from WallStForMainSt
Crossing the U.S. Dollar Rubicon
by Craig Hemke
Sprott Money
Over the past two years, whenever it has come up, I’ve sought to remind interviewers of the most significant financial action of 2022. After the political events of this past weekend, it’s time to discuss this again.
Of course you’ll recall the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February of 2022. This was the most important geopolitical event of that year, and the ramifications continue to metastasize in 2024.
However, the most important financial event of 2022 occurred in early March of that year when the United States and the European Union combined forces to:
Scientific American Claims it is “Misinformation” That There Are Just Two Sexes
Ideologically captured
by Steve Watson
Modernity News
Scientific American has published a piece claiming that “misinformation,” such as the notion that there are only two sexes, is “being used against transgender people” and in order to target “gender-affirming medical care.”
The article states that there are three types of “misinformation,” and they are “oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research, and promoting false equivalences.”
[…] The piece asserts that “Many of the arguments against trans rights center on the idea that transness itself is not legitimate—that there are just two sexes, period.”
There are only two sexes though.
The Real Debt Problem
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
Someone sent me an article from something called Patriot Alerts, “Morgan Stanley Sounds Alarm On ‘Death Of US Dollar.’”
The death of the US dollar is not blamed on the Federal Reserve printing trillions of new fiat currency during the years of Quantitative Easing in order to bail out the difficulties of the 5 large banks. It is not blamed on the thoughtless US sanctions imposed on Russia, Iran, and other countries, the only effect of which is to encourage countries to abandon the dollar based system, thus causing a drop in the demand for dollars and US Treasury debt.
Instead, the dollar’s peril is blamed on Russia, China, Iran, “oil-soaked Saudi Arabia” and “our neighbor Mexico.” In other words, it is a cover-up for the Fed and Biden regime’s catastrophic mistakes.
The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Investment Finance with David Marra
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Kerry and David Marra discussed the impact of AI on quantitative investing and the financial industry. They explored the use of generative AI to handle vast amounts of data and extract valuable insights, highlighting the remarkable implications and rapid evolution of the AI revolution. The conversation also touched on the sustainability implications of AI processors for electrical infrastructure, expressing concerns about the substantial energy requirements of data centers and the potential need for additional power sources. Additionally, they discussed the implications for discretionary and systematic managers, emphasizing the importance of staying abreast of technological changes to remain competitive in the finance industry.
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A $95 Billion Boondoggle
by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
The big news this weekend is that the House passed a long-anticipated $95 billion foreign aid package.
About $61 billion will go to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia. About $26 billion will go to Israel (with some humanitarian aid for Gaza) and around $8 billion will go to supporting allies in the Indo-Pacific region, most notably Taiwan.
The package will go to the Senate this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, where it’ll certainly be approved. Joe Biden will then sign it into law.
Biden desperately wanted this package to shore up his prospects in this year’s election. He can’t afford for Ukraine to collapse and suffer another foreign policy disaster like Afghanistan — not in an election year.
Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
The Washington Post Editorial Board appears to have sipped the same kool aid as Bloomberg News.
As we’ve frequently reported in the past, Bloomberg News has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to brainwash the public into believing that the head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is a respected statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here.) In reality, JPMorgan Chase has admitted to an unprecedented five criminal felony counts with Dimon at the helm and paid fines in the tens of billions of dollars for an additional crime wave that rivals an organized crime family.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, is the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg even co-authored an opinion piece with Dimon.
Is the ‘Housing Shortage’ the Result of Housing-Hoarding by the Wealthy?
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Those seeking to buy a house as shelter for their household can’t compete with the wealthy seeking assets to snap up and hoard for appreciation.
Longtime readers know I’ve been addressing housing issues from the start of the blog in 2005. Let’s start with the general context of housing in the US, courtesy of the US Census Bureau, which tracks occupancy and the number of housing units nationally: Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, 4th Quarter 2023
All housing units 145,967,000
Occupied 131,206,000
Owner 86,220,000 59%
Renter 44,985,000 31%
Vacant 14,761,000 10%
Non-seasonal (i.e. not second homes owned by the wealthy for their recreational use) 11,177,000
Major Banks Debanking Christians
by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
Debanking has become a major issue in recent years as institutions feel the current government gives them leeway to discriminate against customers based on their political beliefs. This is happening throughout the Western world. Most recently, fifteen attorneys general sent a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan about his bank’s “troubling financial pattern” of debanking Christians. “Bank of America has a track record of de-banking religious organizations,” the letter states, “
We are especially troubled by Bank of America’s track record of discriminating against religious ministries.” Bank of America has been banishing Christians and Christian organizations from accessing their accounts for years without penalty.
