Cult: Government Is Now The New Religion? Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, A new magazine cover of the Jacobin is striking a nerve after it appears that the magazine is saying the government is now god and our religion, to be worshipped. It sure begs the age-old question: who do you serve? If we are ever to be free, we have to remove our consent. That goes for those who worshipped Trump as the messiah as well (and there were plenty.)  We should have never allowed ourselves to see each other as slaves to the ruling class, submitting to democracy (which is mob rule) and letting others have power over anyone else for any reason. Our inability to take the moral high ground … [Read More...]

Janet Yellen Talking Out Of Both Sides Of Her Mouth Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com, During testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Treasury Secretary-nominee Janet Yellen talked out of both sides of her mouth. She acknowledged that too much debt is problematic, but in the same sentence, insisted we need to “act big” to rescue the economy. Neither the president-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden. But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big.” This is a prime example of the old adage that you can ignore everything in a sentence that comes before the word “but.” The truth is, Yellen doesn’t care … [Read More...]

Bavaria-Wide Ban On Alcohol Consumption In Public Areas Overturned German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has struggled to impose lockdowns by consensus with the leaders of Germany’s various states, is now seeing Bavaria, one of the most significant and most economically vital regions of Germany, buck the latest national lockdown extension.  According to RT News, in an unexpected win for the people, the Bavarian Administrative Court temporarily suspended the statewide ban on drinking alcohol in public areas, initially introduced by lawmakers to mitigate the COVID-19’s spread.  On Tuesday, Bavarian judges temporarily suspended the statewide ban on consuming alcohol in public spaces in Passau, Regensburg, and Amberg.  A man from Regensburg mounted a legal suit against the Bavarian State Government, claiming they overstepped their bounds by announcing … [Read More...]

Oil Drillers Tumble After Interior Dept Orders 60 Day Oil Leasing Halt On Federal Lands Update: just moments after we reported about the upcoming 60-day oil and gas leasing moratorium, Bloomberg blasted the following report which, all else equal, could have a dramatic impact on the US shale industry: *BIDEN POISED TO FREEZE OIL AND COAL LEASING ON FEDERAL LAND *MORATORIUM IS SEPARATE FROM A 60-DAY PAUSE ISSUED WEDNESDAY So is a wholesale fracking ban coming? Don’t ask us – everyone is confused about the president’s stance on the issue. Lol pic.twitter.com/k6qVJIOlTP — Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) January 21, 2021 * * * Earlier: In a reversal to the recent rally boosting the broader energy sector, US drillers stocks and the broader E&P complex tumbled after … [Read More...]

EU President: “Unbridled Power Held ” By Big Tech CEOs Must Be “Reined In” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen informed President-elect Joe Biden ahead of today’s inauguration that Silicon Valley CEOs have no authority to decide on laws and rules, according to RT News.  Von der Leyen said in a speech on Wednesday to the European Parliament that the incoming Biden administration must begin to regulate big tech companies.  “This political power, unbridled power held by the big internet giants must be reined in,” she said.  European lawmakers are in the process of formulating new digital privacy and antitrust regulation that would have severe implications for Apple, Google, and Facebook. Von der Leyen said tech giants that moderate themselves is a red flag, … [Read More...]

NYC Delays 23K COVID Vaccinations As McKesson “Logistical Error” Leaves Moderna Jabs Too Cold Following comments from a top Israeli public health official who said that Pfizer’s vaccine hasn’t been quite as effective as they hoped according to the initial data, with the efficacy rate closer to 50% than the 95% that had been advertised, we’re now learning that NYC was forced to cancel 23K scheduled vaccinations after a McKesson “logistical error” forced them to recall 21 shipments of the Moderna jabs. Appointments at all 15 of the city’s vaccination centers have been canceled on Wednesday. The world seemed to be too preoccupied with President Joe Biden’s inauguration to notice, as global stocks celebrated the new administration as the Bushes, the Clintons and all their establishment pals showed up … [Read More...]

