from Trends Journal
Could U.S. Treasuries Become the Trade of the Decade?
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
The expediencies and policy extremes have yet to be explored, much less exploited.
Napoleon is reputed to have said, “Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything.” This is the lament of someone holding the reins of power: that this earthly power has limits.
Two things amaze me:
1. The public’s complacent confidence in the permanence of the global financial system. Put another way, what amazes me is the scarcity of awareness of the financial system’s fragility and vulnerability to collapse, a fragility that has increased as a result of policy extremes enacted to maintain a facade of security and confidence.
2. A general lack of appreciation for how few steps we’ve taken on the path of extreme central state/bank policies, a path that stretches over the horizon, beyond what we conceive as possible.
McConnell Cannot Stop the Non-Interventionist Tide
by Dr. Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute
Even Republican stalwarts like current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are starting to notice that something is shifting in the party. While McConnell announced recently that he would step down as Republican leader in the US Senate, in an interview last week he was adamant that he would continue to serve out his term in the Senate with one purpose in mind: “fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party.”
He sounds worried.
What McConnell deems to be “isolationism” had for much of our history been called America’s traditional foreign policy. There have been major exceptions, but until the emergence of the neoconservatives starting in the late 1970s we largely adhered to the words of John Quincy Adams that America, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”
The Labor Market’s Not Strong, The Fed’s Completely Wrong
by David Stockman
LewRockwell.com
The chart below tells you why the Fed and its Wall Street megaphones can’t figure out what is actually happening to the US economy; and, also, why the White House is hopelessly out to lunch in its claims that Bidenomics has been a roaring success.
To paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, what we’ve got here is failure to calculate. That is, the US economy has been radically tortured and twisted by the pandemic era lockdowns and stimmies. So normal economic activity that was disrupted and deferred during the worst lockdown quarters of 2020-2021 has now re-emerged in 2022-2024.
At the same time, the $10 trillion worth of fiscal and monetary stimmies which were force-fed into the US economy during 2020-2021 could not be immediately absorbed by the reduced level of main street activity back then. So they were essentially stock-piled in a huge, unprecedented build-up of household cash balances.
How Obama Gave Trump the ‘Military-Age Males’ Talking Point
The same tactics used to justify drone strikes are now being used to demonize immigrant men.
by Matthew Petti
Reason.com
Immigration hawks want you to believe that men are a threat by default. Figures like former President Donald Trump and current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.) argue that immigration is really an “invasion” because many migrants lined up at the border are “military-age males” from “adversarial nations.” The implication isn’t that these people work for any specific army or militant organization, but that any young man from the wrong country is guilty until proven innocent.
Conservatives and liberals alike might be surprised to learn that this idea was written into U.S. policy by former President Barack Obama. During drone campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration counted any “military-age” men in certain areas as enemy fighters, even if the U.S. government didn’t know who those men were. The policy allowed Obama to lowball the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes.
Gold Hits Another Record as Investors Await U.S. Inflation Print
by Sybilla Gross and Jack Ryan
Yahoo! Finance
[…] Bullion jumped as much as 1.1% to $2,365.35 an ounce as Treasury yields slipped. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect Wednesday’s release of March inflation numbers may show some signs of easing, a scenario that would give the Fed more flexibility in cutting rates. That’s important for gold because it doesn’t pay interest and therefore tends to be more attractive when rates are lower.
Gold is up more than 18% since mid-February, a move that has left some onlookers puzzled because of the lack of any obvious trigger — especially given traders’ conviction on three quarter-point rate cuts is fast fading, with markets now favoring two reductions.
How Much Has the Government Fudged the Reported Numbers of Public Companies?
The question isn’t “has the government caused private companies to misstate their financial returns” but “how much has this happened?” Does this help us to explain the mysterious $700 billion federal deficit gap for 2024? Does it help us to understand why the “”markets”” have been behaving the way they have?
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
You know how it always begins…with the best of intentions. Maybe even with some good worries or reasonable concerns. But eventually, the government always goes too far and begins to over-interpret the laws, and seeks to consolidate more power and money to itself and its various activities.
I’m pretty certain this has happened with respect to the reported financial returns of the biggest US companies because:
- The government granted itself the power to do that
- The reported numbers of the Big 7 (APPL, AMZN, etc.) are ‘too good to be true’ as compared to the entire rest of the universe of stocks
- The last 20 years of Federal Reserve and federal government activity in the financial ““markets”” has been one of increasing and more frequent interventions.
Always with, you can be sure, (more…)
Small Business Optimism Drops to Lowest Level in 11 Years
by John Carney
Breitbart.com
Bidenomics is not working for small businesses.
Optimism among small business owners dropped in March to the worst level since the end of 2012, the National Federation for Independent Business (NFIB) said Tuesday.
The NFIB’s index of small business sentiment fell to 88.5, lowest than even the most pessimistic forecasts, from 89.4 in the prior month. Economists had forecast a slight improvement to 89.9.
The index has been lower than average since about a year into Biden’s presidency. March is the 27th consecutive month below the 50-year average of 98.
Inflation is the leading concern among small business owners, with 25 percent of owners saying it is their biggest worry. That’s up two points from the previous month. The net percent of owners raising average selling prices rose seven points from February to 28 percent after seasonal adjustments.
So the CDC Knew All Along About Those 780,000 Side Effects to Its Covid Vaccine as it Was Assuring Us it Was ‘Safe’
by Monica Showalter
American Thinker
Does anyone in “public service” ever get busted for lying to the public?
