledge of the future is as poor as everybody else’s. 

Now, in the third quarter of 2024, after historically fast hikes in interest rates, the current rate of inflation is less. But average prices continue going up, so the dollar’s purchasing power, lost to that runaway inflation, is gone forever. Inflation continues and has continued to exceed the Fed’s 2-percent “target” rate. And the Fed’s target itself is odd: it promises to create inflation forever. The math of 2-percent compound shrinkage demonstrates that the Fed wants to depreciate the dollar’s purchasing power by 80 percent in each average lifetime. Somehow the Fed never mentions this. 

King shows us that such long-term disappearance of purchasing power has happened historically. Chapter 2, “A History of Inflation, Money and Ideas,” has a good discussion, starting with the debate between John Locke and Isaac Newton, of the history, variations and continuing relevance of the quantity theory of money. It also contains an instructive table of the value of the British pound by century from 1300 to 2000. The champion century for depreciation of the pound was the twentieth. The pound began as the dominant global currency and ended it as an also-ran, while one pound of 1900 had shriveled in value to two pence by 2000. The century included the Great Inflation of the 1970s, during which British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced, the book relates, that “he hoped to bring inflation down to 10 percent by the end of 1975 and under 10 percent by the end of 1976.” His hopes were disappointed, as King sardonically reports: “The actual numbers turned out to be, respectively, 24.9 percent and 15.1 percent.”

These inflationary times need to be remembered, as should numerous hyperinflations. Best known is the German hyperinflation of 1921-23, the memory of which gave rise to the famous anti-inflationist regime of the old Bundesbank. (It was once wittily said that “Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank” — however, this does not apply to its successor, the European Central Bank.) King also recounts that the effects of the First World War gave rise to three other big 1920s hyperinflations — in Austria, Hungary and Poland, and that “inflation in the fledging Soviet Union appears to have been stratospheric.” He discusses the 1940s hyperinflation in China, and how in the 1980s “Brazil and other Latin American economies…succumbed to hyperinflation, currency collapse and, eventually, default.” We must add the inflationary disasters of Argentina and Zimbabwe.  

All these destructive events resulted from the actions of governments and their central banks. The book considers the theory of how to put a stop to this problem that Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Sargent made in 1982. First and foremost, as described by King, it is “the creation of an independent central bank ‘legally committed to refuse the government’s demand for additional unsecured credit’ — in other words, there was to be no deficit financing via the printing of money.” Good idea, but how likely is this suggested scene in real life? The central bank says to the government, “Sorry about your request, but we’re not buying a penny of your debt with money we create. Of course, we could do it, but we won’t, so cut your expenses. Good luck!” Probably not a winning career move for a politically appointed central banker, and not a very likely response, we’ll all agree. 

Moreover, in time of war or other national emergency, the likelihood of this response is zero. War is the greatest source of money printing and inflation. War and central banking go way back together: the Bank of England was created in 1694 to finance King William’s wars, was a key prop of Great Britain’s subsequent imperial career, and in 1914, fraudulently supported the first bond issue of the war by His Majesty’s Treasury.i The Federal Reserve was the willing servant of the U.S. Treasury in both world wars and would be again, whenever needed. In the massive war-like government deficit financing of the 2020-2021 Covid crisis, the Fed cooperatively bought trillions in Treasury debt to finance the costs of governments’ closing down large segments of the economy. 

Reflecting on the enduring temptation of governments to inflate and depreciate their currencies, King rightly observes: 

• “Inflation is very much a political process.”  

• “Left to their own devices, governments cannot help but be tempted by inflation.” 

• “Governments can and will resort to inflation.” 

• “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” (Here he is quoting J.M. Keynes.) 

Just as economics is always political economics and finance is always political finance, central banking cannot avoid being political central banking. The book considers at length the inevitable interaction between government spending and debt, on one hand, and money creation and inflation, on the other—in economics lingo, between fiscal policy and monetary policy. In theory, there can be a firm barrier between them, the spending and taxing done in the legislative and executive branches; and the money printing, or not, in the control of the central bank. In practice, the two keep meeting and being intertwined. King calls this the “Burton-Taylor” problem. Here is his metaphor: 

“History offers countless examples in which fiscal expediency trumps monetary stability. The two big macroeconomic levers are the economic equivalent of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the Hollywood stars who were married twice [and divorced twice] and who were, perhaps still in love when Burton died: occasionally separated but always destined to reconnect.”  

Indeed, governments’ desire for deficit spending and the ready tool of money printing and inflation are always destined to reconnect.  

This reflects the fundamental dilemma of all politicians: they naturally want to spend more money than they’ve got to carry out their schemes, including wars. As the book observes, “Wartime provides the ultimate proof of inflation’s useful role as a hidden tax.” Politicians want to keep their perhaps lavish promises to their constituencies, to reward their friends, to enhance their power, to get re-elected; they like much less making people unhappy by taxing them. The simple answer in every short term, is to borrow to finance the deficit and run up the government’s debt. When borrowing grows expensive or becomes unavailable, the idea of just printing up the money inevitably arises, the central bank is called upon, and yet another Burton-Taylor marriage occurs.  

