from Bill Whittle
GameStop House Hearing this Thursday Will Look at Cozy Relationship of Wall Street’s Oversight Bodies: SEC, DTCC and FINRA
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
The House Financial Services Committee is showing a decidedly gutsy streak under the Chairmanship of Congresswoman Maxine Waters. No less than four hearings this month will take a deep dive into the underpinnings of an out of control Wall Street.
The kickoff begins this Thursday with the Committee’s third hearing on the wild trading action in shares of GameStop and other meme stocks. GameStop trades on the New York Stock Exchange but its trading pattern has looked more like that of a penny stock operated out of a boiler room – raising serious questions about the integrity of U.S. markets.
The Great Reset: An Ancient Faith Continuously Renamed
by Doug “Uncola” Lynn
The Burning Platform
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. – Albert Camus
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. – Voltaire
The writings of antiquity claim Mankind’s desire to unite the world began six millennia ago on the plains of Shinar, starting with the Tower of Babel. That may be true. But, in any event, and whether or not history rhymes or repeats, be assured of this: Nothing is new under the sun.
Grand events have cycled throughout history. In America, they seem to climax around every 80 years. For example, eight decades ago the nation was soon to enter the Second World War. Going back another 80 years, the country was on the brink of the U.S. Civil War, and a little more than 80 years before that was The Revolutionary War.
Haunting Photos of San Francisco During Lockdown
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Dark humor, street art, gritty beauty, and misery in an ugly time.
When the “Shelter in Place” order was announced in San Francisco on March 16, 2020, which was supposed to continue for three weeks through April 7, 2020, two local businessmen, entrepreneurs, and photographers, Basul Parik and Corky Engel, set out to photograph their ghostly city from the streets as they encountered it. Three weeks turned into a year, and into thousands of photos.
Basul and Corky – both with a long history in photography, video, and book publishing – have now released a book with haunting, purposefully black-and-white photos of San Francisco during this ugly time, titled: “Flatten the Curve.”
Chris Marcus: Why Did the CFTC Help Suppress Silver Futures Prices?
by Chris Powell
GATA.org
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):
In an open letter to the acting chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Rostin Behnam, published tonight, Chris Marcus of Arcadia Economics asks for an explanation of a comment Behnam made on March 18 that seemed to applaud and implicate the commission in the suppression of silver futures prices.
Marcus tells Behnam: “In a video posted on March 18 from the International Futures Industry Conference —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSS3zkWYhaY&t=763s
— you made the following statement: ‘The resiliency and the market structure of the futures market was able to tamp down what could have been a much worse situation in the silver market.”
The Twilight Zone
by Theodore Butler
Silver Seek
While many financial developments in the world seem quite strange to me of late, a new observation has me feeling as if I truly entered the Twilight Zone, the TV series that ran from 1959 to 1964, created and hosted by Rod Serling, in which the characters find themselves in disturbing and unusual situations. I guess I have been so preoccupied with the strange events going on in silver that I wasn’t paying close attention to many other commodities. Therefore, it came as a bit of a shock when I scanned the commodities board (after all, my professional upbringing had been as a commodities broker).
I hadn’t really noticed that corn, the largest and most important grain, was trading for current delivery at over $7 a bushel (only a dollar from all-time highs) or that soybeans were trading over $15 a bushel for current delivery, also only a bit less than all-time highs.
The “Miracle Recovery” Narrative: We’ll Just Print Our Way to Prosperity
by Claudio Grass
Mises.org
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been constantly bombarded by news reports and “expert” analyses celebrating an incredible global economic recovery. They’re not even presented as projections or expectations anymore, but as a fact, as though the return to vibrant growth were already underway. Stock markets certainly seem to agree, going from record high to record high while all the political and institutional leaders congratulate themselves on a job well done.
Although this is largely the consensus in most Western economies, this jubilant, victorious mood feels most bizarre in Europe. Celebrating a recovery during a third round of total lockdowns, closed shops, travel bans, and millions out of work seems like cognitive dissonance at best, or barefaced political hypocrisy at worst. France, Italy, Germany, Austria, they’ve all launched yet another round of business shutdowns and heavily restricted social activities and freedom of movement.
Cradle-to-Grave Stimmy: How We Got Here
by David Stockman
LewRockwell.com
You would think that knuckleheads like Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell would finally wake up. Last night the biggest spender since LBJ and FDR combined laid-out Part 3 of a $6 trillion in 100 days spending spree – which comes on top of the Donald’s $4 trillion fiscal bacchanalia last year. Yet the bond vigilantes barely wiggled their small toe.
Indeed, at 1.65%, the 10-year UST is still buried deep below the running inflation rate, which rate itself is on the verge of liftoff.
Still, today’s negative 50 basis point real yield on the benchmark UST is only the culmination of a 30-year campaign by the Greenspan Fed and his heirs and assigns to destroy honest price discovery in the bond pits on the misbegotten theory that cheap debt fosters growth, prosperity and wealth.
No, what it actually does, among countless other ills, is unshackle the politicians to bury future generations in unspeakable debts.
Herd Immunity? Maybe Never, Experts Now Say
by Joseph Curl
Daily Wire
When the COVID-19 pandemic first swept the U.S. more than a year ago, Americans learned a brand-new term: Herd immunity.
The idea is simple: If enough people get a virus or a vaccine — thus building antibodies — the spread of the virus drops off precipitously.
While experts didn’t know exactly how many Americans would need antibodies to reach herd immunity, the number ranged from more than 50% to upwards of 70%. Early on in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. immunologist, put the number at 60% to 70%, but in April he started upping that number, saying in an interview with CNBC News that it would be “75, 80, 85 percent.”
