from StevenCrowder
China is Practicing for an Apocalyptic War Against Taiwan, and the Western World is Still Not Taking the Threat Seriously
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
China has just launched enormous military exercises codenamed “Joint Sword-2024A” which are designed to simulate what a war against Taiwan would look like. Chinese fighter jets are conducting mock airstrikes against “high-value military targets”, and Chinese warships are practicing for a future economic blockade. Most Americans don’t seem to realize this, but once China goes to war with Taiwan, we will instantly be in a state of war with China. The flow of consumer products from China will completely stop, we will no longer have access to the advanced computer chips from Taiwan that we are so dependent upon, and the economy will crash. All of our lives will be turned completely upside down the moment that war with China begins, and that day may be a lot closer than most people think.
On Thursday, the Chinese “encircled Taiwan with naval vessels and military aircraft” as Joint Sword-2024A kicked off…
The Last Hope Against Biden Bucks?
by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
For the past two years, I’ve been warning about the emergence of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), or as I like to call the U.S. version, “Biden Bucks.”
Can good old-fashioned American federalism stop them? We’ll consider that possibility today.
If you’re a new reader who isn’t familiar with Biden Bucks, or an existing reader who could use a reminder, the Biden administration is planning to create a purely digital dollar.
These Biden Bucks would have the full backing of the U.S. Federal Reserve. They’d replace the cash (“fiat”) dollar we have now. And if Biden got his way, they’d be the sole, mandatory currency of the United States.
Gold and Silver’s Inflection Point
by Alasdair MacLeod
Gold Money
For decades goldbugs have bemoaned that paper markets control and suppress gold and silver. Many of them have yet to realise it, but London forwards and Comex futures no longer set the price. It is increasingly set by Chinese savers and their demand for physical metal.
In this article, I estimate the depth of Chinese demand for gold, and assess global demand for silver in the year ahead. In gathering my evidence, I quantify China’s household savings, and point out that their alternatives to buying into rising gold values are few. This is evidenced by householders building their bank deposits, and for them there is now a more exciting alternative — gold and also silver of which more to follow.
The quantities of gold to satisfy likely investor demand, and this will almost certainly be reflected in silver as well, are truly staggering.
A BRIC to the Head – This May Crash the System
China’s gold buying ties in with the BRICS’s plans. Yale invites a mass murderer for its medical school commencement, and Russia rattles the nuclear saber.
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
What’s all the gold buying by China about?
What if the point of everything is to crash the Western financial system?
I am more convinced than ever that the great taking is a very real possibility and that it’s coming sooner than practically anybody expects, including myself! It’s very hard to get one’s mind around, that’s for sure.
Doug Casey On How Artificial Intelligence Will Radically Transform the World
by Doug Casey
International Man
International Man: Amazing new technologies—once the realm of science fiction—are now an imminent reality.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most critical areas where this is happening.
What is your take on AI advancements, and how do you see it evolving in the future?
Doug Casey: AI is going to be huge. No, strike that gross understatement—it’s already huge. It will change everything. There’s no question the abilities of technology are increasing exponentially, at the rate of Moore’s Law. In other words, computing power is still doubling roughly every 18 to 24 months while the cost halves. This is also true in the areas of biotech, nanotech, robotics, 3D printing, and genetic engineering. These technologies are going to fundamentally transform the very nature of life itself. AI will accelerate their progress by an order of magnitude.
Free Vodka and Beer for the Homeless in San Francisco
by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
California is a socialistic cesspool of failed policies that funnel money through inefficient charities. I recently reported that the state, which boasts the largest homeless population in the United States, failed an audit that found nine agencies misused $24 billion in government funds intended to combat homelessness. Now, new reports state that San Francisco alone has been spending $5 per year on alcohol for the homeless.
