by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
Four More Years PAUSE – Is Cognitive Impairment a Disqualification?
Low Voter Turnout Expected for 2024 US Presidential Election
The Donald’s Disastrous Fourth Year – But Don’t Blame the Covid
by David Stockman
LewRockwell.com
This is an excerpt from David Stockmans book: Trump’s War on Capitalism.
The Donald’s fourth year in the Oval Office was a disaster. The US economy literally collapsed after February 2020, but there is no way that Donald Trump gets a free hall pass for the Washington-instigated economic mayhem that transpired.
Trump’s original sin was his whole-hearted embrace from the bully pulpit on March 16 of the “two weeks to flatten the curve” scheme, which was actually never about two weeks. It is now evi- dent that Fauci’s deputy came back from China in February 2020 singing the praises of its brutal lockdowns in Wuhan.
Consequently, Washington’s incipient Virus Patrol was quickly assembled by Fauci et al. out of the bowels of the Deep State and set about imposing Chicom-style “non-pharmaceutical” policy interventions; that is, statist control schemes—across the length and breadth of America.
Trump Advisers Discuss Penalties for Nations That Move Away From the Dollar
by Saleha Mohsin, Jennifer Jacobs and Nancy Cook
Yahoo! Finance
Discussions include penalties for allies or adversaries who seek active ways to engage in bilateral trade in currencies other than the dollar — with options including export controls, currency manipulation charges and tariffs, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
A verbal backlash against the dollar’s dominance in the global financial system gained traction in 2022, when the US led efforts to impose harsh economic sanctions on Russia, a Group of 20 nation. Russia’s central bank, government officials and some 2,500 other targets have had their access to the dollar restricted.
Gold Miners’ Q1’24 Preview
by Adam Hamilton
Zeal LLC
The gold stocks’ latest earnings season is just getting underway, and should prove fantastic. The miners are set to report their most-profitable quarter in years, primarily driven by much-higher gold prices. These companies have also mostly forecast holding the line on costs, helping earnings amplify gold’s breakout surge. This sector’s strong-and-improving fundamentals should increasingly attract back institutional investors.
For 31 quarters in a row now, I’ve painstakingly analyzed the latest results reported by GDX’s major gold miners. This VanEck Gold Miners ETF dominates this sector, commanding 28.9x the assets of its next-largest 1x-long major-gold-miners-ETF competitor! Right after every earnings season, I dig into the latest quarterly reports from GDX’s 25 largest component stocks including the world’s biggest gold miners.
Joe Biden, 81, Walks with Aides to Marine One to ‘Draw Less Attention’ to Awkward Stride
by Wendell Husebo
Breitbart.com
President Joe Biden, 81, implemented a new strategy of walking to and from Marine One with multiple aides to “draw less attention” to his physical ailments, Axios’ Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson reported Friday.
Biden has neuropathy in his feet and a stiffened gait, White House physician Kevin O’Connor found after the president’s annual physical in February.
The health challenges might explain why he struggles to remain upright. Biden has tripped, tumbled, and stumbled at least five times during his presidency.
U.S. Economic Growth Plunges in First Quarter 2024
by Peter C. Earle
The American Institute for Economic Research
The release of 1st quarter 2024 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on April 25th surprised virtually all forecasters. The first three months of 2024 were characterized by a notable deceleration in US economic growth, marking an almost two-year low. The same data release revealed that inflation, as measured by US GDP Personal Consumption Core Price Index (quarter-over-quarter), accelerated 3.7 percent, ahead of an expected 3.4 percent, disrupting a brief period characterized by robust demand and subdued price pressures. Those conditions previously fostered optimism for a so-called soft landing.
The initial estimate of GDP showed an annualized quarterly growth rate of 1.6 percent, falling short of all economists’ predictions (surveys anticipated 2.5 percent). This deceleration was predominantly attributed to a rapid decline of personal consumption, which increased at a slower-than-anticipated pace of 2.5 percent (versus estimates of 3.0 to 3.5 percent). Moreover, a widening trade deficit exerted the most significant downward pressure on US economic growth since 2022. These figures signal a significant loss of momentum after a surprisingly robust economic performance last year.
