from Miles Franklin
Proud Boys Leader Denies New Report That Claims He Was ‘Prolific’ Law Enforcement Informant
by Jeffrey Cawood
Daily Wire
Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is denying a report that claims he was an informant cooperating with federal and local law enforcement agencies several years ago.
According to an exclusive report published by Reuters on Wednesday, “Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.” The outlet goes on to cite statements from a former federal prosecutor, an FBI agent, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, along with a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding, noting, “there is no evidence Tarrio has cooperated with authorities since then.”
Hunter Biden Continues to Hold Stake in Chinese Private Equity Firm, Records Show, Despite Reports That He Was Planning to Divest
by Andrew Kerr
DailyCaller.com
Hunter Biden continues to hold a 10% stake in the Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, Chinese business records show, despite multiple reports from December suggesting he was divesting his position in the company.
Both the Daily Mail and Fox News reported in late December that Hunter Biden was in the process of offloading his stake in BHR. Both outlets cited an unnamed source with Hunter Biden and his business dealings.
But Hunter Biden continues to hold his equity stake in BHR through his company, Skaneateles LLC, as of Wednesday, according to Qixinbao and Baidu, two independent services that provide business records on Chinese corporations based on China’s National Credit Information Publicity System.
Hunter Biden is the sole beneficial owner of Skaneateles LLC, according to Washington D.C. corporate records.
Poll: Liz Cheney’s Political Support Collapses in Wyoming as Primary Challenger Takes Double-Digit Lead
by Matthew Boyle
Breitbart.com
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has seen her political support completely collapse in Wyoming as solid majorities of both Republicans and all voters in the state want her out of office, a new poll shows.
What’s more, Cheney has fallen behind her primary challenger by more than double digits, a sharp turn in just weeks against the one-time rising star since she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump.
The poll, conducted by Trump’s team and first reported by Politico, shows 73 percent of Republicans in ruby red Wyoming view her unfavorably—while 62 percent of all voters in the state similarly view her unfavorably.
Who’s to Blame for the Rash of Short Squeezes?
by Peter C. Earle
The American Institute for Economic Research
The short squeeze in GME (GameStop) over the past few days has captured widespread public and media attention. The stock, which has traded for years in the single digits and teens, ran up to over $350 per share – a gain of $200 per share today alone, suggesting that the entities who held large short positions (bets that the stock would decline) have thrown in the towel. No one knows what the damage is, but no doubt a handful of hedge funds are hurting, having had to buy their positions back far higher than when they sold them. More details will come out over the next few weeks.
The average share price going back roughly one year is under $11. As of today’s closing price GameStop’s one-year return is 7,216%, with the last five trading days seeing a return of nearly 900%. (Having said that, the stock has remained active – hours after equity markets closed.)
Rabobank: The “Rise of the Machines” is Here
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
Machine-learning. One hears a lot about it today, perhaps partly because humans don’t learn. – Michael Every of Rabobank
The future of humanity is truly at stake. Are we going to learn, grow, and evolve or will be stuck under an artificial intelligence-driven Matrix system designed to manipulate our behaviors and turn us into a slave to a technocracy? The choice is ours and it’s never been more vital.
The rise of AI and digital technologies is enabling many capabilities, disrupting several business models, and changing the way we live and work. At the same time, this technological shift is also giving rise to many concerns around ethics, privacy, security, and the future of humanity.
With the rise of AI, machines are slowly taking over human cognition functions, a phenomenon that author Ray Kurzweil predicts will increase over time and culminate in the advent of singularity where machines irrevocably take over humans, possibly at some distant point in the future. –Forbes
Although that distant point may not be so far off.
“You Will Never Get Out from Under the Mask”: Senator Rand Paul Predicts Masks Here to Stay
‘These people are never letting you not wear a mask.’ ‘The technocrats don’t want to give up control.’
by Adan Salazar
Info Wars
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul issued a dire warning about COVID-19 mask rules that are growing more stringent throughout the globe by the day.
In an interview with the Rush Limbaugh Show Wednesday, the Republican senator told guest host Todd Herman that masks are here to stay unless the people resist.
“These people are never letting you not wear a mask,” Paul warned, speaking of authoritarian medical tyrants. “You will never get out from under the mask.”
“I promise you, you will never get out from the mask,” he continued, “because they’re saying that even after all are vaccinated, we don’t know, you still might catch it a little bit, you still might transmit it, even after everybody’s vaccinated. So don’t listen to these people.”
Paul also refuted pointless moves by governments to stop the spread of coronavirus, pointing out infection rates continue to rise despite the mandates.
Reddit Silver Shocker: Reddit Traders Now Targeting Silver: GameStop Traded $82.3 Billion in 4 Days, Enough to Purchase More Than 3x Entire Annual Global Silver Mine Production
from King World News
The following back and forth took place regarding the Reddit Silver Shocker with one of the most respected CEOs that runs one of top performing silver companies in the world.
Reddit Silver Shocker
January 28 (King World News) – Chris Ritchie, CEO of SilverCrest Metals, sent the following communication: “Are you watching this Reddit stuff – now targeting silver ETFs.”
