from Viva Frei
Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban On Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Sullivan & Cromwell, the go-to law firm for Wall Street in the past, has become a case study in how not to manage one’s corporate reputation. (See Wall Street’s Go-To Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Got in Bed with Crypto; Now Its Reputation Is Being Hammered.)
Apparently, having previously represented FTX fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried, and then grabbing FTX’s bankruptcy proceeding and billing $180 million, is not enough shame for Sullivan & Cromwell to heap on its reputation. It is now listed as the Big Law firm that filed a federal lawsuit yesterday on behalf of the corporate front groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and others, to stop the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) new rule banning non-compete agreements for most workers. (An 8-attorney law firm in Texas, Potter Minton, is also listed on the filing for the plaintiffs.)
Government Pension Fund Expects to Shift Focus to Gold, Oil to Mitigate Risk
by Wichit Chantanusornsiri
Bangkok Post
The Government Pension Fund (GPF) is reducing investments in assets that may be affected by war and increasing investments in gold and oil to mitigate risk.
According to Songpol Chevapanyaroj, secretary-general of the GPF, fund management this year is more challenging than last year because of the risk of wars and elections in several countries, as well as uncertainty regarding interest rate directions.
“This year, we will adjust investment proportions by reducing assets that could be affected by war and increasing investments in alternative assets such as gold and oil, which help to mitigate risk,” he said.
Gold and oil account for about 5% of the GPF’s portfolio.
Let’s Cheer the Deep State
by Jeffrey Tucker
Daily Reckoning
They’re wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor.
The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway.
A few weeks ago, The New York Times told us that “As It Turns out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.”
These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The deep state is the opposite of democracy, unelected and unaccountable in every way, impervious to elections and the will of the people. Now we have the NYT celebrating this.
Zelensky Reveals U.S. and Ukraine ‘Working’ On Scheme for 10 Years of Military Aid
by Elizabeth Weibel
Breitbart.com
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that the United States and Ukrainian governments are “working on a bilateral security agreement” that would result in sending additional monetary aid to Ukraine over the next ten years.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Zelensky noted he had spoken to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) thanking “him and all the congressmen for their support” of Ukraine and for voting to send a $61 billion aid package out of a $95 billion foreign aid package.
Zelensky added that during his conversation with Jeffries, he had “emphasized the need for Patriot systems.”
Justin Amash On Why Congress is Broken
by Nick Gillespie
Reason.com
Just 15 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. But why is it broken and how do we fix it? Those are two of the questions Reason’s Nick Gillespie asked Justin Amash in February at Students for Liberty’s LibertyCon. Amash, the Palestinian-Syrian-American former five-term congressman from Michigan, is now running for Senate as a Republican.
First elected as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, Amash helped create the House Freedom Caucus but became an increasingly lonely, principled voice for limiting the size, scope, and spending of the federal government. During the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, Amash resigned from the GOP, became an independent, and voted to impeach. He joined the Libertarian Party in 2020, making him the only Libertarian to serve in Congress.
Moral Anarchy: An Understatement
by E. Jeffrey Ludwig
American Thinker
A recent article published by AT ended with the following ominous sentences: “If the USA is unlikely to become once again an overwhelmingly Christian nation (and this seems to be the case), where will we turn for a new morality? Is it possible that we are now entering a century or so of moral anarchy?”
“Moral anarchy”? Is this an accurate term, or is it an understatement of the moral decline we are living through? Are terms like “moral degeneracy” and “moral collapse” better expressions of what we are facing?
Every perversion known to mankind is being embraced and gradually legalized. The idea that morality is created by each individual as he makes decisions throughout each day is a step beyond anarchy.
‘Chestfeeding’ and Other Transgender Terms Banned in NHS by U.K. Government
No more ‘people with ovaries’
by Steve Watson
Modernity News
The UK government is updating the constitution of the National Health Service specifically to expunge the creeping effort to ‘transition’ medical language by radical gender ideologists.
The move is being taken to ensure hospitals use language that is medically accurate and based in biological science.
It means that terms such as ‘Chestfeeding’ as a replacement for breastfeeding will be effectively banned.
Referring to ‘people with ovaries’ instead of women will also no longer be considered acceptable.
Michael Oliver – Gold’s Historic Acceleration Phase Has Already Begun
from King World News
Today Michael Oliver, the man who is well known for his deadly accurate forecasts on stocks, bonds, and major markets, communicated to King World News that gold’s historic acceleration phase has already begun and investors should expect a great deal more aggressive action to the upside.
The Recurring Nightmare
April 28 (King World News) – Michael Oliver, Founder of MSA Research: The single event that seems to haunt gold investors is the crash-like event that occurred in October 2008. “It must happen again,” so many assume.
Another Bank Bites the Dust – So Who Will Be the Next Dominoes to Fall?
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
It appears that the people running our system have decided that it is time for a wave of consolidation in the banking industry. A key program that was keeping U.S. banks afloat was allowed to expire last month, and everyone knew what that would mean. On Friday, the FDIC quietly announced that Republic Bank had been seized and a sale to Fulton Bank had already been arranged. Have you noticed that they often try to announce bad news like this on Friday? By the time news of the failure of Republic Bank broke, many people had already started their weekends. And the FDIC probably assumes that most people will have forgotten all about this by the time Monday morning rolls around. But this was a big deal, and it is inevitable that more dominoes will soon start to fall.
At the time it was seized, Republic Bank had 32 branches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. The following comes directly from the FDIC announcement that was issued on Friday…
The Ghetto-ization of American Life
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
Behind the facade of normalization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized.
Consider the defining characteristics of a ghetto:
1. The residents can’t afford to live elsewhere.
2. Everything is a rip-off because options are limited and retailers / service providers know residents have no other choice or must go to extraordinary effort to get better quality or a lower price.
3. Nothing works correctly or efficiently. Things break down and aren’t fixed properly. Maintenance is poor to non-existent. Any service requires standing in line or being on hold.
Trump Immunity, Protecting Vote Fraud, Economy Skidding
by Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog
President Trump’s so-called immunity case is in front of the Suprem Court. Who knows how it will turn out, but the first day of argument did not go well for the Biden Administration lawyers. The High Court is not going to dismiss the case, and likely some sort of immunity will be decided upon. At the very least, this case will delay other Trump cases in New York, Florida and Georgia until after the 2024 November Election, and that would be a big win in and of itself.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs just vetoed a bill that would “require proof of residency for voting.” All I can say is Hobbs and other Democrats in power are clearly protecting the voter fraud. With an 8% actual approval rating for President Biden, the swamp knows they will be forced to cheat and cheat big. My questions are: Can they cheat enough to pull it off again? Can they find enough people to help them cheat when the very people that helped them in 2020 are now struggling to survive? It’s not going to get better before election day.
Peter Schiff: Stagflation is Here, but They’re Still Clueless
by Peter Schiff
Schiff Sovereign
According to this morning’s dismal publication from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, US GDP growth crashed to just 1.6%, while inflation keeps rising at a 3.4% rate.
And ‘core’ inflation, which excludes food and energy, was up even higher at 3.7%!
All of these numbers are much worse than expected… and frankly Americans should be outraged.
Think about it: the United States is home to the world’s largest and most successful companies, many of which are on the bleeding edge of technology and productivity. America’s labor market is filled with talented workers. The country is teeming with abundant natural resources. Capital markets are the deepest and most attractive in the world.
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.