Biden administration causes the problems they claim to be trying to solve

 

The charade continues.  As usual, Sundance at Conservative Treehouse sums it up so even non-financial wonks can follow:

At a certain point in the economics of the great pretending cycle, one must wonder what circles they live in.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced another quarter-point interest rate hike and simultaneously noted the banking crisis will likely lead to tighter credit and borrowing for businesses on Main Street…. thereby further reducing the U.S. economic output.  Yet here we are again, and not a single economic or financial pundit is even talking about the origin of the inflation the Fed action is pretending to address, the spike in energy prices.

At the core of the Biden policy issue that creates inflation, is the energy policy that has driven oil, gas, home heating, electricity and manufacturing/farming costs through the roof.  The blocking of energy resource development/production is the top issue leading to massive increases in consumer prices overall.  The Biden energy policy is entirely ignored by a federal reserve attempting to shrink inflation.

Follow the bouncing ball of consequence.

Biden restricts energy development [Main St Suffers].  Prices skyrocket [Main St Suffers]. The fed raises interest rates in an effort to reduce the economic activity to meet the lowered production of energy resource development [Main St Suffers].  The result of the interest rate hike creates liquidity issues for banks holding treasury securities [Main St Suffers].  The banks then reduce credit lines, reduce lending and tighten borrowing to match their lowered liquidity [Main St Suffers].

The Fed then notes further increases in rates may pause as they await the outcome of restricted banking credit and lending from the rate hikes previously installed.  Nowhere in any of this is anyone talking about the nucleus of the issue – the stupid energy policy.  The great pretending continues in the West, while smiling panda lunches with Vladimir Putin. . . .

Read the rest here.

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Going cashless: weaponizing the banks

 

Digital dollars? Sounds innocuous enough, but it’s not.  In a recent column at Based Underground, Claudio Grass points out the dangers in the imminent move to digital currency. Here’s a sample:

As Reuters reported on the 15th of November, “Global banking giants are starting a 12-week digital dollar pilot with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Citigroup Inc , HSBC Holdings Pl, Mastercard Inc and Wells Fargo & Co are among the financial companies participating in the experiment alongside the New York Fed’s innovation center, they said in a statement. The project, which is called the regulated liability network, will be conducted in a test environment and use simulated data, the New York Fed said. The pilot will test how banks using digital dollar tokens in a common database can help speed up payments.”

. . .

[T]he stakes are too high for people to ignore this development. Whoever controls the money, controls everything and the rise of CBDCs [Central Bank Digital Currency] threatens to make that control absolute, closing whatever little “loopholes” of freedom may still exist today.

To most citizens, savers and taxpayers, the transition to a digital dollar might seem harmless, or even beneficial, given that most of the population today associates digitalization with convenience and speed. Indeed, if one doesn’t understand the ins and outs of monetary history, of fiat money and of digital currencies, this concept appears totally innocuous. But even for many who do understand these things, it might seem like such a step would really make no difference. Junk money is junk money after all, be it physical or digital, it’s still backed by nothing, right?

Well, that is right indeed, but there’s a lot more to it. While the currency itself will continue to be worthless, its digital form will come with a bunch of perks and advantages for central planners. As Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy and economics at Cornell University, puts it:

One should recognize that the CBDC creates new opportunity for monetary policy. If we all had CBDC accounts instead of cash, in principle it might be possible to implement negative interest rates simply by shrinking balances in CBDC accounts. It will become a lot easier to undertake helicopter drops of money. If everybody had a CBDC account, one could easily increase the balance in those accounts.

What this essentially means is that any choice that remains and any degree of financial sovereignty that is left in the present system could be easily wiped out by CBDCs. And its not only financial freedom that’s at stake: these centralized digital currencies can be used by governments to monitor, to control and even to directly punish dissenters, by blocking transactions, freezing their accounts or seizing they assets. Some might find that farfetched, but those are probably the same people who thought that China’s “Social Credit System” was implausible too, right up to the moment it was actually implemented.

Full article is here.

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Federal Reserve Bank: You Are A Target

 

J D Heyes at America First Report sounds the alarm:

Federal Reserve Goes Authoritarian,
Set to Force Banks to Adopt ‘Social Score’ System
for Customers Similar to Communist China

. . . As reported by investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel on his Substack, the Fed “has taken a major step in the direction of facilitating an ESG compliant monetary network that effectively acts as a parallel system to that of the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous social credit scoring system.”