California’s New Social Media Law Invites Expensive Lawsuits
Instead of trusting parents to manage their families, lawmakers from both parties prefer to empower the Nanny State.
by Steven Greenhut
Reason.com
After the California Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee recently voted 11-0 to support a far-reaching, speech-quelling, lawsuit-promoting bill in the name of protecting “the children,” Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R–Rocklin) posted this on X: “The most simple bill ever and I was pleased to support it after a lot of heartburn. All the bill says is companies are liable if they don’t ‘exercise ordinary care or skill towards a child.’ Do you disagree?”
Well, yes, I disagree, but more on that in a moment. When asked by a reporter about his gut reaction, Patterson doubled down: “I worry a little bit about exploding litigation that could clog up our courts. But I think the risks to our children are greater if we don’t ask them to exercise ordinary care.”
I’m not picking on Patterson because he’s a bad guy. Quite the opposite.
Another Climate Folly: Carbon Capture and Storage
by Pete Colan
American Thinker
I’ve been hearing a lot of commercials on my favorite local conservative radio station from BP about their Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects (CCUS for “underground” storage), so my natural curiosity got aroused and decided to investigate it.
The World Economic Forum reports: “While such technologies have been commercially available for decades, only 30 CCUS projects are currently in operation across the globe, according to the Global CCS Institute. Another 11 are in construction and 153 are in development (in 2022 alone, 61 new CCUS projects were initiated).”
What is CCS/CCUS? For now, these systems primarily operate on industries that emit CO2 as a byproduct of their operations.
Drag Queen Makes Tiny Kids Chant “Free Palestine”
by Steve Watson
Modernity News
Video has emerged of a drag queen leading children barely older than toddler age in chanting “Free Palestine” during a so called “Queer Storytime for Palestine” event in Massachusetts.
The event, featuring a drag queen going by the name of ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess’, took place earlier this month at the Northampton Center for the Arts.
The event was advertised by the organisers as “dancing, celebrating Palestine culture, learning about queer heroes and doing arts and crafts.”
According to the hosts, Valley Families for Palestine, profits from the event were donated to alQaws, a Palestinian organisation that is “working for queer liberation.”
The U.S. is Facing a Catastrophic Situation, Plus Are They Going to Eliminate Private Property Rights in the United States?
from King World News
The United States is facing a catastrophic situation, plus are they going to eliminate private property rights in the US?
“Houston, we have a problem.”
April 25 (King World News) – Alasdair Macleod: Now that short-term funding through Treasury bills must be nearly exhausted, how will the US Treasury fund the budget deficit, running at well over $3 trillion this year?
According to the US Treasury, the two largest buyers of US Treasuries have been Japan and China. Japan is now the largest holder, but this reflects the interests of mainly pension funds, insurance companies, and a carry trade.
Is Something Starting to Break? Stocks Plummet and Bonds Go Nuts as Economic Data Disappoints
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Are the financial markets headed for trouble? There was quite a bit of panic on Wall Street on Thursday after more bad economic numbers were released. But honestly I simply do not understand why the financial markets responded with such surprise. By now it should be apparent to everyone that we have a “Weekend at Bernie’s economy” that is being propped up by unprecedented levels of government spending. If we actually tried to live within our means, we would immediately plunge into a depression. Our politicians definitely do not want that, and so about every one hundred days they are adding another trillion dollars to the national debt, and the vast majority of that borrowed money goes directly into the veins of the corpse that we call the U.S. economy.
Childhood Seizures, Myocarditis & Pericarditis Increase Post-Covid Injection – FDA Study
The Covid vaccination continues to prove itself as a lethal injection in study after study.
by Sean Miller
Info Wars
A study, published Wednesday in JAMA, was conducted as part of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) public health surveillance mandate. It indicated that a number of serious ailments afflicted children following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.
“Statistical signals were detected for myocarditis or pericarditis after BNT162b2 vaccination in children aged 12 to 17 years and seizure after vaccination with BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 in children aged 2 to 4 or 5 years,” the study said.