Turkey Turns Table On Twitter: “We’ll Never Allow Digital Fascism” Turkey’s pugnacious president has never been shy about taking on foreign and domestic enemies, whether it be currency traders shorting the lira, his own central bank, or big tech companies.  While Twitter and other social media companies have been praised by the MSM for shutting down conservative ‘speech’ in America, some tech giants are being suppressed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after passing new social media laws, according to RT News.   Turning the tables on authoritarian big tech, Erdogan recently said companies who control data could establish “digital dictatorships by disregarding democracy, the law, rights, and freedoms.” He pledged to defend his nation’s “cyber homeland” by ensuring Turkey maintains control over its citizens’ data. Ankara slapped … [Read More...]

Where Wall Street Thinks The Biggest Bubble Is We are officially in bubble territory. Earlier today, coinciding with the release of the latest Bank of America Fund Manager Survey, Deutsche Bank also published its latest monthly survey (Jan 13-15) polling 627 market professionals, and which found that just a paltry 12% of respondents saw no bubbles in financial markets. So with almost 9 out of 10 survey participants now agreeing there is a bubble, where is it? Wccording to DB’s survey, 50% of investors gave Bitcoin the maximum 10 out of 10 bubble rating with an average score of 8.7. Not surprisingly, this confirms the finding from BofA’s own survey according to which Bitcoin was the “most crowded trade”, even though as we explained, it most certainly isn’t. Perhaps this is just Wall … [Read More...]

Mapping Drone Privacy Laws Around The World From Olympic opening ceremonies to public safety, drone applications have come a long way. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh details below, their modern applications are set to almost double the total value of the commercial drone market from $22.5 billion to $42.8 billion between 2020-2025, at a 13.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Naturally, such diverse and complex uses can go quickly awry if not monitored and regulated correctly by governments—yet in some cases, it’s because of governments that drones’ uses border on sinister. This in-depth map from Surfshark explores the murky guidelines surrounding drone privacy laws around the world, and some case studies of how they’re used in every region. How Are Drone Privacy Laws Classified? According … [Read More...]

The Destructive Force And Failure Of QE Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, This article concludes that quantitative easing as a means of stimulating economies and financing government deficits will fail. The underlying assumption is that the transmission of additional money to non-banks in order to inflate financial assets, and to banks to cover government finances, will become too great in 2021 for it to succeed without undermining fiat currencies and financial markets. Admittedly, this opinion stands in stark contrast to the common Keynesian view, that once covid is over economies will start to grow again. To help readers to understand why QE will fail, this article describes how its objectives have changed from stimulating the economy by raising asset prices, to financing rapidly increasing government … [Read More...]

UK May Ease COVID Lockdown From March, Foreign Secretary Says Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times, The UK may begin easing existing CCP virus lockdown measures in March if the vaccine roll-out goes to plan, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday. Talking to the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show,” Raab said the government plans to vaccinate 15 million—or 88 percent—of those most at risk of dying from the CCP virus by Feb. 15, followed by another 17 million in early spring, which will protect 99 percent of those most at risk. “I think it’s true to say that when we get to a situation in the early spring, perhaps March, if we’ve succeeded in hitting those targets and we’ve made progress so far, we can start to think … [Read More...]

Trump Retains Overwhelming Support Among Republicans After Last Week’s Chaos Despite being impeached, defamed, canceled, censored, blocked, and banned, a new Ipsos/Axios poll finds that 64% of Republicans still support President Trump’s recent actions. The details shows that 43% of Republicans who ‘strongly’ approve of Trump’s actions, along with another and 20% ‘approve’ of his agenda. While 34% of Republicans disapproved of Trump’s recent behavior, across the aisle, 80% of Democrats believe this was “a coup,” and 94% of Dems believe Trump should be “immediately removed from office.” Vice President Mike Pence gets even higher overall approval in the same poll. A third of voters ‘strongly approve’ of his recent behavior, with 41 per cent somewhat approving. What makes up the difference is 33% approval … [Read More...]

The Gray Curtain Descends, Part 2 Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic Read Part 1 here… It’s secession or war… Four days after the election, a woman calling herself OHMama posted “I Am Done” on The Burning Platform website. It was the site’s most read article of 2020. SLL and many other websites reposted it. It was raw, explosive anger and a profoundly moving lament; OHMama was clearly at the end of her rope. The closing paragraph packed a wallop. I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but fuck these motherfuckers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a … [Read More...]