ESG — which stands for Environment, Social, and Governance in investing — “refers to a set of standards for a company’s behavior used by socially conscious investors to screen potential investments,” according to Investopedia. What that means in practice, of course, is that regardless of the potential for earning profits for shareholders, which banks and corporations are beholden by law to always strive for, these institutions instead only invest in “politically correct” industries and sectors.

. . .

In short, institutions that are all-in for ESG essentially commit themselves to further attacking and eroding our founding free-market principles through deception, instead preferring Chinese communist-style “stakeholder capitalism” that empowers a small group of uber-elites and technocrats to make important decisions and broad determinations for all of society writ large.

Read the full report here.  And in related news, Sundance posted the transcript of Neil Oliver’s latest monologue – and it’s all about unaccountable banks and money.  Mr Oliver starts off:

I want to tell you a story about money. To be more specific I want to tell you where money comes from. The truth, of which most people are unaware, is that money is created out of thin air. Furthermore, every single pound, dollar, euro, yen and all the rest is created out of thin air by unelected, unaccountable private business people who conduct their meetings in total secrecy and profit always from their actions.

Let’s imagine you want to borrow 200k to buy a house. When you go to the bank and ask for that money, the banker doesn’t give you existing funds, cash from a drawer for instance. Instead, he creates that 200k out of nowhere – money that previously did not exist. That money is not backed by anything real – no gold or anything else. It is conjured out of nowhere and exists now only because the banker says it does. He then says you have to pay him back the 200k plus – let’s say for the sake of example – another 200k in interest.

He is allowed to credit your account with money that did not exist until you asked for it and he pressed digits on a keyboard … and then he invites himself to charge you whatever interest he wants on that previously non-existent sum. Talk about a fool-proof way to make money.  . . .

. . .

If you don’t trust me, how about Thomas Jefferson, founding father and third president of the US, who said:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency … they will deprive people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

The Federal Reserve in the US was created at Christmas time 1913. 

. . .

Henry Kissinger said:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Right now, all around us, the people are being nudged ever closer to digital enslavement by secretive, unaccountable bankers. . . .

Full transcript is here, and it’s sobering.  We all have bank accounts;  we’re all vulnerable. 

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Is there a vast right-wing conspiracy?

Here’s a thumbnail history of vast right-wing conspiracies by Janet Levy at American Thinker.  The historian, Gary Allen, thought he was researching history in order to “prove conservative anti-communists wrong.”  He came to the opposite conclusion.  Here’s the opening:

Fifty years ago, journalist Gary Allen set out to write a book to prove conservative anti-communists wrong.  But while researching, he realized he had not seen the "hidden picture."  There indeed was a conspiracy, shielded by a narrative advanced by liberal academia and the mainstream media, both actually in the service of an elite cabal that included Rockefeller, Ford, Morgan, Rothschild, Loeb, Kennedy, and Carnegie.  No longer willing to dismiss "right-wing conspiracy theorists," he titled his book, published in 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy.  It was a surprising bestseller: more than four million copies were sold during the 1972 presidential elections.  Many received it as gifts through an informal grassroots distribution system.

What Allen claimed to have discovered was that a plutocracy of 3% of the population covertly controlled the lives of the rest.  They had wrested control of the constitutional republic, with its separation of powers, limited government, and competitive free enterprise, and turned it into a system of centralized control by a few.  How was this achieved?  According to Allen, the conspiratorial clique was hidden and protected by a complicit media establishment they own and control.  Also, they are accomplished liars and farseeing planners.  Their subversive tour de force has been to advance the lies that a) communism is inevitable and b) communism is a movement of the downtrodden.  The first lie aims to destroy the will to fight, the second to gain the support of the poor masses and justify the destruction of a vigorous, innovative middle class.

Allen offers an alternative, realistic definition of communism: an international conspiratorial drive for power on part of men in high places, who are willing to use any means for global conquest.  In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said a proletarian revolution would necessitate a temporary socialist dictatorship, which would give way to full-on communism if three things were achieved: a) the elimination of private property rights, b) the dissolution of the family, and c) the replacement of religion with Marxist ideology.  These, in fact, are exactly what academia and left-wing groups in America are pushing for, today and when Allen wrote the book.

But all that, as Allen claims, is an elaborate ruse.  Behind it are the super-rich. 

Recommended reading. Full article is here.