The Incentives Driving the Show for Silver, Copper & Corn …
These are the tactics that are driving the Western “markets” to eventual ruin. Is anybody in control? It seems not…
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
Today I begin with a question from a subscriber asking for an explanation of how Wall Street profits from driving the price of silver down.
By answering that question, we can easily discover that the incentives within the system are for Wall Street to cram down the prices for every commodity they can. This way the producers are left with almost nothing and all the value is gained by the traders and corporations.
Hey, it’s all fun and profits until somebody loses access to critical resources because of all these raccoon-ish antics.
That day, my friends, is rapidly approaching.
Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown Fells Express. Simon Property & Brookfield, to Avert Vacant Stores and Bad Leases at Their Malls, to Buy the Brands and 435 Stores Out of Bankruptcy
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
This Has Been Years in the Making.
Express Inc, once a high-flying fashion retailer for the younger crowd with 542 stores in the US, and with three brands – Express, UpWest, and Bonobos – finally filed for pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.
Since its heyday in 2016, the company has already closed 114 stores. The store count had peaked in the fiscal year ended January 2017 at 656 stores. Now it will close another 95 Express stores and all its 12 UpWest stores, bringing the store count to about 435 stores.
Blackrock Triples Larry Fink’s Home Security as Anti-Woke Backlash Accelerates
from Zero Hedge
BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink’s efforts to push ‘wokesim’ or environmental, social, and governance policies across corporate America have been in reverse in recent years amid the backlash from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and 19 state attorneys general in conservative states, including Arizona and Texas, who have been fed up with ESG-related policies hurting the economy.
Supposedly, the backlash by anti-woke activists has forced BlackRock to triple Fink’s home security spending. Financial Times says the CEO has become “a target for anti-woke activists and conspiracy theorists.”
According to FT’s numbers, the $10.5 trillion money manager spent $563,513 to “upgrade the home security systems” at Fink’s residences during 2023, on top of $216,837 for bodyguards.
China is Dumping U.S. Treasuries and Buying Gold
by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek
As the Chinese accumulate more and more gold, they’re dumping U.S. Treasuries.
That raises an important question: who is going to keep funding the federal government’s borrowing spree?
China offloaded another $22.7 billion in U.S. Treasuries in February, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. That dropped its total holdings to $775 billion.
China still ranks as the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, but the U.K. could soon overtake China and slide into the second position if the current trend continues.
Turley: Trump is Right – New York Case is an ‘Embarrassment’
by Pam Key
Breitbart.com
Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America Reports” that former President Donald Trump’s New York trial for allegedly falsifying business records is an “embarrassment.”
Turley said, “What is clear is in this case, Trump is right this is an embarrassment. The fact that we are actually talking about this case being presented in a New York court room leaves me in utter disbelief.”
He continued, “The arguments today did in fact capture all the problems here. You had this misdemeanor under state law that had run out. This is going back related to the 2016 election. They zapped it back into life by alleging that there was a campaign finance violations under the federal laws that doesn’t exist. The Department of Justice doesn’t view it this way.”
Worst 4/20 Ever
Plus: A listener asks the editors to steel man the case for the Jones Act, an antiquated law that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters.
by Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-ward, Nick Gillespie, and Eric Boehm
Reason.com
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Eric Boehm lament a horrible weekend for freedom, as Congress passed a collection of bad bills concerning military spending for Ukraine and Israel, a TikTok ban, and a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
00:53—House of Representatives passes substantial bipartisan military spending aid package that includes Ukraine and Israel
22:50—New Title IX rules
34:00—Weekly Listener Question
‘Conspiracy Theories’ Aren’t Theoretical Anymore
by John Green
American Thinker
The national mood in the mid-twentieth century was very different from now.
- The United States was respected around the world — even if not necessarily liked.
- Technology was advancing faster than at any time in human history.
- Our cities were mostly orderly, safe, and clean.
- We believed there were few hardships which couldn’t be overcome with hard work. Opportunities seemed endless, as was our optimism.
- We were completely naïve about the danger posed by our own government.
Not everything was sunny. We had problems that needed attention. That is the nature of human existence after all. But when Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” we just thought he was promoting self-reliance and highlighting government inefficiency. As I said, we were naïve.