from The Joe Messina Show
Gold, Silver, Dollar, Lumber, Iron-Ore, Inflation: What is Happening Right Now is Shocking
from King World News
When you look at gold, silver, the dollar, lumber, iron-ore, and inflation, what is happening right now is shocking.
May 10 (King World News) – Peter Boockvar: Not that we needed this stat because it is something I’ve talked a lot before but it is a good visual in case you didn’t see this chart from Steve Rattner on Twitter today, adding fuel to the debate about added unemployment benefits and what that does to the supply of labor.
WHY WORK AT ALL? Regular Wages (BLACK) Unemployment (TAN)
Western Civilization Has Become a Never-Ending Jerry Springer Episode
by Simon Black
Sovereign Man
Early in the 2nd century AD, around the year 101, the Roman humorist Decimus Junius Juvenalis began publishing a collection of satirical poems poking fun at the Empire.
Rome was already in serious decline by the time Juvenalis wrote his first poem. In the first century AD alone, Romans suffered the tyrannical insanity of Caligula, the destructive extravagance of Nero, multiple civil wars, and the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ in 96 AD.
Needless to say, Juvenalis had plenty of inspiration for his satires.
He was like the George Carlin of his day– making fun of everyone, even the most sacrosanct institutions. And he didn’t pull any punches.
The FBI Seized Heirlooms, Coins, and Cash From Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes in Beverly Hills, Despite Knowing ‘Some’ Belonged to ‘Honest Citizens’
Victims of the FBI’s constitutionally dubious raid say they’ve been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back.
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box—about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she’d promised to pass down to her daughter—almost by accident.
She’d been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills facility where she’d rented a safe deposit box since 2017. That’s when she saw the bad news.
“Permanently closed.”
After a brief moment of panic, some phone calls, and several days, Dagny and her husband Howard (pseudonyms used at their request to maintain privacy during ongoing legal proceedings) figured out what happened.
A News Report of Black Racism – and ‘Privacy’
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
The attack unfolded around 8:40 p.m. when the black suspect snapped at her 31-year-old victim, “Take off your mask!” in front of 411 W. 42nd St., cops said Monday.
The attacker swung a hammer at the victim, hitting her on the left side of the face, according to police.
Cops recovered the hammer, but the attacker is still in the wind. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, authorities said.
No kidding? You mean someone hated someone else when they decided to attack the victim with a hammer? C’mon man, that had to be a crime of looooove!
Idiocy abounds, I see.
But I also see that for once we’re calling racism what it is when it’s not a white person doing it.
Shocking Chart Shows Most Workers Now Make More On Unemployment Than from Their Jobs
from Zero Hedge
Almost a decade ago, we explained that America had become a bizarre kind of welfare state where, due to the premeditated vagaries of the tax code, hard work was punished.
As a reminder, back in 2012 we showed that it was increasingly lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to do the bare minimum, receive minimum wage and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work hard and aspire to a higher socio-economic status. This was graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantified, and explained by Alexander, “the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.“
Janet Yellen is Attempting to Consolidate the Fed’s Power to “Supervise” Wall Street Banks
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
You know there’s a problem when the media relations office at the Federal Reserve will not turn over the bio for one of its employees that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just tapped to be the acting head of a key Wall Street banking regulator.
After days of media rumors that Yellen was set to appoint Michael Hsu, an Associate Director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Supervision and Regulation, to be the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Yellen made the announcement official on Friday. Hsu is set to assume that position today.
We had attempted to obtain Hsu’s bio from the Federal Reserve for days. We were told they had no official bio. We asked for the resume Hsu provided when he was hired. We received no response. We then asked the Treasury Department’s media relations office for Hsu’s bio. We received no response.
Lola Goes to the Olympics
by Brian C. Joondeph
American Thinker
Women first competed in the Olympic Games in 1900 in Paris, participating in tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism, and golf. By 2016, 45 percent of participants were women. Men and women competitions were separate for obvious reasons of strength and speed.
Yet this summer at the Tokyo Olympic Games, these two distinct categories may be blurred with transgender athletes competing, specifically transgender biologic males competing against biologic females. Lola, who “walked like a woman but talked like a man” will be an Olympian.
New Zealander Laurel Hubbard, is a biologic male now aged 43, who competed as a male weightlifter until transitioning into a female in her mid 30s. She won a silver medal at the 2017 world championships and has a serious shot at winning a medal in Tokyo.