Just printing up the desired money is a very old idea. As the book discusses, this frequently practiced, often disastrous old idea has been promoted anew—now under the silly name of “Modern” Monetary Theory. 

King writes: 

“The printing press is a temptation [I would say an inevitable temptation] precisely because it is an alternative to tax increases or spending cuts, a stealthy way in the short run of robbing people of their savings…. Ultimately, there is no escaping ‘Burton-Taylor.’” 

When governments and central banks yield to this temptation, can the central banks correctly anticipate the inflationary outcomes? Do they have the required superior knowledge? Clearly the answer is no. 

Chapter 6 of the book, “Four Inflationary Tests,” provides an instructive example of failed Bank of England inflation forecasts, to which I have added the actual outcomes, with the following resultsii: 

To apply an American metaphor to these British results, that is four strikeouts in a row. The inflation forecasting record of the Federal Reserve presents similar failures. 

Central banks try hard, including their large political and public relations efforts, to build up their credibility. They want to preside over a monetary system in which everybody believes in them. 

But suppose that everybody, including the members of Congress, instead of believing, developed a realistic understanding of central banks’ essential and unavoidable limitations. Suppose everybody simply assumed it is impossible for central banks to know the future or the future results of their own actions. Suppose, as King puts it, the whole society had “a new rule of thumb… ‘these central bankers don’t know what they’re doing.’” Rational expectations would then reflect this assumption. 

In that case, central banks would certainly be less prestigious. Would our overall monetary system be improved? I believe it would be. We Need to Talk About Inflation, among many other interesting ideas, encourages us to imagine such a scenario. 

Authored by Jennifer Kabbany via The College Fix,

One bust of President George Washington inside the nation’s capitol just can’t catch a break.

The monument at George Washington University was beheaded during the height of the Black Lives Matter riots in June 2020.

The university finally had it fixed by the summer of 2022.

Now the private institution is going to have to send its custodial crew back out there.

On Wednesday the monument was hit with graffiti stating “disclose divest now” in red spray paint. It was one of several places peppered with such vandalism, according to images posted by pro-Palestinian social media accounts.

The vandalism came as the pro-Palestinian protesters kicked off the first day of school with aggressive protests — this despite the fact that GWU suspended both Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace for the fall semester in an attempt to rein in the chaos.

“Pro-Palestinian protesters rallied outside University President Ellen Granberg’s on-campus house and the barricades surrounding University Yard on the first day of the fall semester to underscore ongoing demands that GW discloses its finances and divests from Israel,” the GW Hatchet student newspaper reported.

The demonstrators also tried to get back into the fenced-off GW University Yard: “Police are on the scene, but students seem adamant. This was the location of their encampment, ‘Shohada Square,’” reported citizen journalist Stu Studio.

BREAKING: George Washington University student protesters and DMV SJP are trying to get back into the fenced-off GW University Yard. Police are on the scene, but students seem adamant. This was the location of their encampment, “Shohada Square.”

Your move @GWtweets pic.twitter.com/KHLcqj769B

— Stu (@thestustustudio) August 23, 2024

The Student Coalition for Palestine at GWU posted on Instagram on Thursday about the vandalism:

Last night, autonomous protestors sent a message to Provost Christopher Alan Bracey at his home, spray painting the message amplified and repeated by students, faculty, and the people of this city onto Bracey’s very own driveway: “DISCLOSE DIVEST NOW!” During the encampment earlier this spring, Provost Bracey himself violently assaulted two students. A statue of George Washington on campus was also branded with the same demand.

Let this be a message to Bracey and every administrator at this University. We will never falter from our demands. This administration has the blood of 186,000 Palestinians on their hands. The burn of pepper spray, the bruises of police brutality, and the mark of handcuffs and zipties on our comrades are forever seared into our memory and consciousness. Your crimes will follow you wherever you go. You will be confronted in your events, in your offices, at your homes. Every step you take we will be there to hold you accountable.

This week’s uproar at GWU comes a few months after a pro-Palestinian GWU student tribunal called for campus leaders to be beheaded on guillotines. Protests got so bad in the spring semester GWU administrators called on help from the metro police.

A memo from University President Ellen Granberg stated at the time that all of the university’s efforts to end the encampment and deter protesters from escalation failed.

Granberg’s memo stated in part that “when protesters overrun barriers established to protect the community, vandalize a university statue and flag, surround and intimidate GW students with antisemitic images and hateful rhetoric, chase people out of a public yard based on their perceived beliefs, and ignore, degrade, and push GW Police Officers and university maintenance staff, the protest ceases to be peaceful or productive. All of these things have happened at GW in the last five days.”

As GWU Professors Jonthan  Turley writes, the continued vandalism on our campus is often defended as free speech. It is not.

As he discussed in his book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” there is a difference between conduct and speech. I have defended the right of pro-Palestinian groups to protest on campus. However, occupying buildings or trashing property is criminal conduct that should be sanctioned or prosecuted. The problem is that the few charges brought against such actors were largely dropped.

As students return, protests are again ramping up around our campus and other schools.

