Bovard: The Coming “January 6” Train Wreck Authored by Jim Bovard, The January 6 Capitol clash may be the gift that keeps on giving to cynics everywhere. In the coming months, Americans will likely see jaw-dropping bureaucratic debacles, stunning abuses by federal prosecutors, and appalling bloodlust by angry Biden supporters. Perhaps the least likely outcome is that the coming train wreck will restore faith in American democracy. The Justice Department declared last week, “The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Breach will be the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence.” The feds are sorting through “237,000 digital tips, 1 million Parler videos and images comprising 40 terabytes of data scraped from the Internet … [Read More...]

“This Is The Biggest Bubble I’ve Seen In My Career” – Dems’ Infrastructure Spending Could Lead To Devastating Crash, Druck Warns This isn’t the first time billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller has warned that US markets are caught up in a “raging mania” fostered by the trillions of dollars in government spending. Druck, an acolyte of George Soros known for his macro investing prowess (even as he complains that contemporary Fed-backstopped markets “make no sense”) is a frequent guest on CNBC. But on Friday morning, he made a brief appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Show with Stephanie Ruhle, who seemed ill-equipped to respond to Druck’s arguments about why the Dems’ multi-trillion two-part infrastructure plan will end up hurting America’s poorest citizens. Druckenmiller As Druck explains, the … [Read More...]

Volkswagen CEO Says EV Margin Parity With ICE Vehicles Will Be Reached In “2 To 3 Years” Ever since the forced adoption of EVs by governments worldwide, all eyes have been on when the electric vehicles would finally make economic sense to produce. According to Volkswagen, that milestone is still years away, but is moving closer. CEO Herbert Diess said at the company’s annual general meeting this week that its EVs would see margins at the same level of combustion cars “in two to three years”.  The company also disclosed that its shift to EVs continues on schedule, as it delivered 170,939 all electric vehicles in the first half of the year. This number is twice as many vehicles as the company delivered last year, according to Bloomberg.  Diess … [Read More...]

YouTube Deletes 15 Videos From Brazilian President’s Channel For “COVID Misinformation” Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, Google-owned YouTube is once again flexing more power than world leaders by deleting 15 videos from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s channel over claims of ‘COVID misinformation’. Videos that were removed included one that discussed the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID, as well as former health minister Eduardo Pazuello comparing coronavirus to AIDS. “Post-HIV pandemic, HIV continues to exist. There are still some who are contaminated, most are treated, and life goes on,” he stated. Some of the content was also deleted because YouTube doesn’t allow anyone to question the efficacy of masks. This is particularly bizarre given that WHO and Anthony Fauci himself said … [Read More...]

Pegasus Spyware Targeted French President Macron – “Extremely Serious” Breach Under Investigation The latest victim who was targeted using the phone hacking spyware Pegasus has been revealed to French President Emmanual Macron – part of a growing list that’s said to include some 600 government officials and politicians from over 30 countries. Israeli tech firm and Pegasus-developer NSO Group is in damage control mode after an international consortium of news outlets has published dozens of stories exposing the hacks. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is also on the list. It’s believed that governments used the Israeli company’s military-grade hacking tools to access the phones of dissidents, activists and journalists in countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and even Hungary. The fact that heads of state were also likely targeted … [Read More...]

Peter Schiff: How Transitory Is Transitory? Via SchiffGold.com, What exactly is “transitory?” You and your wife may disagree on its meaning when your old friend asks if he can stay with you while he “Sorts things out.” The term is virtually worthless without some guiding context, as in “Honey, he’ll be out of here by Monday. Tuesday the latest.” Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was asked to provide much-needed clarity as to how this term applies to our current bout of much higher than forecast inflation. Given that much of the economic outlook rests on how quickly the surge subsides, his definition is hardly semantic.  Based on his years of experience, and the mountains of data the Fed has collected, … [Read More...]

“Hellish” Noise Complaints Lodged About £30,000 Per Week Luxury London Flat…Owned By The Vatican A flat in London that is owned by none other than the Vatican has come under controversy for the amount of “hellish noise” coming from the unit late at night. The £30,000 per week luxury flat in question is at Hans Place in Chelsea, FT reported this week. Complaints about “loud events” with some involving DJs, have been lodged with the local council, the report notes. The unit is 9,000 square feet and houses a large garden and indoor swimming pool.  The property was bought among other luxury London properties in 2014 in a purchase that was “overseen by cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu”. Becciu was the first cardinal in modern times to be charged … [Read More...]