OK, California Housing Market: First-Ever Population Decline Meets Biggest Home Construction Boom Since 2008
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
The state lost 182,000 people in 2020, but added 100,000 homes, for 270,000 people. Los Angeles lost 52,000 people, added 18,000 homes. San Francisco lost 14,800 people, added 4,000 homes.
California’s population didn’t exactly “collapse” or anything, but it declined by 0.46%, or by 182,083 people, in 2020, the “first negative growth rate” since population estimates have been collected, according to the California Department of Finance on Friday. At 39.47 million, California’s population has fallen to the lowest level since 2017, culminating a multi-year trend of declining but positive growth rates.
As we’ll see in a moment, many of the most populous, congested, and expensive coastal counties lost population not only in 2020 but also in prior years, including Los Angeles. The Pandemic merely accelerated the trends. But many less expensive inland counties gained population.
Precious Metals Complex Bottom Part 1: Silver
by Rambus
Silver Seek
Since there is so much information to show you on Silver, Gold and the GDX I’m going to break it down into 3 parts so you can better understand what the charts are strongly suggesting.
Silver Part 1:
After an eight month correction in the PM complex I’m going on record to say the bottom is in. I know it is a bold statement but everything I see from a Chartology perspective is strongly suggesting the new impulse move up has begun. I don’t make these kinds of predictions often because of the impact it can have on ones portfolio if I’m wrong.
Washington’s Bipartisan Fiscal Folly
by Mark Hendrickson
Mises.org
For years, I have been sounding the alarm about chronic federal deficit spending—practiced by both Republicans and Democrats—steering our country into a fiscal abyss. I feel like a broken record as I periodically chronicle the folly of it all. The process has taken on a sense of inevitability as we watch what feels to me like a slow-motion train wreck.
I have remarked on various milestones along this dangerous course:
Americans as a people and a polity are astoundingly indifferent to debt and have embraced it as the (temporarily) normal way to live.
One significant marker along the way was the grim prospect of more of our tax dollars going to service of the national debt than to national defense.
Treasury Will Give States a Lot of Power to Decide How to Spend $350 Billion in Covid Relief Funds
States and local governments will have significant leeway in deciding how to spend the $350 billion in Covid-19 relief funds, according to the Treasury Department.
by Thomas Franck
CNBC.com
States and local governments will have significant leeway in deciding how to spend the $350 billion in Covid-19 relief funds authorized by President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
The Treasury Department said Monday that governments will be compelled to spend the cash infusion “to meet pandemic response needs and rebuild a strong, more equitable economy.”
But importantly, Treasury officials said states and territories are not allowed to use the funding to offset lost revenue as the result of a tax cut or make a deposit to a pension fund.
Senior administration officials said on Monday that approved uses for the funds are intentionally broad and flexible.
Why Did the World Gold Council Join LBMA in Protesting Higher Gold Prices?
And what is the Bank for International Settlements’ real game with gold?
by Chris Powell
GATA.org
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Surely many issues remain to be addressed arising from last week’s panicked protest to the Bank of England by the London Bullion Market Association and World Gold Council about the impending “Basel 3” regulations emanating from the Bank for International Settlements:
Here perhaps are a few of them.
Baltimore Has Been Scaling Back Policing for a Decade. The Results Have Been Deadly.
by Ashe Schow
Daily Wire
For the past decade, Baltimore has been cutting its police force in what the City-Journal described as “a fateful experiment.”
“A decade ago, Baltimoreans became lab rats in a fateful experiment: their elected officials decided to treat the city’s long-running crime problem with many fewer cops. In effect, Baltimore began to defund its police and engage in de-policing long before those terms gained popular currency,” the City-Journal reported last week. “This experiment has been an abject failure. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 Baltimoreans have been murdered—one of every 200 city residents over that period. The annual homicide rate has climbed from 31 per 100,000 residents to 56—ten times the national rate. And 93 percent of the homicide victims of known race over this period were black.”
Trouble in River City: The Left’s Ugly Con Game
by Frank Miele
Real Clear Politics
The progressive left is hard at work transforming itself into a lovable huckster selling solutions to problems that don’t exist. Think of it as “The Music Man” on steroids.
You know the story of the con man who convinces an early 19th-century Iowa town to invest its hard-earned savings into an imaginary boys band in order to save the citizenry from the imaginary danger of children shooting pool:
Ya got trouble, my friend…
Trouble! Trouble! Trouble!
Right here in River City! With a capital ‘T’
And that rhymes with ‘P.’
And that stands for pool.
We’ve surely got trouble! Trouble! Trouble!