As for George, the monument will have to be, again, restored. It is all being heralded as “a message to Bracey and every administrator at this University.”

The question is whether officials will be equally clear and consistent in their own message that threats, property damage, and other offenses will not be tolerated on our campuses.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, categorizes over $5 trillion in global commodity exports by sector and the value of material exported.

Data was averaged between 2019–2021 to represent an annual estimate. Source figures can be found at The State of Commodity Dependence 2023 published by UN Trade & Development.

Commodity Exports with the Highest Value

Oil and its products account for 30% of global commodity exports on average, valued at $1.5 trillion annually.

Figures rounded.

When including natural gas, electricity, and coal exports, the energy sector contributes 40% to the value of global commodity export per year ($2 trillion). Agricultural exports ($1.9 trillion) rank second and are higher in value than mineral exports ($1.4 trillion).

Within agriculture, crops and forestry has the lion’s share of value at $1.2 trillion. This category includes everything from wheat to wood exports.

Meanwhile, the minerals sector is more equally divided between base metal exports (like copper, iron, and aluminum) and precious metals and stones (gold, silver, diamonds).

Not pictured in this graphic is how international the commodity trade tends to concentrate in just a few countries on the exports side. For example, one-fourth of all copper produced in 2023 came from Chile.

The flip side of this means some of these major resource exporters have a significant amount of commodity dependence. And relatedly, many of them are low or middle income countries. When international prices for the commodity exported decline, the likelihood of financial crises and reduced public spending increases, further entrenching economic challenges in these regions.

Oil’s export value closely mirrors its consumption as a primary energy source. Check out “What Powered the World in 2023?” to see the world’s energy mix.

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

The number of immigrants illegally entering the United States is down at least temporarily because of deals cut with the United States’ southern neighbors and other measures, according to experts, but the crisis is far from over.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) numbers showed 205,000 illegal immigrant encounters in June, slightly lower than the 208,000 in June of 2021 after President Joe Biden took office.

The Biden administration has taken credit for the recent drop, attributing it to new asylum rules limiting the number of people allowed to cross illegally into the country and through the CBP One app, which enables migrants to make appointments with Border Patrol to enter the United States.

Other factors limiting the number of illegal migrants crossing the border include deals with Mexico and Panama.

In December 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, seeking help with decreasing illegal immigration.

This summer, the Biden administration promised to help pay for Panama’s efforts to repatriate hundreds of thousands of migrants headed to the United States via the Darien Gap, one of the most treacherous migration routes.

Biden’s efforts came after millions of people from more than 150 countries crossed the U.S. southern border illegally last year, drawing intense media attention with the 2024 election on the horizon.

Even with help from southern neighbors and a new executive order in place, illegal immigrant encounters stand at 2.4 million through June so far this fiscal year—likely to outpace the 2022 total of 2.8 million.

Last year, a record 3.2 million illegal immigrants entered the United States. More than 10 million migrants have crossed into the country unlawfully since Biden reversed Trump administration policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” under which asylum seekers waited until their asylum claim could be heard.

The arrangement between the Biden administration and Mexico triggered a crackdown on migrants headed to the U.S. southern border. Mexican officials have rounded up tens of thousands of migrants, busing them to the southern cities of Villahermosa and Tapachula.

Honduran girl Dareli Matamoros holds a sign asking President Joe Biden to let her in during a migrant demonstration at San Ysidro crossing port in Tijuana, Mexico, on March 2, 2021. Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images

Some U.S.-bound migrants in Mexico reported being sent back to southern Mexico as many as six times, causing them to run out of money and become stuck at least temporarily.

That’s significant, because the CPB One app currently doesn’t work south of Mexico City, meaning migrants must start their journey all over again or remain stranded in southern Mexico.

The Biden administration announced that the app will begin to work throughout Mexico, including in the southern region, on Aug. 23, which is likely to increase traffic again.

The app allows migrants on their way to illegally cross the U.S. southern border to set up an appointment with border patrol at ports of entry. The immigrants are processed at ports of entry in Arizona, Texas, and California and released into the country to await asylum hearings.

The House Committee on Homeland Security, after reviewing documents provided by DHS, contend that the CBP One app is being abused, because almost 96 percent of noncitizens using it are unlawfully released into the country.

Panamanian President-elect José Raúl Mulino visits the Reception Center for Migrant Care in Lajas Blancas, in the jungle province of Darién, Panama, on June 28, 2024. Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

Many illegal immigrants’ asylum claims are ultimately rejected because they came for economic reasons, instead of fearing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

In 2021, one study by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse showed that less than 30 percent of illegal immigrants who applied for asylum qualified for it.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration in 2023 over the CBP One app, claiming that the administration used rulemaking to circumvent immigration laws made by Congress.

“Federal law makes clear that those entering the country illegally should be expelled from the United States, except in very rare circumstances,“ Paxton said in a statement.

”However, the Biden border app does not and cannot verify that an illegal immigrant would qualify for an exception, which would prevent them from being deported.”

Todd Bensman is the senior national security fellow at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies think tank, and he spoke to The Epoch Times on Aug. 13 from Panama, where he assessed the number of migrants coming through the Darien Gap.