The “managed alcohol program” states that it aims to keep homeless people physically dependent on alcohol out of jail or the hospital systems by providing them with “controlled doses” of beer and vodka. The program apparently has only served 65 clients, but the public sector has found a way to spend an astounding $5 million annually on a bar tab for the homeless.
Is Anyone Else’s Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital “Shadow Work” as Mine is?
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in which the unpaid “shadow work” demanded to keep all the complicated digital bits in motion obliterate our leisure and productivity.
Is your life as stupidly complicated as mine is? Of course it is unless you’ve withdrawn from all engagement with the digital realm and all devices containing digital components.
To rephrase the question: is anyone else a boiled frog like I am? Yes, a frog slowly boiled by the steadily increasing burdens of the “shadow work” required to maintain a life that has become, without us noticing, dependent on constant unpaid effort to keep all the stuff we now depend on functioning.
There are illusions galore in this mimicry of technological “empowerment:” the illusion that we “own” all the stuff that becomes a brick once a digital component fails or we fail to accept the new terms of service.
The Fed is Already Insolvent. Here’s How We Think This Plays Out.
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
On Tuesday, September 15, 1992, the two most powerful financial officials in the British government held an urgent meeting that night to review their plan for when the markets opened the next morning.
The tone of the meeting must have felt frantic… even desperate… because the value of the British pound had been falling for weeks.
Investors and speculators were rapidly losing confidence in the UK government, mostly due to the ridiculous “Exchange Rate Mechanism” (ERM) which essentially pegged most European currencies to the German Deutschemark.
Rational investors viewed the ERM as an almost comical impossibility.
Another FDIC-Insured Bank Got in Bed with Fintech; It’s Now Got a Dumpster Fire and Desperate Pleas From Customers for Their Money
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Exactly how long is it going to take federal banking regulators to figure out that “move fast and break things” – the business model of Silicon Valley financial technology (fintech) startups and their voracious venture capital backers – is the last thing that Americans want to be integrated into the FDIC-insured bank where they hold their money to pay their mortgage and to buy food to feed their children.
After one form of fintech – crypto – hastened the demise of several FDIC-insured banks in the spring of last year, handing billions of dollars in losses to the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, a rational person might have thought that federal banking regulators would have moved rapidly to shut down this lunatic banking model. But no. The story becomes ever more surreal today.
Home Sales Whacked by Mortgage Rates. Active Listings & Price Reductions Jump to Highest in Years, but Sales of High-End Homes Surge.
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
This surge in sales of high-end homes changed the mix and thereby skewed the median price.
Sales of existing homes of all types were still dogged by the 7% mortgage rates, but a shift has been taking place that took amplitude in April: Many more higher-end homes came on the market and sold, while fewer mid-range homes sold. This shift impacted all kinds of metrics, from inventory for sale to the median price.
So the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales of single-family houses, townhouses, condos, and co-ops fell by 1.9% in April from March, to an annual rate of 4.14 million homes. Compared to the Aprils in prior years:
Why is the Economy So Weird Right Now?
Plus: Samuel Alito’s bad flags, simping for marijuana, and more…
by Liz Wolfe
Reason.com
What pundits say: “Joe Biden is, at the moment, losing his reelection campaign,” wrote The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey in a piece this week. “And he is doing so while presiding over the strongest economy the United States has ever experienced.”
Lowrey cites the low jobless rate—under 4 percent!—and higher wage growth than we experienced during Barack Obama’s administration. “Inflation has cooled off considerably,” she adds, “meaning that consumers’ purchasing power is strong.”
This argument isn’t unique. Pundits have, of late, been scratching their heads trying to figure out why President Joe Biden is polling so poorly when the recession never really materialized, and inflation was tamed (even if that means interest rates must remain high for a while longer). Some of this may be due to the fact that the economic indicators are actually all over the place, and do not paint a consistently rosy picture despite the credit many are attempting to give Biden.