Except the trouble being sold by today’s progressive stand-ins for “Professor” Harold Hill is not about pool, and it isn’t child’s play. But it is most definitely a con game. They want the American public to believe the most blatant lies:
Senator Sanders Rips One of Democrats’ Proposed Tax Cuts: ‘A Terrible, Terrible Message’
by Andrew Trunsky
DailyCaller.com
Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders ripped Democratic efforts to reinstate state and local tax deductions, saying that the move sends a “terrible, terrible message.”
Former President Donald Trump capped SALT deductions at $10,000 during his term, but many Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, support reinstating them. The tax predominantly affects wealthy voters from high-tax states and cities, most of whom lean Democratic.
The repeal would overwhelmingly benefit the top 1% of Americans, according to the Tax Policy Center, since they generally pay more in income, property and overall taxes.
Free Expression
by Robert E. Wright
The American Institute for Economic Research
The title is a double entendre meant as both a synonym for the noun phrase “free speech” and as a normative claim regarding a declarative statement like “policymakers should free expression from unnecessary constraints.” Free Willy, of course, but also free expression!
President Biden was not quite right when he claimed that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” The First Amendment simply recognizes Americans’ absolute natural right to express themselves freely without fear of government interference, be it direct or indirect through corporate regulation. People who understand the Constitution, the gist of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty distinguish between the right to use a tool, be it words or firearms, and the uses to which that tool are put.
Though Liberals Are Pushing ‘Birthing People’ Prominent Democrats Still Wished ‘Happy Mother’s Day’
by Damjan Tutarkov
LaCorte News
Noted Democratic leaders issued statements marking Mother’s Day on Sunday as some of their colleagues further on the left opted for the term “birthing people.”
“Our mothers are our Guardian Angels, and we carry them always in our hearts, whether or not we are blessed to have them with us,” Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote on Sunday. “Happy Mother’s Day to you and your family.”
The White House tweeted Sunday, “Moms have always built, shaped, led, and sustained this country — and we’re committed to fighting for the safe and equitable workplaces, affordable health care, child care, and equal pay that every mom deserves. Happy Mother’s Day.”
Parents Increasingly Reject Covid “Vaccine” for Kids
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
Much to the ruling class and mainstream media’s dismay, parents, in increasing numbers are declining to have their children injected with the experimental gene therapy shots falsely being called “vaccines.” Only 58% of parents/caregivers/guardians said that they would give their child the shot.
The United States has run up against an important threshold, and one that should not be ignored. They are running out of people willing to take this shot voluntarily. Now we should start to expect the coercion and punishments for non-compliance to be rolled out any day now. We all know it’s going to happen, it’s now a matter of time.
Medical Journal: Get The COVID-19 Vaccine, Or Be Punished HARSHLY
During a quarterly earnings call Tuesday, Pfizer said it will seek emergency use authorization for children ages 2 to 11 by September, according to The New York Times. This would not be full approval, although, expect that to be coming soon.
Truth is Gaining Ground On the Lies of World War II
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
Years ago concerned with Washington’s growing provocation of Russia, I made the remark in a column that Hitler, like Napoleon, destroyed himself by marching off into Russia. I suggested we not repeat the folly. Two readers corrected me. They informed me that Hitler had no choice. Hitler’s decision was not based on hubris or miscalculation. A former Russian KGB official with access to the documents had defected to the West and written a book that proved that Stalin was preparing to invade Germany and overrun all of Europe and that Hitler had no alternative but to strike first, even though Germany was unprepared for such a war, before Stalin completed his preparations.
I was too much under the influence of the WW II narrative to believe them. I didn’t see how Stalin could attack when he had not that long before purged the ranks of the officers of the Red Army. I also believed, as some historians taught, that Hitler was frustrated that the British government would not agree to sign a peace threaty favorable to the British that promised Germany’s military protection of the British Empire.
COVID Vaccine Deaths: The Numbers Point to a Catastrophe
3800 reported deaths from COVID vaccines would skyrocket when you estimated the true figure.
by Jon Rappoport
Info Wars
A new May 4 report by independent researcher, Virginia Stoner, reveals US vaccine-death figures. The report is titled, “The Deadly Covid-19 Vaccine Coverup.”
Stoner uses the US government’s own numbers.
Here are key quotes from her report:
“There has been a massive increase in deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) this year. That’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that’s an indisputable fact.”
“We’re talking about a huge and unprecedented increase—so massive that in the last 4 months alone, VAERS has received over 40% of all death reports it has ever received in its entire 30+year history.”