Eric King: “Yes. It will be interesting to see what comes of the public buying SLV. The question is, will it move the price of silver higher? So far the answer is no, as futures are trading down 24 cents near the $25 level. Remember, this is an options expiration week and the banks are trying to depress gold and silver prices in order to expire call options worthless. Meaning, banks may play games because they control SLV and like anything run by banks there is corruption. Wish the public was buying Sprott physical silver (PSLV). That would tap physical silver market really hard. Regardless, it will be very interesting to see where silver trades from here.”…
The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
That’s how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally rebel and start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course.
The Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility stripmined $50 trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their technocrat lackeys who own the vast majority of the capital: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018.
Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech / monopolies / cartels / financiers? The basic answer is the New Nobility’s PR has been so persuasive and ubiquitious: soaring inequality and Neofeudalism has nothing to do with us, it’s just the natural result of technology and globalization–forces nobody can resist. Sorry about your debt-serfdom, but hey, your student loan payment is overdue, so it’s the rack for you.
The Blob of Lies Collapses
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Fauci’s latest has been a real toofer.
First, he came out and told people to wear two masks.
The latest is the new panic porn screed — there will be a new strain that will evade vaccines.
Well, of course there will. Coronaviruses have never been successfully vaccinated against longer-term. Why not? Because they mutate too much, and they do it regularly and notoriously. If we could have figured out how to suppress them with a routine vaccine, given that they cause colds and flus and have forever, we would have done it by now.
But the real 900lb Gorilla in the room is that it’s over.
Look at North and South Dakota, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina (just in the last week or so), Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.
Proud Boys Leader was ‘Prolific’ FBI Snitch: Court Docs
from Zero Hedge
While US officials claim that ‘far-right extremism’ is one of the largest threats facing America, the leader of the group most commonly singled out as an example – the Proud Boys – was a ‘prolific’ informant for federal and local law enforcement, according to Reuters, citing a 2014 federal court proceeding.
Enrique Tarrio repeatedly worked undercover for investigators following a 2012 arrest, court documents reveal.
Curiously, Tarrio was ordered to stay away from Washington D.C. one day before the January 6 Capitol riot after he was arrested on vandalism and weapons charges – upon a request by government prosecutors that he be prohibited from attending. At least five Proud Boys members were charged as part of the riot.
SEC Chair Jay Clayton Left Markets in the Biggest Mess Since 1929
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Jay Clayton is the man who served for almost all of the four years of the Trump administration as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; who attempted a failed coup to take over as the top criminal prosecutor in Manhattan; and who had represented 8 out of 10 of the mega Wall Street banks in the three years prior to arriving at the SEC. Clayton came to the SEC as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell where he had worked for more than two decades. Sullivan & Cromwell is a law firm that has been serving Wall Street’s interests since the birth of Wall Street.
Below we describe the condition in which Clayton has left what used to be considered the most respected markets in the world.
Bitcoin: Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency backed by nothing more substantial than air. In early July 2019, economist Nouriel Roubini sized up Bitcoin as follows on Bloomberg News:
The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: Dollar’s Purchasing Power Swoons, January Update
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
San Francisco Bay Area condo prices are the glaring exception. House Price Inflation in all its glory.
We’re not talking about miracles, such as the same house getting bigger somehow or fancier, but about how many dollars it takes to buy the same house. According to the National Case-Shiller Home Price Index for October, released today, it takes 9.5% more dollars than it took a year ago to buy the same house, meaning that the US dollar has lost purchasing power by that much with regards to houses. This watering down of the dollar is the purposeful result of the Fed’s interest rate repression and the $3 trillion it printed and handed to the markets, which triggered, among all kinds of other peculiar phenomena, a land rush.
In Just a Few Days, Biden Has Brought the U.S. Much Closer to a War with China
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
The warmongers are back in control in Washington, but this time the wild-eyed lunatics that Joe Biden has surrounded himself with won’t just be starting wars in the Middle East. Relations with China are already taking a turn for the worse, and the Chinese are warning that actions that the Biden administration is taking could soon push us to the brink of military conflict. I know that this may surprise many of my readers, because a major Republican talking point has been that Joe Biden and his family have been way too friendly with the Chinese in the past. Many had assumed that Biden would have a very cozy relationship with China now that he is in the White House, but it looks like the opposite is going to be true. The Biden administration is taking a very aggressive posture, and the Chinese are not happy about that at all.
A Disgrace to the American Public
by Brian Maher
Daily Reckoning
“Your a disgrace to the American public.”
This we have on authority of reader Bill C. Friday’s reckoning about Joe Biden’s inaugural speech appalled him.
Others denounced us with such extravagance… we cannot publish their comments without alarming the Federal Communications Commission.
Biden’s talk was the greatest inaugural stemwinder in history, we gushed. Washington’s and Lincoln’s were Alan Greenspan lectures next to it.
Thus we incurred the ire of Adam M. Here he gives us a good, round piece of his mind:
Birx Suggests Trump Secretly Fed Covid Data. Carson: I Never Saw That, People ‘Finding Ways to Stir Up the Problems’
by Amanda Prestigiacomo
Daily Wire
Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader in the Trump administration’s White House coronavirus task force, suggested over the weekend that President Donald Trump was being secretly fed conflicting data on COVID-19 — data that she was never shown.
“I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,” she told CBS News. “So I know that someone — someone out there or someone inside — was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.”
“I know what I sent up, and I know what was in his hands was different from that,” Birx added.
Former HUD secretary and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, who was involved in the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response, was asked by Fox News Trace Gallagher to react to Birx’s claims.