Silver Breaks Out – Is There Short-Squeeze Potential
by Dave Kranzler
Investment Research Dynamics
The GSR is currently at 82, after trading as high as 92 earlier this year and up to 97 in 2023. It traded down to 63 in early 2021, which put silver at $30. If gold were to hold at just $2400 while the GSR falls to 63, the conservative price objective for silver would be $38. But it’s silly to assume that silver would move 30% higher from its current price while gold stays constant. So $38 is a very conservative minimum level price objective.
If the current bull move in the precious metals sector resembles the move from late 2008 to mid-2011, the GSR could fall all the way to 31, where it bottomed in 2011. Let’s give gold a more realistic price target of $3000 in this scenario. If the GSR were to drop to 31 eventually, that would imply a price objective of $96 for silver.
Zombie Inflation and the Return of Rate Cuts: A Detailed Breakdown
by Money Metals
GoldSeek
In the latest episode of the Money Metals Midweek Memo, host Mike Maharrey dives into the current state of the economy, inflation, and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.
Mike Maharrey describes inflation as a “zombie” that never truly dies. He likens the situation to a horror movie where the monster appears to be defeated but keeps coming back to life. This inflation zombie is characterized by its persistent return, despite efforts to control it.
Maharrey explains that while there may be periods where inflation seems to cool down, it is never truly dead and continues to resurface, much like a relentless zombie. He emphasizes that the underlying policies and economic conditions continually revive this inflation, making it an ever-present threat that cannot be permanently eliminated.
Breitbart Business Digest: What Goes Up – Might Just Keep Going Up
by John Carney
Breitbart.com
The Fed Admits the Next Move Might Be a Hike
There’s a palpable tension in the air as Wall Street is confronted with the once unthinkable: interest rates may not be at their peak.
The minutes from the Federal Reserve meeting that concluded on May Day show that we’re not alone in our view that the Fed’s next move might be an interest rate hike. Indeed, an unspecified number of Fed officials raised the possibility at the meeting.
“Various participants mentioned a willingness to tighten policy further should risks to inflation materialize in a way that such an action became appropriate,” the minutes read.
In the restrained and measured language of central bankers, this is nothing short of a clarion call. They’re telling us that the dragon of inflation, which many thought had been slayed, is stirring once more.
‘Tyranny’ by Any Other Name
by Richard Morrison
The American Institute for Economic Research
Sohrab Ahmari wants conservatives to stand up for the little guy against big business. Despite being an influential voice among traditionalists, however, his book Tyranny, Inc‘s criticism of corporate America reads more like those of a socialist pamphleteer of a century ago than a modern conservative pundit. Even compared to the populist politicians whose names appear among the book’s dust-jacket endorsements — Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) — Ahmari’s anti-capitalism comes off as not so much a proposal for reasonable reforms as a repudiation of the entire modern economy.
The core of the book’s argument is that business decisions that negatively affect workers today are equivalent in their force to the coercive power of government, meaning that Americans in the 21st century are subject to an economic system deserving of the title’s verdict: tyranny.
Dementia Joe Circles Back to Racism
by Sloan Oliver
American Thinker
Anyone who’s ever dealt with an Alzheimer’s (or dementia) parent or grandparent knows the routine — they only talk about five or six topics before they return to the first. By the time they’ve reached topic #5, they’ve completely forgotten that, only 30 minutes prior, they spent 10 minutes telling you about story #1. Those in such condition, those losing their mental faculties, spend the most time on events that most impacted their life; then it’s on to story #2 for several minutes; followed by topic/story #3, 4 and 5 before they revert to topic #1.
In the last years of my WWII, Korean War veteran father’s life, he told us (topic #1) that he singlehandedly defeated the Japanese (He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot in the Pacific.) and singlehandedly kept the Chinese hordes from overrunning the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. Topic #2, he talked about scoring the winning touchdown (in 1938) against the cross-town rivals. Topic #3, he reminded me that I came from his penis. I tell this only to let you know that people with dementia are completely unfiltered.