It would seem not, based on a report that the Centers for Disease Control covered up 780,000 reports of significant side effects, such as seizures, tinnitius, and facial paralysis, from the COVID vaccine it was foisting onto the often hesitant public, oilily assuring that it was “safe and effective,” and anyone questioning that was an “anti-vaxxer.”
According to Epoch Times, as seen on The Jewish Voice:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released previously hidden reports of facial paralysis and other adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.
Bombshell: Hunter Biden-Linked Ukrainian Energy Firm Burisma Financed Terror Attacks in Russia
Investigators “established that funds, flowing through commercial organizations, including oil and gas conglomerate Burisma Holdings, operating in Ukraine, have been used in recent years to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia,” says Investigative Committee spokeswoman.
by Jamie White
Info Wars
Probes have been launched into the financing of terrorist activities in Russia and abroad in the wake of the concert hall terror attack that left 140 people dead, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday.
The list of suspects include Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which is linked to a corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family that’s been underway for years.
The criminal investigation stems from a complaint filed by a group of Russian MPs and public figures following the Crocus City Hall attack outside Moscow last month.
The U.S. and Ukraine have been fingered as responsible parties in the attack by the original complaint.
Dream Merger: X (Twitter) to Acquire Trump Media (DJTX) with John Rubino
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Kerry and John Rubino discussed a range of topics including the current state of the economy, the precious metals market, geopolitical tensions, the potential consequences of increasing interest rates on regional and community banks, the problem of squatters taking over homes, and the challenges of reaching a wider audience on digital platforms. They explored the impact of deficit spending, immigration, and the surge in tech stocks on the economy, while also expressing apprehension about potential terrorist threats and the role of the U.S. financial system in a failing global system. They also provided an in-depth analysis of the current state of the precious metals market, emphasizing the significant rise in gold and silver prices and the positive performance of junior and major miners.
Click Here to Listen to the Audio
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Jamie Dimon Warns World Faces “Risks That Eclipse Anything Since World War II”
from Zero Hedge
Perhaps the world’s most influential banker – JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – warned the world in his annual letter to shareholders that while he expects US economic resilience (and higher inflation and interest rates), and is optimistic about transformational opportunities from AI, he worries geopolitical events including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, as well as U.S. political polarization, might be creating an environment that “may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since World War II.”
He begins with an ominous overview of the geopolitical chaos the world faces.
Three Crises Loom
by James Howard Kunstler
Daily Reckoning
If your situational awareness is well-tuned, you can put together a political weather report from the swirl of events that otherwise seem to confound the degenerate simps who pretend to report the news.
Events are tending in the direction of self-reinforcing, ramifying chaos, and the people running the show are obviously insane as they do everything possible to hurry chaos along.
Case in point: Antony Blinken, our secretary of state, who announced the other day that Ukraine will get rushed into NATO ASAP.
Do you understand that would mean a direct, automatic, peremptory declaration of war against Russia, requiring all of NATO — that is, their combined militaries — to go kinetic inside Ukraine and theoretically inside Russia, too, (a move that has not worked out well for anyone in all of history), because Article 5 of the NATO Charter states that an armed attack against one is an attack against all, and must be answered with counter-attack?
For the First Time in History, the Fed is Reporting Billions in Losses Weekly; It’s Still Paying High Interest Income to the Mega Banks On Wall Street
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
As of April 3 of this year, the Federal Reserve (Fed) has racked up $161 billion in accumulated losses. We’re not talking about unrealized losses on the underwater debt securities the Fed holds on its balance sheet, which it does not mark to market. We’re talking about real cash losses it is experiencing from earning approximately 2 percent interest on the $6.97 trillion of debt securities it holds on its balance sheet from its Quantitative Easing (QE) operations while it continues to pay out 5.4 percent interest to the mega banks on Wall Street (and other Fed member banks) for the reserves they hold with the Fed; 5.3 percent interest it pays on reverse repo operations with the Fed; and a whopping 6 percent dividend to member shareholder banks with assets of $10 billion or less and the lesser of 6 percent or the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at the most recent auction prior to the dividend payment to banks with assets larger than $10 billion. (This morning the 10-year Treasury is yielding 4.41 percent.)
Strong Jobs Report Does Not Mean Strong Economy
by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
One thing that analysts fail to explain is that Americans have begun working multiple jobs since the COVID pandemic that wrecked the global economy. Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 in March, but there are millions of Americans holding multiple jobs who can still not keep up with the cost of living even with wages up 4.1% in the past year.
Around 5.3% of the US workforce held more than one job, on the books, in 2019 but that slowed during the pandemic when businesses were unable to open. In September 2022, 4.9% of American workers (7.7 million people) held more than one job (on the books) as the economy began to slowly recover but that trend did not stay in motion due to rampant inflation and the cost of living. By October 2023, 5.2% of the US workforce (8.4 million people) held more than one job.
America’s Biggest Bank Sounds the Alarm Bell
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, did not open his annual shareholder letter with rosy language about the state of the world, or even enthusiasm about his bank’s record profits.
Instead, he describes “yet another year of significant challenges” including the war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, extreme tensions with China, higher food and energy prices, turmoil in the banking sector, outrageous government deficits, and even major risks with the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.
Dimon writes that “America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate,” and that this is a “time of great crises”.