The Lynch Mob Comes For Citizen Trump Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org, “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled this mob and lit the flame of this attack.” So alleged Liz Cheney, third-ranking Republican in the House, as she led nine GOP colleagues to vote for a second impeachment of Donald Trump. The House Republican caucus voted 197-10 against impeachment. House Democrats voted lockstep, 222-0, to impeach in an exercise the solidarity of which calls to mind the Supreme Soviet of Stalin’s time. But is what Cheney said true? Undeniably, the huge crowd that assembled on the mall Wednesday did so at Trump’s behest. But that peaceful crowd was not the violent mob that invaded the Capitol. The mob was a mile … [Read More...]

Here’s How Much Your Income Will Change Under The Biden Tax Plan While the market has so far focused exclusively on the temporary economic sugar high that the Biden fiscal stimulus will unleash on the US economy, which however may be far below Biden’s bogey of $1.9 trillion with Goldman now expecting just $1.1 trillion being enacted due to republican opposition, traders are starting to focus on the cost side of the “cost-benefit” analysis. And, as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid writes, while “for now it’s all about the size of the stimulus juices flowing into the economy” the pips will likely be squeezed later in the year as the Democrats craft broader infrastructure and tax legislation. That’s why today’s Chart of the Day from Reid shows … [Read More...]

One Bank Makes A Big Call: “Vaccinations Should Bring Virus Under Control In Next Few Weeks” One month ago, we presented to our readers an analysis from Goldman Sachs, according to which the rapid rollout of vaccinations at long-term care facilities would lead to a decline in US hospitalizations around Jan 9, and would then push total covid-related hospitalizations to nearly zero by the end of the month. While Goldman may have been off by a few days, it was almost spot on: as Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing the Covid Tracking Project, the US hospitalization numbers are now dropping compared with a week earlier in both the Northeast and Midwest, the critical inflection point that Goldman had pegged for Jan 9. An analysis from BofA … [Read More...]

Hundreds Of Pieces Of Fine Art, Worth Millions, Rushed Out of U.K. Ahead Of Brexit Cutoff Among the litany of decisions resulting from Brexit was a choice that art dealers in London had to make: keep their art in the U.K. or migrate it to the EU before Brexit restrictions go into effect? The potential issue lies in future import duties that collectors may have to face, should they decide to bring their art from London to the EU in the future. Many midsized galleries in London sell “regularly” to Europe, according to Bloomberg.  The art could previously “move freely between the EU and the U.K. with minimal restrictions and without cumbersome tax and customs procedures.” Those days are long gone, leading to … [Read More...]

Netflix’s “Tiger King” Star Carole Baskin Pumps Penny Stock In New Video  It appears someone paid Netflix’s “Tiger King” star Carole Baskin via Cameo, a video-sharing website where users can pay for video messages, to pump a penny stock that resulted in a parabolic move in Zomedica.  According to Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman, “Carole Baskin tells me her Zomedica mention that may have triggered a 230% rally in the penny stock came from a $299 Cameo request.”  “It was a Cameo they paid for. I don’t hold any stock in the company and don’t make stock recommendations,” Baskin told Guzman.  Parabolic Rise In Zomedica On The Baskin Pump Here’s the video of Baskin discussing penny stock Zomedica, a small Michigan-based company producing products … [Read More...]

131 Governments In 160 Years As DB’s Jim Reid wrote overnight, with the current turmoil in US politics it’s easy to miss the perennial political problems that are again resurfacing in Italy. PM Conte’s government could collapse as soon as tonight now that PM Renzi (leader of Italia Viva party) has withdrawn his support even if he is only a tiny, junior partner in the coalition. This current coalition has so far only lasted 16 months but in Reid’s CoTD, he shows that this has been par for the course in Italy since 1861. Over this 160 year period Italy has had 131 governments. So each one has lasted an average of just under 15 months. DB’s Italian economist Clemente Delucia sees three possible scenarios: first, a sort of stasis outcome with only marginal… [Read More...]