Traffic was down substantially, he said, but some migrants he spoke with on the Colombia side of the jungle passage seemed to be in a holding pattern, waiting to see whether others were making it through.

“There’s a lull right now for sure, a decisive lull in Darien,” he said.

Fabiola Suarez from Venezuela rests at Bajo Chiquito in the Darien Gap after a 3-day trek from Colombia on Feb. 18, 2024. She said her destination is Denver, where her husband is waiting. Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times

Venezuelans, who make up the most significant number of migrants trekking through the dangerous route into Panama, may be waiting to see what happens in the wake of their country’s contested presidential election, he said.

President Nicolás Maduro has refused to step down after the opposition party running against the de facto dictator claimed victory in the July 28 election. The United States has refused to recognize Maduro’s claim that he won.

Maduro’s forces have rounded up more than 2,000 dissidents who demonstrated or cast doubt on his having won a third term despite evidence showing that he lost by more than two to one.

Bensman predicted that traffic would stay low for the next couple of months as migrants weigh the situation.

“The migrants are definitely nervous about what the Panamanians said out loud that they were going to do and the fact that some barbed wire went up on some of the trails,” he said.

“But I think that’s temporary because the Panamanians are really kind of still letting everybody in.”

Bensman said Panama is deporting about 50 to 100 migrants with criminal records out of the country each week by plane.

A Venezuelan family treks from Bajo Chiquito to Lajas Blancas on Feb. 18, 2024. The woman, who was limping as she walked, said her knee gave out. Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times

Panamanian officials who spoke with him said American personnel aren’t helping with the operation, he added. And the Biden administration has yet to provide funds to pay for repatriation flights for immigrants as promised.

Mayorkas, who attended Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino’s July 1 inauguration, signed a memorandum of understanding to provide financial assistance to Panama for illegal immigrant repatriation flights out of the country.

Bensman said he believes Mexico’s actions of rounding up migrants near the U.S. border and busing them back south has made the most difference in the number of migrants attempting to illegally cross the United States’ southwest border.

Meanwhile, immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) have been quietly flown into the United States under a Biden administration mass parole program that was recently suspended over fraud concerns.

Up to 30,000 CHNV nationals per month were allowed into the United States under the administration’s use of parole, enabling most to stay up to two years and receive work permits.

The illegal immigrants needed a sponsor and to purchase their own airplane tickets to qualify for the program.

Miami received the bulk of flights of those entering under mass parole, according to CBP statistics.

Border Patrol numbers filtered for those CHNV nationalities arriving at the Miami airport for fiscal year 2023 through June 2024 total almost 335,000, with all interior ports totaling more than half a million, according to CBP statistics.

Mexican federal military troops check the identification of people on the bank of the Rio Grande across from the United States, in Piedras Negras Mexico, on April 21, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

The pause in the CHNV program came after an internal report by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found fraudulent information in thousands of application forms filed by sponsors. The Federation for American Immigration Reform obtained the report.

Internal government documents showed that the same Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers were used hundreds of times in some cases. Also, 100,948 forms were filled out by 3,218 serial sponsors, meaning sponsors whose numbers appeared on 20 or more forms.

Documents showed that 24 of the 1,000 most used sponsor Social Security numbers belonged to people who were deceased. Also, 100 physical addresses were used between 124 and 739 times on more than 19,000 forms.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) called mass parole an “unlawful” program that obscured the problem of an overrun border.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

It currently costs NY about $36 per MWH for energy. But the state demanded wind. Let’s discuss the amazing bottom line results.

So Much for So Little

The Wall Street Journal asks Why Is New York Paying So Much for Wind Power?

New York state signed a contract in June to buy electricity generated by two large wind farms, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, off the coast of Long Island. The projects are expected to begin in 2026 and 2027, with power delivered to Brooklyn (Empire) and Long Island (Sunrise). The state will pay $155 and $146 per megawatt-hour, respectively. These prices are steep, at least four times the average grid cost paid over the past year.

States agree to pay wind-power operators—known as the “offtake price”—based on a project’s “break-even cost,” the estimated bill for building and operating the wind farm over its useful life. That is undoubtedly part of the problem. The offshore wind business off the East Coast is in turmoil. Operators have canceled projects from Massachusetts to Maryland that were due to be constructed in the next four years. Some have been delayed, while others have renegotiated their contracts at prices 30% to 50% higher than originally promised.

Two widely quoted sources of break-even costs are the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Lazard, an investment bank. In its most recent estimates, the EIA suggests the average break-even cost of offshore wind farms, adjusted to 2024 prices, is $131 per megawatt-hour, not counting government subsidies, and $101 per megawatt-hour after allowing for basic tax credits. The latter figure is what matters, because every offshore wind farm expects to take advantage of investment or production tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.

EIA Says Wind is Not Economical

Let’s pause right there because wind is absurd by any measure.

The cost of wind is $131 per MWH without credits and $101 with $30 in tax credits according to the EIA.

A handout of $30 is an 83 percent subsidy (30/36) and the deal still is still nearly 100% per MWH in the red, losing $35 per MWH over the cost of buying energy at market rates.