But now, experts are saying we may never reach herd immunity. “Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers,” The New York Times reported on Monday.
Biden Admin May Partner with Private Firms to Gather Online Data Without Warrants
by Michael Ginsberg
DailyCaller.com
The Biden administration is considering partnerships with private cybersecurity firms to gather and monitor online data, according to a report.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is discussing a plan that would allow them to circumvent limits on intelligence gathering, CNN reported Monday. Federal agents are only allowed by federal law to scroll through public posts on social media and cannot use burner accounts to follow private accounts or enter private chat rooms. However, the reported DHS plan would enlist private cybersecurity firms to engage in those practices.
The U.S. is an Accomplice to the Largest Child Trafficking Operation in U.S. History
by David Ray
Breitbart.com
During the last big wave of unaccompanied alien minors (UAMs) in 2019, a Border Patrol agent said something to me that shook me to my core. He said that he was “sick and tired of having to administer rape kits to nine-year olds.”
While that statement might be shocking, it’s actually going on right now. Except in 2021, the problem is much, much bigger, meaning so is the pool of victims. In March of 2019, when that statement was made, there were roughly 9,380 UAMs apprehended at the border. Those numbers have absolutely exploded – nearing 19,000 last month alone. Today, more than 23,000 UAMs are in the custody of the federal government.
China Unleashes Financial Tech Crackdown
by Ethan Yang
The American Institute for Economic Research
On April 30, 2021, Seeking Alpha wrote the following about an escalating regulatory onslaught in China:
“Taking a page from the Ant Group playbook, China has imposed sweeping restrictions on the fast-growing financial divisions of 13 companies including Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance (BDNCE), JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), Meituan (OTCPK:MPNGF) and Didi (DIDI). The requirements include stricter compliance when listing abroad, as well as curbs on information monopolies and the gathering of personal data. Companies must also restructure their financial units into holding companies and sever “improper links” between their existing payments services and financial products.”
This move by Chinese state regulators seems to be riding on the momentum from actions taken against Chinese billionaire Jack Ma back in late 2020. Chinese security regulators took aggressive action against the innovative Chinese financial tech firm Ant Group by canceling their IPO following Ma’s criticism of the Chinese banking system. Ma subsequently disappeared from the public eye for months after being summoned to meet with state authorities.
New Poll: U.S. is Running Out of Adults “Willing to Be Vaccinated”
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
According to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, the United States ruling class is running out of adults who are willing to be vaccinated. That could mean more measures to get this experimental gene therapy in the remaining holdouts could be rolled out.
The survey was conducted on only 1,558 Americans 18 or older. It was done from April 27 to April 29, and found that while the number who say they have already been vaccinated (57 percent) has continued to climb in recent weeks, just 6 percent now say they have not yet been vaccinated but plan to get a shot “as soon as it is available to me.” That’s down from 35 percent in February and 17 percent earlier in April, according to a report by Yahoo News.
This is both good and bad news. The good news is that people stood up for themselves and said “no” if they chose to not get “vaccinated”.
The Camp of the Saints is Upon Us
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
The national disintegration of France is progressing precisely as Jean Raspail predicted in his novel. Those who see the disintegration and urge its halt are the ones punished exactly as in the novel. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/paris…
The situation in the United States is far more serious than in France. In the United States the authorities have brainwashed themselves with their belief in “American exceptionalism.” Consequently, warnings are not even acknowledged. I have been pointing out the ongoing American collapse for years, and it has never produced a debate.
Minneapolis Target Store Ransacked by Rioters Features Mural Celebrating Rioters
Capitulation.
by Paul Joseph Watson
Info Wars
The Minneapolis Target store that was infamously ransacked by looters last year now proudly displays a mural celebrating those same rioters.
Yes, really.
As we highlighted last year, the store was reopened with the goal of catering more to black shoppers and being less “racist.”
After a newly formed “racial justice committee” sought to tackle Target’s reputation of appealing primarily to white suburban shoppers, efforts were made to make the store more welcoming for black people while also stocking more products made by black-owned brands.
Part of this facelift included a new mural at the front of the store meant to represent the new ethos of the brand.
The Coming Gold and Silver Break Out with John Rubino
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
John Rubino returns… Warren Buffet is seeing lots of inflation out there, the lumber problem. He has a ot of homebuilder assets. To him it’s a real thing. People will listen? Will they sell bonds and jump into real assets? Supply chain ailments. If you’re building a house lumber has tripled and you can’t just go and buy a new stove or washer. They’re 6 months backordered. Charlie Munger hates cryptos. The currency of “Kidnappers and Terrorists.” And he’s very respected among the mainstream and deep state. Gold’s upcoming breakout. If real inflation really is taking off in a way that the government can’t deny and they crackdown on cryptos, then gold and silver are going to be beneficiaries. And the chart patterns are extremely bullish. No one cares about gold and silver anymore, or so they say. Silver is more likely to go parabolic than gold, but they both could. Big gold miners reporting earnings, production is up slightly, free cash-flow is extremely good. Which means increased M&A with majors buying up juniors. Agnico Eagle revenues were up 39.1% year over year.
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Gold and Silver Are On Fire with Nick Santiago (Ep #258)
from Daily Market Wisdom with Nick Santiago
For more than 20 years, Master Trader Nick Santiago has been beating the markets. He’s made some incredible calls along the way and now he’s looking to spread the word. There’s no reason that the average trader should be coming up short. So now we’ve started a daily show to bring you up to date on the latest market developments. Nick will be sharing trades and concepts and discussing current trends.
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