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Sen. John Kennedy: open the US economy soon or it will collapse.

Sen. John Kennedy made such good sense on Tucker Carlson last night. Via FoxNews:

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Wednesday that deciding when to reopen the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic is like choosing between "cancer and a heart attack."

"The American people are not morons. They understand what I'm about to say," Kennedy said Wednesday. "We've got to open this economy. If we don't, it's gonna collapse. And if the U.S. economy collapses, the world economy collapses. And trying to burn down the village to save it is foolish. That's our cold, hard truth."

Kennedy went on to say that most Americans know the virus is still spreading and understand it will spread faster whenever states and cities loosen their restrictions. As a result, he said, officials will have to be smart about the situation.

"Don't open up in the middle of a hot spot," Kennedy said. "Encourage your elderly and those with preexisting conditions to stay quarantined and provide them financial support. Wear masks, try to socially distance.

"Use technology without violating privacy to try to track the hot spots and track people who have been exposed," Kennedy said. "Test as much as we can. Make sure that we got health care capacity."

Kennedy also reacted to reports that Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is eyeing July as the target for an economic opening.

"He's talking about leaving the economy closed until July. Do you really believe the American people are going to stand for that? They're not," Kennedy said. "This economy is going to collapse."

It was important for Sen. Kennedy to point out that when the economy re-opens for business, new cases of the virus will increase. The supposed purpose of the shut-down was to postpone some of the infections so as to not overwhelm the healthcare system. Plenty of debate going on as to whether that was ever a viable strategy, or even whether that purpose is behind all this.  (Sundance has a good analysis of the ideological aspects in his coverage of the New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's interview on Tucker Carlson here.  UPDATE: Here's another at Issues and Insights.)

And if you or someone you know contracts COVID-19 / Wuhan virus, you know to ask your doctor if you are a candidate for a hydroxychloroquine cocktail.  Here's a quick look at the risks of taking hydroxychloroquine. 

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Re-visiting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Many in the Cleveland Tea Party became aware of the mis-named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when Ohio’s Richard Cordray was appointed as the Bureau’s first Director in 2012. I was hoping that President Trump would find a way to eliminate this agency, since it is not accountable to Congress or the Executive branch. This agency is now back in the news, since Elizabeth Warren has a chance at becoming the Democrat Party’s nominee for President. Lloyd Billingsley at Front Page Magazine has an update:

As announced this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The case involves constitutional issues such as the separation of powers, but there’s a lot more going with this agency. As Judicial Fortitude author Peter J. Wallison notes, the CFPB is “the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren,” and that makes a case for closer examination.

Her claims to Cherokee ancestry have been exposed as a fraud, yet Warren remains a leading contender for the Democrat nomination for president. In her 2014 A Fighting Chance, Warren maintained the fake Cherokee claims and also billed herself as an economic expert.

Nobody in this country “got rich on his own,” she explains. Rather, “you moved goods on the roads the rest of us paid for” and used workers “the rest of us paid to educate.” You were safe in your factory “because of police and fire forces the rest of us paid for.” And so on, the same Big Brother view as POTUS 44. If people are in financial distress, Warren blames their problems on the banking industry, portrayed as the flywheel of capitalist greed and trickery. That view comes across in the structure of the CFPB.

As Wallison notes, the CFPB was given plenary authority to enforce all federal laws that apply to financial transactions with consumers, and more. CFPB power was “broadened beyond existing laws” to take enforcement action on any action it finds “unfair, deceptive, or abusive.” Since “abusive” is not defined, this served up “a vast field for the agency to define and pursue.” Wallison finds this a “dangerous step in support of an even more powerful and uncontrolled administrative state.”

For example, the CFPB director gets a five-year term fully protected from removal by the president other than for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.” This places the director outside the control of the president, “whose ability to pursue the policies he was elected to implement depends crucially on the ability to remove and replace the senior officials of executive agencies.” Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh is already on record that the CFPB director is the most powerful person in the federal government, aside from the president. And it gets worse.

The CFPB gets funding not from Congress but the Federal Reserve, and the money comes at the request of the CFPB director. And under the enabling Dodd-Frank legislation, the Fed has “no ability to affect the agency’s actions.” So Warren’s CFPB is beyond the control of Congress, and if the Supreme Court upholds the status quo, “it would be possible for Congress to create other agencies that are beyond the control of any elected body.”

. . .

The full article is here. Scary stuff.

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