A Sweetheart Deal

The deal (thank you team Biden and New York), will pay $155 and $146 per megawatt-hour, respectively to Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind.

The owner-operators of the two farms—Equinor for Empire and Orsted for Sunrise—are two of the top five global wind-farm investors and operators. Equinor is Norway’s state oil company, while Orsted previously was Denmark’s.

With a break even cost of $101 (thanks to subsidies), Equinor will make $54 per MWH and Orsted will make a mere $45 per MWH on something whose total cost should be $36 per MWH.

The Journal calculates Equinor and Orsted (foreign corporations) will each receive a total subsidy of more than $3 billion courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

The Journal asks “Did New York sign an agreement that allows large wind-farm operators to earn unreasonably high after-tax profits at the expense of its residents?”

I believe the math speaks for itself.

Not only will New Yorkers pay over four times the going rate for energy, the US will send $3 billion to foreign companies to do so.

Congrats team Biden and New York State.

Another Green Energy Company Declares Bankruptcy

Meanwhile, Another Green Energy Company Declares Bankruptcy, Thank Biden’s Tariffs

And in case you missed it Ford Loses $132,000 on Each EV Produced, Good News, EV Sales Down 20 Percent

While Democrats prance around the DNC in Chicago with manufactured enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, a deadly week unfolded outside in the Democrat-run city.

According to the Washington Times, 6 people were murdered amid 22 shootings in the first three days of the Democratic National Convention, while a member of the Texas delegation was robbed at gunpoint while walking in downtown Chicago Wednesday morning.

The weekend before, there were 26 shootings and five deaths, according to police.

In the first three days of the DNC, according to the Chicago Police Department:

• On Monday, there were eight shootings, four of which were fatal, and an armed robbery.

• On Tuesday, there were five shootings involving 12 victims and an aggravated battery shooting.

• On Wednesday, there were nine shootings involving 12 victims, one of whom died, and a stabbing.

Of course, the violence hasn’t been allowed anywhere near the convention site at the United Center, located a few miles from downtown.

“Our officers are out there. They’re out there. They’re highly visible,” said Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling in a Monday presser. “And we have officers not only along the corridors downtown, in and around the venues of the Democratic National Convention, but also in our neighborhoods to continue to protect our people who are living in areas that are the most vulnerable.”

According to HeyJackass, there have been a total of 244 people shot and 38 killed in the windy city.

Hilariously, President Joe Biden on Monday bragged about violent crime coming down under his administration – though as the Times points out, that claim is based on data compiled from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which relies heavily on oft-incomplete reporting from city officials.

As part of Thursday’s DNC program, several speakers were addressing gun violence.

Even if crime is down nationally, it has soared in Chicago over the past year. Violent crime in Chicago grew to its highest level in a decade in 2023, but the arrest rate dropped, according to data from the Illinois Policy Institute. In 2023, violent crime in Chicago was 11.5% higher than it was in 2022.

There were at least 617 homicides in Chicago in 2023, making it the nation’s murder capital for the 12th consecutive year. Murders are down slightly in the city this year, with 344 through Aug. 4, compared with 379 at the same date last year, or a drop of 9%.

On Tuesday, morning a 25-year-old man was robbed around 2 a.m. near the Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel — in the heart of downtown — when two men in a black Range Rover pulled up to him as he walked along the sidewalk, according to local media reports. The assailant then crossed the street to rob the Texas delegate and his friend. -Washington Examiner

For those who might find themselves strolling around Chicago, here’s where not to go…

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via TheNationalTelegraph.com,

August 15th was the anniversary of the infamous “Nixon Shock”, when excessive spending and trade deficits had governments on the ropes, as prices climbed relentlessly, inflation soared into the double digits, while economic growth stalled.

In 1971 of that year, Nixon “temporarily” suspended convertibility of the US dollar for gold (still in effect), while simultaneously proclaiming a 90-day freeze on all wages and prices across the United States.

The stagflationary 70’s also saw Trudeau the 1st enact “The Anti-Inflation Act of 1975”, with his infamous “6 and 5” measures (a 6% cap on wage increases with a 5% cap on prices was supposed to put 1% back into the pocket of the peasants).

None of this worked, and as the lumpenpublic were mulched by higher prices and growing government, gold served as a barometer to it all – soaring from $35/oz at the time of the Nixon Shock to $850/oz in 1980 (that all-time high still won’t be exceeded in inflation adjusted terms until gold cracks about $2,580).

It took Paul Volcker  to get inflation under control with double-digit interest rates – (when the news came that he had been elevated from President of the New York Fed under Gerald Ford to Chairman by Jimmy Carter, Volcker’s wife burst into tears).

Today, 50 years later with a monetary regime that makes the 70’s look austere, double-digit interest rates are simply not an option – we’ve just seen a 5-sigma event nearly blow up the global monetary system from the BoJ nudging interest rates from the zero bound to 25bps.

With an unprecedented levels of monetary expansion and debt levels somewhere beyond nosebleed elevations, policy-makers and central bankers are trapped.