Billionaire Tom Barrack Charged With Acting As Agent Of UAE To Gain Favor With Trump Thomas Barrack, the 74-year-old billionaire founder of private equity form Colony Capital – who served as chairman of the 2017 inaugural fund for then-President Donald Trump – was arrested on federal charges in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. He is accused of acting and conspiring to act as an agent of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018, Justice Dept says in statement. The Indictment also charges Barrack with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 20, 2019, interview with federal law enforcement agents. Barrack and other defendants “repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American … [Read More...]

England’s “Freedom Day” Dulled By Looming Food Shortages As “Ping-Demic” Worsens In keeping with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s promise, England lifted its last remaining COVID-linked restrictions on movement and business at midnight on Monday, finally allowing people to move about more or less freely, even as new COVID cases are climbing in the UK and much of the EU. Despite the surge in new cases across the UK (which has been overwhelmingly driven by the Delta variant), instances of deaths and hospitalizations have climbed only slightly. Over the weekend, the number of new daily cases climbed above 50K for the first time since January… but deaths remain de minimus (and that is with a 2 month lag from cases picking up)… Across England, work from home … [Read More...]

Bitcoin’s Line In The Sand: Where Whales Are Buying Via Ecoinmetrics Substack, One thing that distinguishes Bitcoin from traditional financial instruments is its open immutable ledger. Anyone can see anything that is going on on-chain and nobody can temper with the data. That means, in principle, on-chain data should be a gold mine of interesting financial data. In practice though it is not always straightforward to know where to look and to understand what the data is actually telling us. So today let’s start with some baby steps by looking at on-chain trends relating to the recent price action. On-Chain Trends Let’s start with a summary of where we are. In the beginning there was the Halving. And with the Halving came growth. … [Read More...]

Transgender Biological Male Cleared To Compete In Women’s Weightlifting In Tokyo Olympics In continuing with the total farce this year’s Olympics has become thanks to Tokyo’s overzealous response to Covid, the International Olympic Committee has given the “all clear” for a transgender biological male to compete on behalf of New Zealand in the women’s weightlifting super-heavyweight category. 43 year old Laurel Hubbard’s inclusion “does not violate the current rules on the books,” the committee ruled, according to the New York Post. She would be the first transgender athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, despite the fact that transgender athletes have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2015.   IOC head Thomas Bach commented: “The rules for qualification have been established by the International Weightlifting Federation … [Read More...]

Houlihan Lokey Offering Junior Employees Five Night Caribbean Vacation In Bid To Retain Young Talent We have been documenting the steps that numerous investment banking firms have been taking (or, in Goldman’s case, not taking) to try and retain their junior bankers amidst an environment where many employees are complaining about their work life balance. The latest in the line of “perks” that we have been pointing out comes from Houlihan Lokey Inc., who gave some of its employees a five night stay at the Fairmont Royal Pavilion in the Caribbean.  As Bloomberg notes, the vacation “represents a silent plea to the company’s junior employees: Please don’t quit.” And that has been the ethos of late, with junior bankers apparently wielding all of the power as … [Read More...]

Escobar: Russia-China Advance Asian Roadmap For Afghanistan Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times, Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s ‘facilitate, not mediate’ role could be the key to solving the Afghan imbroglio… Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a family photo before a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Contact Group on Afghanistan, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry / Sputnik via AFP Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting of Foreign Ministers on Wednesday in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, may have been an under-the-radar affair, but it did reveal the contours of the big picture ahead when it comes to Afghanistan. So let’s see what Russia and China – the … [Read More...]

“Mansion Shortage” – Palm Beach Luxury Home Supply Hits Record Low  Migration to Florida has been supercharged during the coronavirus pandemic as remote working, fewer taxes, less violence, cheaper living, and minimal virus restrictions enticed people from big Northeast metro areas to the Sunshine State.  The great migration to Florida, some figures have at around 900 people per day, are moving to the state from the Tri-state area, have bought up all the luxury single-family homes in Palm Beach, triggering a “mansion shortage,” according to CNBC, citing a Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel real estate report.  The ultra-rich Palm Beach community saw the average single-family home hit $11.7 million in the second quarter, up 38% from a year earlier. Real estate brokers say there’s … [Read More...]