The study investigated data from covid-injected adolescents aged 12-17 and discovered a ‘safety signal’ (myocarditis/pericarditis) after administration of the Pfizer inoculation. A signal that had already been previously identified before.
Stagflation: The Coming Economic Storm in the U.S. with Dennis Tubbergen
from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Kerry and Dennis Tubbergen discussed various economic challenges and potential responses from the Federal Reserve. They explored the concept of stagflation and its potential presence in the current economic environment, as well as the need for significant budget cuts to address economic challenges. The speakers also expressed concern about the potential downturn in the housing market and the challenges facing the commercial real estate market, including high interest rate resets on loans and the exodus of companies from urban areas. They also touched on the broader implications of failing states and cities, leading to a discussion about potential secession movements and political realignment in the United States.
Click Here to Listen to the Audio
Sign up (on the right side) for the free weekly newsletter.
Making Sense of Our Troubling Times
Based on several requests from our subscribers, we are making this premium interview with Alan Booker public and reposting. | Humanity is busy degrading its chances of having a prosperous future. Technology won’t save us, and can’t in its current approaches because its underlying framework is out of alignment with the core principles of life. Sustainability is a dead concept. Being regenerative is nature’s lesson. To change this humans have to shift our stories and their underlying metaphors. If we don’t…
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
Welcome to this very special Off The Cuff with Alan Booker of the Regenerative Design Institute.
Alan came to the Honey Badger Gathering in 2023 at Evie’s and my wonderful homestead, and absolutely wowed an impromptu audience with his wisdom and discourse.
He discussed the disappearing insects, why education is failing us, how to actually farm regeneratively, how systems thinking is more critical than ever, the importance of grasping how nature reduces entropy, and why our way out of all this is our…stories and their underlying metaphors.
Awesome, I know right?
Doug Casey On the Failures of the Justice System and a Viable Solution
by Doug Casey
International Man
International Man: What is the role of a justice system in a society, and what should the State have to do with it?
Doug Casey: In my view, what really holds a society together isn’t the laws enacted by legislatures or dictators, but peer pressure, social opprobrium, and moral approbation. In general, society is pretty self-regulating. It’s why people pay their bills at restaurants even though there’s not a cop at the door. Criminals are the exception, not the rule—although, it must be said, they naturally gravitate towards the government.
When somebody commits a crime, there’s a trial to determine what harm has been done, who should be compensated, and so forth. Courts determine these things. But I would argue that the state is not a necessary part of any of this. Society, like markets, tends to be self-ordering.
Settling the Gold Versus Crypto Debate
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
In 1972, while excavating to build a factory on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, a backhoe operator noticed gold objects glimmering in the bucket of his machine.
The construction worker had accidentally discovered the Varna Necropolis.
Dating back to around 4500 BC, the jewelry found in this ancient burial site is the earliest evidence of the use of gold by humans, and archeologists believe that they were considered a status symbol in ancient burial rituals.
Thousands of years ago, gold was likely collected from the earth’s surface in the form of nuggets or river dust.
It wasn’t until about 3500 BC, on a hilltop located in the modern-day country of Georgia, that a group of people from the prehistoric Kura-Araxes dug the oldest known gold mine.
The Myth of the MAGA Economy
by David Stockman
LewRockwell.com
The GOP primary season has come alive, and the state of play is abysmal. Front and center there is Donald Trump, while everyone else, including a few real Republicans and several neo-con fakers, stumble along far in the rear.
And that’s a terrible shame. America desperately needs a return to old-fashioned GOP governance, yet Donald Trump is not remotely a conservative, let alone even a half-assed Republican. As it is, he fluked into the Oval Office in November 2016 and pro- ceeded to wantonly abandon Republican economic doctrine and badly tarnish the brand. But rather than showing him the door, the floundering remnants of the Republican Party have rallied to the banner of one of the most bombastic, egomaniacal, unfit mountebanks ever to appear on the American political scene.
So, what are the good people of the GOP thinking?