This is why we’re seeing a resurgence in popular rhetoric around the idea of price controls – everywhere from Jagmeet Singh here in Canada, who blames grocery store CEOs for inflation, to Dem nominee and incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, channeling him with promises of food price controls as part of her election campaign.

Price Controls Invariably Presage Decline (& Tyranny)

The definitive chronicle of price controls throughout recorded history comes to us by way of Robert L. Schuettinger and Eammon F. Butler’s “Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls” – or “How Not to Fight Inflation“.

I could not for the life of me find my hard copy, but during the depths of the Global Financial Crisis, The Mises Institute saw the value in republishing it…

“By special arrangement with the authors, the Mises Institute is thrilled to bring back this popular guide to ridiculous economic policy from the ancient world to modern times. This outstanding history illustrates the utter futility of fighting the market process through legislation. It always uses despotic measures to yield socially catastrophic results.”

It starts as far back as Urakagina of Lagash, a King of Sumeria in around 2350BC who came to power and overturned wage and price controls held in place by an unnamed line of despotic predecessors:

“[he]began his rule by ending the burdens of excessive government regulations over the economy, including controls on wages and prices…
An historian of this period tells us that from Urakagina,

‘we have one of the most precious and revealing documents in the history of man and his perennial and unrelenting struggle for freedom from tyranny and oppression.’

This document records a sweeping reform of a whole series of prevalent abuses, most of which could be traced to a ubiquitous and obnoxious bureaucracy …it is in this document that we find the word ‘freedom’ used for the first time in man’s recorded history; the word is ‘amargi’.“

It is somewhat telling to find that the word “freedom” was seemingly coined to describe the end of price controls.

The Code of Hammurabi of ancient Babylon is often cited as one of the earliest legal codes, thought to be the first to enshrine the presumption of innocence, but it also contained detailed tables of price controls on everything from goods to services – like the hiring of a wagon (“forty qa of corn per diem”) to the wages of a field laborer (“eight gur of corn per annum”).

According to Schuettinger and Butler, historical records show that Hammurabi’s price controls dampened trade and economic activity for both Hammurabi and his successors, citing W. F Leemans, who found that:

Prominent and wealthy tamkaru (merchants) were no longer found in Hammurabi’s reign. Moreover, only a few tamkaru are known from Hammurabi’s time and afterwards . . . all . . . evidently minor tradesmen and money-lenders.

Concluding:

“it appears that the very people who were supposed to benefit from the Hammurabi wage and price restrictions were driven out of the market by those and other statutes.”

Finding that:

“There was a remarkable change in the fortunes of the people of Nippur and Isin and the other ancient towns which he ruled, which came in the middle of Rim-Sin’s reign [Hammurbi’s predecessor – whose policies he extended] . The beginning of the economic decline corresponds exactly with a series of “reforms” inaugurated by him.

For the first of many times throughout this piece, I will ask the reader to “hold that thought”.

We can fast forward to ancient Greece where Athens, a city state “perpetually short on grain” sought to control the prices at which it was sold in order to keep them “just”. At one point, under a measure that was supposed to be temporary (sound familiar?), state appointed corn buyers called “Sitonai” were mobilized to set the pricing.

Predictably, the problem got worse, and there were calls to make the measures permanent.  One politician, Lysian of Athens wanted to put grain dealers who broke the code to death.

The book is exhaustive in its examinations, covering China, India, the Medieval age, even modern times (Canada and the US in the seventies) – but ancient Rome warrants a deeper look – particularly the road to Emperor Diocletian’s Edict of 301AD.

“Under the tribune Caius Gracchus the Lex Sempronia Frumentaria was adopted which allowed every Roman citizen the right to buy a certain amount of wheat at an official price much lower than the market price.

In 58 B.C. this law was “improved” to allow every citizen free wheat. The result, of course, came as a surprise to the government.

Most of the farmers remaining in the countryside simply left to live in Rome without working.

If that wasn’t enough:

Slaves were freed by their masters so that they, as Roman citizens, could be supported by the state.

(There is a modern day analog here with open borders and the illegal immigration crisis – where we could be looking at mass migrations as being, at least partially, incentivized by governments of weakening economies trying to jettison dependents and potential rebels – offloading them to countries dumb enough to think they’re acting enlightened by taking them on and supporting them).

By 45BC, Julius Caesar found that roughly a third of the citizenry was living on “free food” from the government.

He managed to reduce this number by about half, but it soon rose again; throughout the centuries of the empire Rome was to be perpetually plagued with this problem of artificially low prices for grain, which caused economic dislocations of all sorts.

Succeeding emperors resorted to the ancient version of “Quantitative Easing” – currency debasement:

In order to attempt to deal with their increasing economic problems, the emperors gradually began to devalue the currency. Nero (A.D. 54–68) began with small devaluations and matters became worse under Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161–80) when the weights of coins were reduced. “These manipulations were the probable cause of a rise in prices,” according to Levy. The Emperor Commodus (A.D.)