Chinese Communist Party Is “Cornered” As World Awakens To Its Abuses Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times, More than ever, the Chinese Communist Party is finding itself backed into a corner as the world wakes up to its human rights atrocities, according to Nury Turkel, the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). “China has never been this isolated in the recent memory, and the isolation is making them belligerent,” Turkel told The Epoch Times at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit. “That’s why they are picking fights with camp survivors,” he added. Turkel was referring to attempts by Chinese officials to publicly shame Uyghur women who gave first hand accounts of sexual abuse at the internment camps … [Read More...]

The Fed’s “Inflation Bubble” By James Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein The Federal Reserve continues to argue that the US is experiencing an “inflation bubble.” Even though the uptick in consumer prices has run hotter and longer than policymakers expected, the “inflation bubble” will deflate at some point. Policymakers offer no timeline for the moderation but continue to promote the view that inflation will drift back to the 2% mark, implying that the economy has a preset ceiling of inflation and nothing more. The Fed’s inflation story is paradoxical. It comes from an institution that has long argued inflation is a monetary phenomenon. The current policy stance is the most accommodative monetary stance in history, so expectations of more inflation, not a reversal, should … [Read More...]

Mass Protests Erupt Across Greece As Government Bans Unvaccinated From Public Spaces A few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron riled up vaccine skeptics across Europe when he made vaccinations mandatory for all health-care workers (many of whom had previously refused) while tightening COVID rules to pressure French citizens to get vaccinated. As other governments ponder whether to follow suit, thousands took to the streets of Athens in protest on Thursday to oppose vaccination programs. The biggest transgression, in the eyes of the protesters, was the government’s decision to bar the unvaccinated from certain public spaces. They’re also opposed to plans to immunize teenagers. The policy barring unvaccinated from bars, restaurants, theaters and other entertainment venues will take effect Friday and remain in place at least … [Read More...]

One Bank’s Non-Transitory Inflation Meter Just Exploded One month ago we reported that Bank of America had released a new proprietary indicator tracking the level of transitory inflation, which incidentally was at the highest possible reading of 100. Of course, since then it’s only gotten worse and the June CPI report released earlier this week revealed another explosion in transitory price pressures. Used cars, new cars, lodging, and transportation services together accounted for 70bp of the 88bp increase in broader core CPI as discussed previously. As a result, core CPI surged 0.9% mom in June: these components primarily reflected the price pressures from goods shortages and the reopening. To no surprise, the BofA US transitory inflation meter (TIM) remained at 100 this month, because it simply couldn’t rise … [Read More...]

Watch 1 Billion Years Of Tectonic Plate Movement In 40 Seconds According to plate tectonic theory, the Earth’s surface is made up of slabs of rock that are slowly shifting right under our feet. Because of this constant movement, today’s Earth looks a lot different from what it did millions of years ago. In today’s animation, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang looks at the Earth’s tectonic plate movement from 1 ga (geological time for 1 billion years ago) to the present-day, via EarthByte on YouTube. Editor’s note: The video starts at time 1,000 ma (1,000 million years ago), and ticks down at the rate of about 25 million years every second. The Emergence of Plate Tectonic Theory Plate tectonics is a relatively new theory—in fact, according to National Geographic, it hadn’t become popular … [Read More...]

Watch: Sen. Rubio Demands US Govt “Call It For What It Is” In Cuba – A “Communist, Marxist, Socialist Tyranny” Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News, After attempts by the Biden administration and the establishment media to downplay the anti-communist uprising in Cuba as anything but that, Senator Marco Rubio made an impassioned speech demanding that the government “call it for what it is.” “We should be clear in our language,” Rubio said during a speech on the Senate floor, adding “We don’t just condemn this tyranny. We condemn this communist, this Marxist, this socialist tyranny.” Rubio demanded that America make “clear about whose side we’re on.”  “The first lesson we need to take away from it is that Marxism, socialism, … [Read More...]