By Diocletian’s time in the 4th century it reached truly hyper-inflationary levels when measured in other provincial currencies:

Egypt was the province of the Empire most affected, but her experience was reflected in lesser degrees throughout the Roman world. During the fourth century, the value of the gold solidus changed from 4,000 to 180 million Egyptian drachmai.

Diocletian’s Dilemma

Gresham’s Law states that “bad money drives out the good” – it means that rapidly devaluing or debased currencies are traded for anything other than themselves (which drives prices denominated in that currency up) – while “sound” currencies, like gold, or nowadays Bitcoin are hoarded – or at least more carefully spent.

“[I]n the years before Diocletian, emperors were issuing tin-plated copper coins which were still called by the name ‘denarius.’ Gresham’s Law, of course, became operative; silver and gold coins were naturally hoarded and were no longer found in circulation.” 

The result of iterative generations of government mismanagement and currency debasement was the hollowing out of the middle class:

“The middle class was almost obliterated and the proletariat was quickly sinking to the level of serfdom. Intellectually the world had fallen into an apathy from which nothing would rouse it.”

The same thing is happening today, but in Diocletian’s time, he saw what was happening and moved to impose some kind of order, first by issuing a new Denarious, that after centuries of declining silver content, openly contained none:

Via Armstrong Economics

…and then, moving to a system that attempted to replace money entirely (again, hold that thought):

Since money was completely worthless, he devised a system of taxes based on payments in kind. This system had the effect, via the ascripti glebae [tenant serfs], of totally destroying the freedom of the lower classes—they became serfs and were bound to the soil to ensure that the taxes would be forthcoming. 

But he had a dilemma:

The principal reason for the official overvaluation of the currency, of course, was to provide the wherewithal to support the large army and massive bureaucracy—the equivalent of modern government.

Diocletian’s choices were to continue to mint the increasingly worthless denarius or to cut “government expenditures” and thereby reduce the requirement for minting them.

In modern terminology, he could either continue to “inflate” or he could begin the process of “deflating” the economy.

Diocletian decided that deflation, reducing the costs of civil and military government, was impossible. On the other hand: To inflate would be equally disastrous in the long run. 

Diocletian’s problem is the same one central banks and policy makers face today, all over the world:

Source: IMF

The world is awash in too much debt – with debt-to-GDP more than doubling from 100% to over 256% since the Nixon Shock. With interest rates being artificially suppressed for decades – austerity is off the table, for now — I’ve been writing for years how CBDCs and #Netzero are essentially setting the table for forced austerity.

But we’re not there yet – retail CBDCs are a few years away from being ready but the global financial system is unravelling now (in the meantime, you can get on the waiting list for my CBDC Survival Guide, which is coming out this fall).

How did Diocletian navigate the quagmire?

The Solution: Inflate with Price Controls

As Schuettinger and Butler recount,

It was in this seemingly desperate circumstance that Diocletian determined to continue to inflate, but to do so in a way that would, he thought, prevent the inflation from occurring.

He sought to do this by simultaneously fixing the prices of goods and services and suspending the freedom of people to decide what the official currency was worth. 

Contrary to our own political leaders,  Diocletian wasn’t stupid (in fact, he may have been the most intelligent Roman Emperor after a long string of weak minded half-wits who were propped up by the military).

He knew that the incentives would be against the productive class working, selling, and entrenpreneuring at a loss and he understood that Incentives Are Everything. In his case:

“if farmers, merchants and craftsmen could not expect to receive what they considered to be a fair price for their goods they would not put them on the market at all, but would await a change in the law (or in the dynasty).”

So Diocletian had to realign people’s incentives:

“From such guilt also he too shall not be considered free, who, having goods necessary for food or usage, shall after this regulation have thought that they might be withdrawn from the market; since the penalty ought to be even heavier for him who causes need than for him who makes use of it contrary to the statutes.”

The penalty was …death.

Same for anyone who purchased goods or services at prices above the prescribed amount (no matter how hungry or desperately you needed something or how scarce that something was).

As draconian as that sounds, it almost looks like more people were killed by deprivation and mob rule than were executed for violating price controls:

There was much blood shed upon very slight and trifling accounts; and the people brought provisions no more to markets, since they could not get a reasonable price for them and this increased the dearth so much, that at last after many had died by it”

The authors go on to cite Roland Kent:

“In other words, the price limits set in the Edict were not observed by the traders, in spite of the death penalty provided in the statute for its violation; would-be purchasers, finding that the prices were above the legal limit, formed mobs and wrecked the offending traders’ establishments, incidentally killing the traders, though the goods were after all of but trifling value; hoarded their goods against the day when the restrictions should be removed, and the resulting scarcity of wares actually offered for sale caused an even greater increase in prices, so that what trading went on was at illegal prices, and therefore performed clandestinely.

Within four years, the law was set aside, and Diocletian abdicated.

Michael Rostovtzeff, another leading Roman historian, remarked:

“Diocletian shared the pernicious belief of the ancient world in the omnipotence of the state, a belief which many modern theorists continue to share with him and with it.”

Here We Are Again

Since the unprecedented monetary stimulus during Covid, we are now beginning to see exactly how trapped we are – with politicians taking victory laps for 2.9% inflation (hedonically adjusted and perpetually revised) – nobody is really remarking that the official targeted inflation rate is in the process of being hiked by half from 2% to 3% target.

The Fed is getting ready to cut interest rates, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England and the ECB are already cutting and as I told readers in the latest issue of The Bitcoin Capitalist, the Bank of Japan just showed the world that they can’t raise:

On Tuesday, August 6th, the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance held an emergency meeting, and the next day announced “no more rate hikes” until the global financial system could handle it.

Which will be never.

For the first 50 years of the post-Bretton Woods era, since the Nixon Shock, monetary debasement has been mostly under-the-radar and after the stagflationary 70’s, had been largely confined to asset inflation.

This was thanks to a massive bond super-cycle that saw the cost-of-capital come down for 50 years, igniting an asset bubble on the other side of the ledger:

Consumer inflation never really started hitting hard until the aftermath of Covid, and the central banks took to hiking rates to try and get it back under control (my suspicion was always that what they really wanted to do was reload as high as possible so they could cut, once again):

Again, from this month’s TBC (see end of this post for a trial deal):

We’ve been saying since the Fed originally started hiking, that they would do so until something broke.

In March of 2023, something broke – with Silicon Valley Bank and the regional banking crisis; it was quickly papered over with FDIC backstops on all deposits, while the Fed abandoned their balance sheet reductions and quickly reinflated the money supply.

Everything since then has been a theatrical, slow-motion pivot.

Now, after this Bank of Japan miscalculation, something really broke – and the world now sees how the BoJ is trapped, the rest of the central banks are paused or already cutting, right when the global liquidity cycle is starting to turn back up.

Via RBC Global Asset Management

(Also – M2 is also beginning to rise again)

Price Controls Are The ‘Hail Mary’ Play of a Bankrupt System

All the usual tricks which got us this far, money printing, interest rate suppression, ballooning debt have finally run out of runway because they are now resulting in. consumer price inflation.

This is 100% the fault of bad political leadership and central bank policy but that will never be admitted (to be fair, the St. Louis Fed’s Chris Neely authored a piece in 2022 explaining “Why Price Controls Should Stay In the History Books“)

Instead, politicians will resort ad hominem attacks on the productive class, and absurd accusations that it is the fault of investors and entrepreneurs, who must navigate the risks of monetary debasement, for causing it.

Hence, we have Kamala Harris seemingly anchoring her political campaign on “ending price gouging” once she’s in office.

She seems to be channeling Canada’s own champagne socialist, Jagmeet Singh, the Rolex wearing, Versace sporting millionaire  who routinely demonizes CEOs – particularly those of grocery store chains, for causing inflation:

Corporate greed in our country has reached a breaking point after decades of Liberal and Conservative governments that have rewritten the rules to favour the ultra-rich.

Now, every bill you pay makes CEOs richer.

It’s wrong.

I’ll change the rules to help you, not CEO profits. 

(What’s ironic in both cases, is Harris is promising to do something upon being elected, although she’s the incumbent Vice President since 2020, while Jagmeet Singh is the one person in Canada, who is single-handedly propping the Trudeau government in power with a coalition government that he could end at any time).

The Lure of Technocracy For Price Controls

After one looks at the historical record – 4,000 years of endless failures, in price controls, communism and every permutation of centrally planned economies, there has to be a reason politicians are still reaching for it as a solution to problems they have caused and why a small – but vocal and influential, segment of the public cheerleads this as a net benefit for society.

The secret sauce of “it’s different this time” is technology – particularly Big Tech, big platforms, Total Information Awareness and surveillance. Central planners think it is now technically feasible to run all the calculations and tracking in real time that would enable unrestrained monetary stimulus while keeping a lid on negative externalities like inflation.

Politicians like Kamala Harris and Jagmeet Singh are just farming public sentiment created by their own policy failures, but there are very serious people – mostly unelected technocrats of a particular globalist mindset, who think we have the means, motive and opportunity to create a kind of “fully automated luxury communism”.

One of my go-to clips for illustrating the mindset is J Michael Evans at a WEF meeting talking about coming personal carbon trackers:

I’ll lay out the quote again here:

“We are developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint. What does that mean? That’s where are they travelling, how are they traveling? What are they eating? What are they consuming on the platform? So, individual – carbon – footprint – tracker. Stay tuned, we don’t have it operational yet, but it’s something we’re working on”.

The stage is set, when politicians tell you they want to be able to control prices, believe them – but what the public must understand is that price controls means spending controls.

The politicians will tell you that it’s all about putting “greedy CEOs” in their place.

What they won’t tell you is that price controls also means is telling  you what you can or cannot eat, how you use energy – whether you’ll be permitted to travel, or make any other kind of economic decision or make any kind of value exchange that you used to take for granted.

In a world of price controls, that’s over.

Throughout history, price controls have always brought about serfdom and tyranny because that is the only way to override individual incentives. In today’s highly wired world that would mean total technocratic feudalism.

The most vivid example we have today is Venezuela – where price controls were so effective, the rabble had to break into public zoos to eat the animals.

*  *  *

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